Autobiography of Marcel Corneille Blanchaer

Revised November 11,2006

Here I am in my 78th year (1999), the second of the two children of Oscar Jean Blanchaer and Rosalia Verwimp. I was born on April 4, 1921 in Deurne, a suburb of Antwerp Belgium. This was three years after the end of World War I and 11 years after the birth of my brother Ernest and 7 years after Ernest's accidental death.
  Rosalia had no special memories of my birth, but Oscar enjoyed telling how, when he picked me up for the first time, held me high and laughed with joy, I returned his greeting by peeing in his face!

My early life in Belgium -
  For the first 3 years of my life we lived in a comfortable middle-class home in Deurne. I have few memories of this period but can recall seeing the family's Airedale dog running around in the family garden that had a high brick wall. Oscar, Rosalia and I are shown here in our garden in 1923. In 1924 the family went to Detroit, Michigan for one year.
Departure for "Amerika" -Here I am as I looked at 3.5 years just before we left Antwerp. We arrived on the "Majestic" in New York on October 14, 1924.
  In Detroit Oscar, on leave from the Minerva Motor Company of Antwerp, worked at the Packard Motor Company. When their one year visas to the U.S. expired, instead of going back to Belgium, the family moved across the Detroit River to Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
Life In Remington Park -
  I passed my early childhood in Remington Park, a suburb of Windsor. When the family moved there it had just been opened as a 'subdivision' on former farmland and still had many beautiful 100 year-old elm trees in which I and my friends did gymnastics and even tried (unsuccessfully) to build a tree house.

There were as yet very few houses so I and my playmates had a lots of room to play 'Cowboys and Indians' in the many open fields. When we were in a quieter mood, we would grub in the soil to make miniature forts and a few years later, dig small-scale versions of the ditches being dug for water pipes and sewers along the still-unpaved 'streets'. We also played war games that reflected some of the real-life experiences of our parents in whose minds the memories of World War I were still fresh. Some winters we skated on a creek at the south end of Remington Park, but most years it and nearby ponds did not freeze over, even in the depth of winter. This was because Windsor is near the southern-most spot in Canada, Point Pelee. Windsor lays south of Detroit, Michigan and many other parts of the US. The summers are hot and very humid, because Essex County, in which Windsor is located, is surrounded by water: Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River on the north and west sides respectively and Lake Erie on the south side.