A Windsor bandshell key to city’s Black history lies in disrepair. Now, it’s a step closer to being saved

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The Jackson Park bandshell once hosted civil rights leaders and musical superstars, a pioneering Black beauty contest and huge Emancipation Day rallies. Now, the site lies in disrepair as Windsor debates whether to save a key part of the area’s Black history.

The bandshell, a covered stage in the corner of a park located just south of the city’s downtown, is currently off-limits to the public, protected by locked fences and doing duty as a parks department storage spot. But it moved one step closer to rehabilitation this week after city council agreed to look into fixing it up.

“I don’t think, despite the challenges, it’s an insurmountable task,” said Councillor Kieran McKenzie, whose work prompted Monday’s vote. “The space itself has a lot of history, there’s some sentimentality attached to the space.”

Council did not decide to restore the bandshell during its meeting on Monday, only to direct staff to determine the cost of a feasibility study into doing so, up to a maximum of $120,000. But it is a small step in the direction of undoing a loss to the Black community, which has seen important parts of its local history erased.

Major hurdles include finding new uses for the old structure and striking a deal to share adjacent land owned by the local school board. The bandshell now sits too close to a fence to allow for a substantial audience.

There is also an unknown total cost. Once staff report back on a price tag for a feasibility study, council would have to vote again on whether to proceed any further.

If it all works out, local activist and artist Leslie McCurdy dreams of performing the final episode of her long-running play – The Spirit of Harriet Tubman – at the bandshell.

“Because that performance started my career, because Harriet Tubman has been my personal hero all my life, and because she is a major conductor on the Underground Railroad, and Windsor is major end-point of the Underground Railroad,” she said. “You know, so it just all kinds of ties in.”

The bandshell was built in 1959 to replace an earlier one that burned in mysterious circumstances. The replacement was then allowed to deteriorate, during an era in which cities across North America alternated between neglect of and heavy-handed intervention in Black neighbourhoods and public spaces.

These include the razing of Africville, in Halifax, and the loss of Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley neighbourhood, which was displaced to build highway viaducts. In Windsor, urban renewal came for the McDougall Street corridor, once a core of local Black life. Residents were dispersed and only a few churches now recall their former community.

“The sort of erasure of the history of this community kind of started with the erasure of its physical spaces,” said Willow Key, a University of Windsor master’s student who was lead researcher on a walking tour and digital exhibition to remember and commemorate the area.

“When I was conducting the research, a lot of people who were born and raised in Windsor didn’t really know much about the community or its existence. Which is quite interesting to me. They’re people who would have been alive during that period.”

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Other parts of local Black history are also enjoying greater attention. Last week, Canada Post unveiled a stamp commemorating Mary Ann Shadd, a lawyer, journalist and early proponent of integrated schooling who spent part of her career in a town that later became part of Windsor.

Bringing back the Jackson Park bandshell would be a more complicated sort of commemoration.

One of the biggest issues is the location. Behind the bandshell is a playing field known as Windsor Stadium, owned by the district school board. According to Mr. McKenzie, the city’s original plan decades ago had been to have a reversing grandstand that could serve both the field and the bandshell. Instead, the council of the day opted against this dual functionality, leaving the bandshell both orphaned and hemmed in.

While the school board isn’t willing to sell the adjacent land, spokesman Scott Scantlebury confirmed in an e-mail that it “would be open to discussions about joint use of the area which could lead to practical use for the bandshell.”

However, Renaldo Agostino, a former promoter who is now councillor for the ward that includes the bandshell, remains doubtful the site is even suitable for major events. He noted its lack of rigging infrastructure and other amenities.

“What comes first, does the event come first or does the venue come first? And do you have a need for events. Like, that’s the conversation that needs to be had,” he said.

“And then the other conversation of course behind this all is what do you want? Do you want a museum honouring the history of the park, the stage, or do you want the opportunity to have a successful event space? Because those are two very different things.”