Windsor was one of the small communities located on the Canadian shore of the Detroit River at the end of the 19th century. Although it played an important part in the local agricultural economy of neighbouring Essex and Kent Counties, Windsor, along with the adjoining towns of Sandwich, Walkerville and Sandwich East, was rapidly adjusting to the commercial and industrial developments taking place on the opposite shore, in and around the city of Detroit. The Canadian and American shores were linked by several ferries. As well, railways such as the Grand Trunk, Canada Southern and Canadian Pacific made Windsor a terminal for Canadian goods from all across the country.

Detroit, founded by Cadillac in 1701, is the oldest European settlement in the interior of the North American continent , . By the turn of the 20th century, Detroit had reached a population of 200,000 and had long lost its French identity. But it maintained a significant French-Canadian population that gave it a special cachet amongst major American cities , . On the South shore French Canadians still made up 50% of the population.
Detroit was well on its way to becoming one of the great American commercial and manufacturing centres. Already, many Windsor inhabitants worked on “the other side” . Others supplied raw materials for the industries across the river and everyone bought products manufactured in Detroit.

Settlement on the south (Canadian) shore began in 1749 at Petite Côte, in what is now the town of LaSalle. The area was still known as Petite Côte at the time of Le Progrès. The original French settlement had grown towards the south, up to the mouth of the Canard river, and also eastwards along the Detroit River to the entrance to Lake St-Clair. In 1767, the mission to the Hurons officially became Assumption Parish , , , the oldest parish in what is now Ontario. When the Americans took over Detroit in 1796, many Loyalists crossed the river, founding the town of Sandwich, just west of Assumption Church. Further upriver, directly across from Detroit, Scottish and Loyalist merchants established a small commercial centre around François Baby’s ferry dock. This is how Windsor began.

One hundred years later, the south shore was bubbling with activity. Windsor, which became a city in 1892 , was now the commercial centre for the entire area and the terminal for the Great Western Railway (a branch of the Grand Trunk Railway) and the Canadian Pacific . Still surrounded by French farms, Windsor was now linked to the county seat in Sandwich by electric streetcar . To the east, the streetcar line went to Walkerville, the town Hiram Walker built to produce and export whiskey to the United States. The streetcars went as far as Sandwich East, where Henry Ford would soon build his first Canadian assembly plant. The first mention of an automobile appears in Le Progrès in 1901 seven years after that, an article in Le Courrier attests to the rapid evolution of this novelty item into an ubiquitous mode of transportation .

Le Progrès, while concerned primarily with issues affecting French-Canadians, was an important player on the municipal scene in Windsor. In it, we can get a fairly accurate picture of daily life in the Border Cities at the end of the 19th century. An editorial published in Le Progrès’ twentieth anniversary issue, on June 6 1901, take stock of Windsor at the dawn of a new century, describing the changes that have occurred over the past two decades and listing the people and institutions who have left their mark on the city .

Le Progrès was heavily involved on every level of Windsor’s political scene : municipal, provincial and federal. The paper provides us also with a view of life in a border town, showing the strong links between Windsor and Detroit. Local commerce and industry is featured in numerous articles and advertisements. People and places feature prominently in Le Progrès, with news from the several communities that make up the Border Cities: Sandwich, Walkerville, Sandwich East, Pilette Corners, Les Marais. Like today, crime seems to be a major preoccupation of Le Progrès’ readers, and much ink is spilled over lawbreaking on both sides of the border. In short, Le Progrès provides us with a very good snapshot of daily life in Windsor in these far-off times.