Ok, I'll jump in even though this thread started last year.
I moved from the GTA b/c a scam mortgage broker convinced me she could get me a mortgage even though I thought she was nuts. She of course stated that Windsor was a VERY cheap place to live. She is a thread for another time LOL
So once I got there, within a few days I started to realized what was happening & had to start looking for rentals.
While I had health problems in the GTA, I started to experience NEW symptoms when in Windsor. I was devastated, especially AFTER I just happened to watch a docu on the MOST polluted cities in either Canada or NA. I watched this literally the first month that I arrived.
Guess who was #1????
Of course WINDSOR & then Sarnia.
I remember the first time I encountered rained there & I went to put groceries in my trunk & felt this gritty stuff all over my car. I was SHOCKED at what was falling from the sky.
I started looking for a place outside of Windsor, but let's face it, pollution doesn't stop at some man made line in the ground, it blows all over the place.
Windsor doesn't just get its pollution from Detroit, it gets it (I think) from Sarnia & Toronto & of course Windsor itself. The other problem & contributing factor are the trucks. There are TONS of semis going in & out of Windsor & into Detroit. I didn't know it at the time, but the carcinogens from the diesel fuel is soooo toxic, that's the reason for the high rate of cancer.
People have other health issues too, not just cancer. I'm very sensitive to anything that isn't nature, so it really affected me.
In fact Sarnia is soooo bad, that there's hardly any male babies being born there b/c the women keep either miscarrying, or the doctors figured out that the cycle of deciding whether the baby is male or female loses itself at that point & they are all coming out female. I'm just paraphrasing here, sorry, it was a while ago that I watched that docu so I don't know how to describe it.
In fact based on the next docu I watched, there is a known threat to the decline of the male species (sorry guys). Sarnia is hit sooo hard, doctors from all over the world go there to study it. There are toxic chemical plants right across the water in Detroit.
So even once I moved to Kingsville, I was still having problems, but at least the water is better there.
In Windsor, how many times have I smelled the water & cringed so that I didn't even want to wash my hands.
I normally drink purified or spring water, but when I was in the GTA, I always drank tap water at a restaurant (with lemon). I couldn't even do that in Windsor & Amherstburg was THE WORST. I could taste it on the food & almost died. I also had a reaction to some electrical grid or something in Amherstburg. NEVER had that reaction EVER in the GTA.
Windsorites are VERY nice people overall.
Compared to Toronto, they don't look at you as a dollar sign. When they welcome you into their store, restaurant, etc. I feel they really mean it.
There are some asses there, but they may not have originally been from Windsor. I know one guy ripped me off, he was from Vancouver.
Anyway, that was the highlight of Windsor for me. I didn't like Kingsville at all other than the produce & I went into Windsor every week to 2 weeks.
From the farms, you can get CHEAP produce of very good quality once spring rolls around. A bag of baby cukes for $2, or 6 cukes for $1, or a basket of great tomatoes for $3. Leamington (slightly further than Kingsville) is the tomato capital of Canada if you can believe that.
Kingsville is about 35-45 minutes away depending on where you live in Windsor.
The streets in Windsor are terrible. Just like the states, potholes all over the place except where they have paved. I find it to be a dirty city overall & supposedly the property taxes are very high even though the housing prices are low.
You have to get them to lower the property taxes if you buy. I learned that from a Realtor who said it can be done if you prove the value of the house has dropped. Most people don't know this, so they pay way more than they should.
Since Internet will be important for you (I'm a netrepreneur, so I know), Cogeco was so so & I think they were slightly more expensive, but they aren't as good as Rogers.
There was one company DSL that I was going to sign up with to FINALLY get rid of Cogeco, but I was about to move to Panama at the time, so I nixed that idea.
My point is, at least in Kingsville, you have no choice but Cogeco. I remember now that I had soooo many problems with them & while they were nicer than Roger's employees, I wasted a lot of my time & my time is worth money to me. They made 2 HUGE mistakes where they blamed me & it was their fault. They finally admitted it months later.
