The City of Windsor is being honoured for its efforts to restore and preserve a piece of Windsor’s history.
The University of Windsor presented the city with the Kulisek Prize during a ceremony Tuesday in recognition of the restoration of Streetcar No. 351 and the creation of a permanent exhibition at the riverfront Legacy Beacon located within the Michael D. Hurst Legacy Park.
Head of the University of Windsor Department of History Dr. Robert Nelson says not a lot of people know about this important chapter of Windsor’s history, the first electric streetcar in Canada.
“We’re very happy to give it for this beautiful restoration of the streetcar and the overall setting of this entire location and how it’s really made the riverfront that much more attractive for the entire population of Windsor,” he says.
The $10.3 million Legacy Beacon project along Riverside Drive at the foot of Caron Avenue houses the historic streetcar that was built in 1918 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and later purchased by the Sandwich, Windsor, and Amherstburg Railway.
Streetcar No. 351 officially opened April 24, 2025, and attracted over 28,000 visitors during its first season of operations. It has already had over 1,000 visitors less than a month into its second season in 2026.
Nelson says it’s such a struggle to get anything preserved.
“Historical preservation can be a hard sell with the community until they see the results. Then it gets very popular, very quickly,” he says. “When it’s just an abstract idea and they remember maybe boring high school history classes and they don’t really get behind the idea of what the point is of historic preservation, then they come down, see the situation, and they get it.”
Nelson says history is how we tell the narrative of Windsor to ourselves.
“It’s stories like this that we need to tell, and people get behind that,” he says.
The Kulisek Prize is an annual prize awarded to a distinguished finished project on the history of Windsor and surrounding Essex County, Kent, and Lambton created by a group or individual member of the public.
The Kulisek Prize is named for Dr. Larry Kulisek, who had a long and notable career as the Department of History’s specialist in local history.
During the ceremony, the city was also gifted with a copper/brass replica of Streetcar No. 351.
Business manager Ryan Thompson and organizer David Campbell of the Sheet Metal Workers and Roofers Union Local 235 presented the keepsake replica.
It was made as part of a competition as part of the Ontario Sheet Metal Workers and Roofers’ annual conference in Windsor in 2025.
The site operates from May 1 through Labour Day, Tuesdays through Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays through Sundays, including all statutory holidays, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. following Labour Day and through October 31.
The site is closed on Mondays, aligning with operating hours for Museum Windsor.