As we crossed the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit into Windsor, Ontario, the landscape shifted—not just geographically but in tone. The industrial sprawl gave way to quiet streets lined with summer trees and stone-faced buildings. Windsor doesn’t announce itself loudly. It waits. And so we followed the river’s pull and wound our way through the University of Windsor, letting the campus unfold around us as we drifted toward the water.
The University began, as many Canadian universities did, with the Church. In 1857, Assumption College was founded by the Basilian Fathers—Catholic priests with a mission for education. At the time, the college served the children of French-speaking settlers and immigrants in the region, and its curriculum was steeped in classical studies and theology. Over the years, as Windsor grew from a small border town into an industrial city, the college grew too, adding faculties, expanding programs, and eventually, in 1963, transforming into the secular University of Windsor. But the old heart still beats within it.
We parked for a moment near a small stone chapel—simple, quiet, and still. This is the Rosary Chapel, tucked like a prayer into the edge of campus. It’s not grand. There are no flying buttresses, no tourist groups snapping photos. But it is lovely. Built in 1955, the chapel stands as a reminder of the university’s Catholic heritage and its enduring presence as a space for reflection and ritual. Inside, the stained glass windows filter light in slivers of red and gold, and the scent—faint beeswax and old wood—brings back memories I can’t quite place.
The Rosary Chapel isn’t the kind of place you go looking for. It’s the kind of place you find when you need quiet. When students come here, they don’t come for history lessons—they come for peace. I imagine it’s seen countless whispered prayers before exams, eulogies for lost classmates, even the occasional wedding for those who met under its bell.
As we pulled away, I thought about how this campus—so close to the noise and motion of the border—manages to contain these pockets of silence. The chapel, the quad, the library with its creaky chairs and smell of paper—each is a sanctuary of sorts. Together they form a kind of intellectual monastery, where the business of learning is both secular and sacred.
Near the river, we watched the Detroit skyline shimmer behind the Ambassador Bridge, that artery of steel and commerce. But here, just a few blocks inland, was another kind of bridge: a university built on faith, transformed by time, and still committed to guiding students across the uncertain waters of their own becoming. The Rosary Chapel, humble and half-forgotten, felt like the still point in that turning world. A place to breathe. A place to remember. A place to begin.