I got a modern house for rent in Kingsville (this is rare) for $850/month. In Windsor prices were more like $1,000-1,200. I don't rent apts., only houses.
Nightlife I can't tell you. I heard there's a lot of night clubs there, but the music wouldn't have been my taste even if I had gone b/c I think I heard it was ONLY house & I like different types of dance music.
Restaurants - didn't like them at all & I went to many plus they were more expensive than restaurants in Toronto if you can believe that (not talking the high end ones). The ONLY restaurant I really liked was the Turkish one I found by accident & then I found out was owned by a Toronto couple LOL I laughed when I found that out.
Unfortunately they didn't know how to run their business properly & it was always dead in there. The next time I went to eat there, they were gone
Most of the restaurants are just chain restaurants that serve junk.
Everyone says the food there is great. I'm a foodie & it's not IMO.
If you don't care about food, it will be fine for you.
There is actually a good Japanese restaurant there near the clubbing area. I found another Japanese steakhouse that was ok, but the first one was better. When I was there, she opened about 5 months after I arrived & she did NO advertising, so I didn't even know she existed.
The food is sort of weird there (Chinese - the egg foo young sauce is weird, the lo mein isn't real lo mein, etc.) & I assume that's b/c it has the US influence & that's one thing I can't stand about Americans, the restaurants I've gone to aren't authentic like it is in Toronto. Not saying that's true of ALL US cities, just the ones I went to in Chicago & Detroit & I think Miami too.
Whenever I complained about the poor quality of food, people would say, "Well this isn't Toronto." & I thought to myself, what does the city have to do with anything??? It's the CHEF that matters, not the city (unless of course it's the water, but I don't think that's it at all.).
If you are into holistic things, forget it. They are very very behind the times. They only have one health food store that has any kind of holistic food items & I can't get most of the stuff I want, so I had to start ordering online. The owner is Chinese & he's a sweetheart. Say hi to him if you ever go there. I can get you his address I think I still have it.
The other health food stores just have crappy supplements, no food items. He has everything, but it's VERY expensive b/c there's no competition & Windsorites just don't buy that kind of stuff.
People - aren't very attractive there. A lot of them are very overweight b/c they eat all the junk food.
It will be a culture shock if you are coming from Toronto b/c there's hardly any different ethnicities there (most everyone is white), although they have a large Arabic community, an Italian area (of course) & a Chinese area. One thing I noticed, the foreigners all speak pretty good English just like in the States. Not like in Toronto where they speak none.
And the Chinese I met (2 families) are very nice there unlike in Toronto LOL
Yes there are a lot of Americans in Windsor & vice versa. In fact a lot of them inter married & either live in Detroit or vice versa.
I don't know how people shopped every week in Detroit. You have to pay duty if you spend over X amount of dollars. I didn't think you did & then I got nabbed at the border. Sometimes it's worth it, other times it's not b/c of the cost of gas & then it costs you $8 ($4 each way) when you pay to go & come back.
I DID get a new surround system from Amazon, had it shipped to the UPS docking station that is like 10 minutes once you get over the border & even with paying the duty, it was way cheaper than had I purchased it in Canada.
I didn't find out about the UPS trick until later on & about 3 days of fighting with UPS LOL
Unfortunately I never used it again. What I did find, is that when I bought things from the US & had them shipped across, only ONCE was I charged duty unlike when I shipped to the GTA. I learned that if you just ship it regular USPS, 9/10 you won't pay a dime.
I didn't like Detroit, but Ann Arbor is a place everyone talks about. It's a University town that is very holistically bent & Eden Foods is there (they used to be in Detroit). It's about 45 minutes from the border, maybe an hour. I went there at the very end & then got lost coming back b/c my Garmin screwed me up. LOL
Remember that Windsor is a University town, so there's a lot of students there from all over Canada.
Oh & one thing, they ticket you WAY more there than I got tickets in the GTA. Within the first year I was there (I was there for 2.5 years in total), I got 3 tickets including one stopped one b/c I ran into the ATM for Scotia.
So I hope that helps you & others who may wish to go there.
Michelle
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