Perry Thompson’s room in The Village at St. Clair is filled with countless paintings he’s created since moving into the Village nearly a year ago. Many are vibrant, colourful, depictions of musicians and bands that have influenced him over the decades, while others are abstract expressions of the comfort he finds with a brush in hand and a blank canvas before him.
Music and art are intertwined in Perry’s life, and he passed that passion and enthusiasm to countless young people over a 35-year career as an art teacher in Windsor. People coming and going into the Village today often recognize him – Windsor can feel like a small town, in many ways, and Perry’s influence was broad. Thousands of students passed through the halls of Sandwich Secondary School, and Perry connected with many of them.
“He was one of the cool teachers,” says St. Clair Recreation Director, Hannah Renaud. She never had him as a teacher, but her husband did.
There are countless pockets of influence within the school experience for young people – there are concretes and tangibles in the math and sciences, for example, while Perry’s gift was to encourage students to find a little joy in the abstract.
Art, he says, “is not tangible, you know, it's fleeting.” There's no right or wrong answer. It's only an interpretation of how one sees the world at any given moment.
And just as art is sometimes fleeting, so, too, can be good health.
Perry now lives with Parkinson’s Disease and the progression of symptoms led him to long-term care and The Village at St. Clair. The transition wasn’t easy, he admits, but he began to settle when the team encouraged him to pursue his passion for art. He began to paint almost daily, and says his peace of mind is found in those moments. His physical self changes, as well. The tremors that affect his body as a result of the disease nearly disappear when he picks up a brush and focuses on a canvas.
“When I pick up the brush and start, it just stops,” he says, before catching himself. “It doesn’t disappear completely, but you work with it. You play with the shape.”
And in doing so, he connects with an important aspect of his overall well-being: namely, joy.
“A smile,” he replies, when asked what he gets out of the act of painting. “It keeps me sane. It stabilizes things – your head and your heart.”
In a room surrounded by his work, Perry reflects on his life. He recalls trips to Greece with students, and he recalls the connection he had with members of the Canadian Band, The Tea Party. He saw the potential they had when they were students and recalls conversations they had. “We would talk about philosophy, where they want to take their music, how they want to present themselves.”
With a few other St. Clair residents and team members, he was able to see the band’s evolution at a concert in late 2025, decades after those school years. He smiles, recalling it – it was loud, but he was happy to be there, perhaps watching music and art flow in a continuous circle.
Perry is a part of Village Life now at St. Clair, and in his philosophy as a teacher, one can find applications for both young and old.
“You could take the kids anywhere with their ideas,” he says, thinking back to his teaching days. “You’d have conversations, then build something, and sometimes the product was the kid.”
In Perry, through his ideas and the ongoing pursuit of his passion, we find the product is inspiration. No matter the challenges we face, there is always joy to be found in the abstract.
