#34: Windsor, Canada

Going on trips is an essential part of the Notre Dame experience.  Road trips to away football games at beautiful locations such as Ann Arbor, East Lansing, and West Lafayette happen most every September.  Spring and fall breaks also see many students travel to various places across the country and around the world.  However, no location is as widely visited (and as unanimously loved) by Notre Dame Students than Windsor, Canada.

For those unfamiliar with this Midwestern mecca, Windsor is the Las Vegas Atlantic City of the Midwest.  Also described as the seedy underbelly of the Detroit Metro Area*, Windsor is a city that is loved by Notre Dame Students for its lengthy bar district, its unnecessarily extravagant casino, and its infamous strip clubs.  At only three hours from campus, most students will make several excursions to the city over the course of their four years.

These students will make a variety of excuses to go to the city:  “it’s on the way to the Michigan State Game”**. . . “It’s JPW, nobody will be on campus” . . . “It’s Friday Night”.  While all of these are completely valid reasons, the primary reason that Notre Dame Students go to Windsor is because of the 19 year drinking and gambling age (and getting lap dances with Monopoly Money).

While these students will go on to spend countless hours at The Backer, Finny’s, and Fever during their Junior and Senior years; their first drinks at a bar will likely come during their Sophomore year at Peppers or the Boom Boom Room buying Molson and Labatt Blue with two dollar coins while the televisions play highlights of Hockey on TSN.  Because of this, a trip to Winsor is a seminal moment in the lives of many Notre Dame Students.  

These students will be enthralled by Ouellette Avenue Bar district that has several solid blocks of bars with the occasional late night eatery intermixed.  Some will try their hands at the blackjack tables of Casino Windsor late at night while others will entertain themselves with the strip clubs or even the “exotic massage parlors”.  Regardless, these Notre Dame Students will go out of their way to do things that they would never consider on campus, and they will probably repent for their sins upon return to America.

*Although, by now its strip clubs are most likely bringing in more revenue than General Motors and Chrysler combined.

**It’s Not