Amherstburg town councillor Diane Pouget wants to erect a plaque to commemorate a meeting that is said to have started the conversation to end the Cold War.
The so-called "walk that changed the world" took place in the orchards on former Senator Eugene Whelan's farm in Amherstburg at the height of the Cold War on May 19, 1983. Whelan hosted a delegation of Soviet officials, which included then Agriculture Minister Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev later became the president of the Soviet Union. During that conversation, the two are said to have laid bare their concerns about tensions between the Soviet Union and the West, laying the framework for the end of the U.S.S.R.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union came in December 1991.
"I have received permission from the Whalen family to proceed with it," says Pouget about the project which she proposed to town council Monday night. "I did talk to the Heritage Committee, but it wasn't within their mandate."
Pouget hopes to erect the plaque along the sidewalk in front of the Whelan property.
