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Introduction
Introduction
The name
of the paper itself came from the original name of The Windsor Star. The
Windsor Star began life as The Border City Star. There was, at
that time, no official city called Windsor. Windsor came into being in 1893 after an
amalgamation of several towns along the Detroit river. Most of the towns on the
North Eastern the tip of South Western Ontario shared the name "Sandwich". The amalgamation was
likely prompted less by the area's growing population and more to alleviate
the confusion of having so many municipalities named after something sold at
a deli counter.
In 1993, Windsor was in the grips of centennial
fever. Beyond anyone's most optimistic expectations, Windsor had survived 100 years as not
only a city but as part of Canada. Being a painful, boring
four-hour drive from Toronto and only a five-minute drive away
from Detroit, Windsor could easily be confused for a
suburb of America's Motor City. The first Burger King in Canada was opened in Windsor. Windsor McDonald's restaurants
were the first in Canada to serve breakfast entrees. The
first American bank to open a branch in Canada was in Windsor. An American software company
owned Windsor's Ontario Hockey League team. About the only
thing that reminded the rest of Canada that Windsor indeed existed was that "Windsoradians"
got to vote in Federal and Provincial elections. At election time, Windsor could always be counted on to
send four Liberal MPs to Ottawa and four NDP MPPs to Toronto. This is probably why no level of
government ever tried to sell Windsor to the USA for favorable terms.
Such was
the elation that Windsor reached the centennial mark that
the few bookstores Windsor had stocked no less than five
different coffee table books devoted to this grim industrial city's seemingly
inconsequential past. It seemed anyone with half a grasp of Windsor's past got a publishing deal.
Even Windsor's most chauvinistic boosters wondered aloud
if maybe there were more coffee table books than Windsor's 198,000 citizens could absorb.
Terry
Brown's final April Fool's issue set out to parody this somewhat excessive
back slapping ("wow, in a 100 years we never went bankrupt, we were
never successfully invaded, and we were never reduced to rubble by Martian
attack saucers").
The
Border City Lance
had two principle themes:
- Not much has change on campus
and in the city in 100 years. The problems of 100 years ago are still
problems today. The only thing that has changed is the name of the
politician or university president claiming a solution was in the offing
Real Soon Now.
- Good god, weren't women
poorly treated 100 years ago by the Catholic church? Again, Terry and I could not
let go of our need to take pot shots at our Catholic up brining. The University of Windsor grew out of a Catholic
school called Assumption College. Most of the original
teachers were clergy from the Basilian order. Basilian priests at times
exceeded even the Jesuits in both their orthodoxy and zeal for physical
violence against moral transgressors (i.e., students).
Of the
four Lance April Fool's issues Terry and I worked on I had the least
physical involvement with The Border City Lance. I worked on it
remotely from Toronto, mailing Terry text and art work. Despite a
physically hands-off role, three of my articles made the front page. Terry
even used the arched "The Border City Lance" banner I created in
CorelDraw and snail mailed to him. This was 1993. Pre-email days, eh.
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