Parks in Windsor, Ontario
[2] Across Matchette Road lies Malden Park, a former city dump-turned-park, with a huge 300-foot (90 m) hill, providing views of the Windsor and Detroit skylines, as well as sights of the River Rouge and Zug Island factories.
On a clear day, visitors can even see the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station and the office towers of Southfield, Michigan far off in the distance.
It is connected via the bike trails (such as the West Windsor Recreationway) to neighbouring Ojibway Park and Spring Garden Natural Area.
The beach at Chewett Beach/McKee Park used to allow swimming until recently, when it was completely redesigned, keeping only the small boardwalk and boat launch.
This park also connects to the Fujisawa Botanical Gardens, a gravel trail and grassed area still under conversion from railway bed, extending south to Wyandotte Street.
The park also offers coin-operated viewfinders, which allow you 2 minutes of viewing through large binoculars at the Detroit Skyline for just 25 cents.
The Great Western Park contains wide open space for playing many games, along with benches, and completely re-landscaped gardens and bays.
These gardens, including a magnificent curved waterfall and plaza are dedicated to a former Windsor Mayor from 1975–1982 who got the ball rolling for the entire riverfront park system in the mid-1970s.
They contain a terraced garden, plaza, font, waterfall, reflecting pool, and a small bridge around a bay, also linking the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel pumping house, via a securely locked door.
A bronze bust of Weeks, sculpted by noted local sculptor, Christopher Rees, (deceased) stands on the west side of the garden.
A restroom was built into the hill-side below the bike trail, with the roof providing a very large and beautiful overhang/lookout to observe the river and Detroit Skyline.
Recently, City Council has been considering selling the Roseland Golf Course and Lakeview Marina in the east end, citing financial difficulties.
There is a newly paved, oversized parking lot that runs alongside the Ganatchio Trail, and both are located directly across the street from the beach itself.
Beachgoers and sunbathers of all ages attend this community park for some rest and relaxation and leisure time in general.
The beach portion of Sandpoint lies to the west of the totem pole, and is marked off from the shipping channel by floating markers.
While Sandpoint Beach has lifeguards on hand, Stop 26 is generally unmanned, with signs in place cautioning people of the strong currents in the Detroit River and Lake Saint Clair.
Every Winter, Sandpoint Beach is home to the "Polar Bear Dip", a long-running tradition of beach-goers running into the freezing (and often ice-covered) lake and swimming briefly to raise money for charities, or for the local hospitals.
Only accessible by boat, this island park is fun for picnics and exploration, at the mouth of Detroit River and Lake St. Clair.
It features a forest, play ground, open area, plaza, marquee, Outdoor icerink with a roof and even an open-air swimming pool for the public living in the Walkerville and Ottawa Street Village neighbourhoods in Downtown Windsor.
It is one of the larger city parks and features a newly restored granite memorial prominently located at the main gates, inscribed with the names of 837 men and women from the Windsor area who died serving in the First World War.
The Memorial bike trail connects the park to the intersection of Walker and Grand Marais Roads, where the Windsor - Tecumseh Tornado of 1946 tore through the city.
Most of the houses that border the park across the streets are stylized in Industrial Revolution-England style, with rounded windows and row-houses with steep roofs.
It contains an outdoor (seasonal) pool, an intermediate size soccer field and a 100 by 150 feet (30 by 46 m) skateboard park.
The longest of the shared-usage trails in the network is the paved Roy A. Battagello River Walk, (built in the late 1960s, and upgraded/widened several times), stretching from west of the Ambassador Bridge to the historical Hiram Walker Distillery, a distance of around 5 miles (8.0 km).
The Ganatchio Trail travels along the east side of town, with a branch heading south towards Forest Glade.
Whenever University Street, Riverside Drive, or the Riverwalk trail are closed, Wyandotte is typically used as an alternate, and as a result, it is beyond capacity and it is heavily traveled for basically all of its length being a major east-west artery, despite going through the heart of downtown Windsor, and intersecting the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel Entrance at Goyeau Avenue.
The City of Windsor is slowly working towards connecting the Riverwalk to the Chrysler Canada Greenway with designated routes.
The Riverwalk trail has also seen TCT signs appear along its western segment from the Ambassador Bridge to Dieppe Gardens, and along the Peter Street Bike Route (where they meet at the University of Windsor), south along Brock Street and the College Avenue Bike Trail, down through Mic Mac and Malden Parks.
Recently, the Windsor Star and a few of the Detroit television stations have reported the City of Detroit wanting to build a bike trail network similar to Windsor's, stretching from Hart Plaza, along the Renaissance Center, to Chene Park and Belle Isle, and even considering a ferry across the river for cyclists and pedestrians.
The trail serves a dual purpose of exercise/recreation and commuting, since many people have chosen to use their bicycles instead of their cars (which has started to save the City of Windsor money in road repair costs).
