Mississauga

Mississauga, Ontario, is the largest suburb in North America. It is a leading transportation and industrial center and is considered a leader in technology, urban development, and fiscal responsibility.

Landscape

The city of Mississauga lies on the northwest edge of Lake Ontario, in Canada's industrial center, known as the Golden Horseshoe, an area arcing from Niagara Falls to Oshawa. The nickname comes from the bright lights of the metropolitan area as seen from space. The area is also part of the Great Lakes Lowland, the lowest spot in Canada.

A suburb of Toronto, Mississauga has historically had little real downtown and instead been characterized as urban sprawl, though the twenty-first century saw efforts to develop a more defined core region. The current city is composed of sixteen former municipalities, only two of which have retained their individual character.

Port Credit Village is the single largest commercial harbor on Lake Ontario. Offering marine facilities and charter boats, the port is a customs reporting station and is famous for the smokestacks of Lakeview Generating Station (nicknamed the Four Sisters) and for its five harbor lights.

Streetsville, once known as Queen of the County for its mills, remains a village within a developed modern suburb. Its many historical buildings and streetscapes contribute to its small-town charm.

Lake Ontario provides recreation, fishing, and transportation to US markets. Efforts are ongoing to improve the quality of the water and fish in the lake. The Credit River also flows through Mississauga. The river, with a 1,000-square-kilometer (386-square-mile) watershed, is a major factor in the ecology of the area.

This fertile agricultural area has humid summers warm enough to grow and process mixed crops and agricultural products. The average July temperature is 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit), but it may climb higher than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). Winters are moderate, generally below freezing but usually not colder than -15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit). There is also less snowfall than in other parts of the province.

Mississauga escapes the lake-effect snows of Lake Huron and Lake Superior and those south and east of Lake Ontario. Mississauga may get no more than 1.9 meters (6.23 feet) of snow in a year, compared to 3 meters (9.8 feet) for Oswego, New York. In addition, Mississauga enjoys occasional warmer breaks in the winter.

People

Mississauga residents bill their city as one of the most ethnically diverse in the world. They celebrate that diversity every May during the three-day Carassauga Festival, attended by more than 400,000 people in 2018.

Of the 721,599 inhabitants in the 2016 census, almost half reported having a mother tongue other than English or French, with Chinese, Urdu, Polish, and Arabic among the most common. Many citizens also speak more than one language. Most neighborhoods are ethnically mixed. While ethnic groupings do exist in Mississauga, they are generally in the form of strip malls and shopping plazas.

Chinese restaurants are common throughout the city. Asian markets include Golden Square Centre and the Mississauga Chinese Center. Polish delis in several neighborhoods offer sausages, pierogies, tripe, bigos (cabbage stew), and other specialties. Indian and Punjabi groceries and restaurants carry spices and halal meats (slaughtered according to Muslim ritual), such as goat, lamb, beef, and chicken. Filipino and Portuguese groceries and restaurants are among others offering various interesting, eclectic foods.

Ethnic associations provide cultural support and various kinds of assistance. The Chinese Association of Mississauga offers settlement assistance to new immigrants from China. The John Paul II Polish Cultural Center hosts numerous educational programs and cultural celebrations. The Philippine Choral Society provides an opportunity for participation in cultural activity. The Muttahida Sports and Recreation Club (Pakistani) holds competitions open to the general community.

Chinese New Year is celebrated with a big parade, lion dancers, and Chinese drums. Hoi Xuan Que-Huong, or Vietnamese New Year, is celebrated with comedy and traditional folk songs, a concert, cultural entertainment, children's activities, and traditional food.

A Polish tradition is Wiglia (Vigil), celebrated on Christmas Eve. Twelve different dishes are cooked to represent the twelve apostles. The meal often includes fish, mushroom soup, potatoes, and fruit but traditionally no meat. Depending on what part of Poland a family's ancestors came from, the meal may include Jewish dishes.

Economy

Mississauga's economy is thriving; it had more than ninety thousand businesses in 2017, most of them computer, chemical, financial, aerospace, and pharmaceutical firms, and the city recovered from the 2008 recession better than many municipalities. Among the city's top employers are Citigroup, GlaxoSmithKline, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, Microsoft, Pepsi Beverages Co., TD Bank Group, and Wal-Mart. Many major companies have their primary or Canadian branch headquarters in Mississauga, including over sixty Fortune 500 companies.

Both the city government and businesses are economically aggressive. Hydrogenics Corporation, whose Canadian headquarters is in Mississauga, is working to increase the sale of hydrogen fuel cells to produce clean electricity.

The city's economic development office assists new, expanding, and relocating businesses. New businesses may also get assistance from the Mississauga Business Enterprise Centre, which provides help with preparing business plans, taxes, registering new businesses, and participation in government programs such as the New Exporters to Border States Program (NEBS).

In fact, the business climate is perfect for small businesses, and there are thousands of them, many employing fewer than fifty people. The one downside is the aging of the labor force, which means there are fewer young people to take entry-level jobs.

Mississauga's location at the center of the biggest industrial and consumer market of Canada is crucial to its economic success. In addition, the city is only ninety minutes away from markets in the United States. Also, many American companies have relocated in Mississauga because of Canada's generally lower production costs.

Seven major highways connect Mississauga with cities in Canada and the United States, and four major rail companies serve the city. In addition, Mississauga is served by trains and buses of the Toronto Transit Commission and GO Transit. Mississauga Transit also provides bus service throughout the city.

Canada's busiest airport, Toronto Pearson International, is mostly located in Mississauga. Handling more than 47 million passengers annually, the airport is consistently ranked among the busiest airports in the world for aircraft movements.

Landmarks

Mississauga's tourist attractions reflect not only the cultural diversity of the city, but also a diversity of lifestyles and interests.

Mosques, Hindu, and Sikh temples, and Japanese gardens are part of the community landscape. The Chinese Center, with ten acres of grounds and a market building constructed in the style of the Great Wall of China, is an official Ontario tourist attraction. The Civic Centre contains gardens, a fitness center, squash courts, an amphitheatre, and a reflecting pool that becomes an ice rink in winter.

Mississauga offers over five hundred parks and gardens for relaxing, taking pictures, picnicking, cycling, hiking, jogging, and a variety of recreational activities, including cross-country skiing during winter. Some of the parks even have leash-free zones for the benefit of pets. Many of the parks also have Japanese gardens.

Historical attractions include the self-guided Mississauga Heritage Walking Tours; the Adamson Estate, built in 1919; the Benares Historical House, constructed in 1856; and the Bradley Museum, an 1830s farmhouse. The free-admission Art Gallery of Mississauga offers a permanent collection, a sculpture court, and juried art shows. The Harbour Gallery exhibits the work of various Canadian artists in a rotating, 437-square-meter (4,700-square-foot) collection.

The Hershey Centre arena, home of the Mississauga Steelheads, a junior hockey team of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), also offers ice rentals. Playdium, an interactive center, has more than two hundred attractions, including rides, simulators, go-karts and bumper cars, miniature golf, and a batting cage. Canada's Wonderland is a theme park offering two hundred attractions, including a ten-hectare (twenty-acre) water park, and many rides.

History

Archaeological evidence suggests that First Nations people lived in the area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. Iroquoian- and Algonquian-speaking peoples occupied the region of the Credit River in the seventeenth century when the Europeans first arrived. One of the Algonquian groups was the Mississaugas, an Ojibwe tribe that had migrated from Lake Huron. By 1700, the Mississaugas had driven out the Iroquois.

Government officials from York, as Toronto was then known, bought 33,995 hectares (84,003 acres) from the Mississaugas in 1805. This First Purchase, as it is called, opened the way for settlement, which began the next year. The Mississaugas, however, kept a small piece of land on either side of the Credit River.

The newly purchased region, called Toronto Township by the new owners, was referred to as the Home District by settlers. Settlements of the Home District included Dixie, Clarkson, Erindale, Sheridan, Cooksville, Summerville, and Port Credit.

In the so-called Second Purchase of 1829, the Mississaugas gave up the land along the river. This led to the settlement of Streetsville, Malton, Barbertown, Derry West, Britannia, Meadowvale Village, Burnhamthorpe, Elmbank, and Mount Charles.

Dixie, first settled in 1807 by Philip Cody, was named for Dr. Beaumont Dixie, who donated funds for the 1816 construction of Union Chapel, originally a wooden structure, for the worship of all Protestant denominations. The stone church that replaced it still stands in its original location.

Clarkson was named for William Clarkson, an immigrant from New Brunswick who ran a general store and post office. Cooksville was named for Jacob Cook, its most prominent entrepreneur of the early nineteenth century who carried mail and ran stagecoaches. Irish immigrants from New York settled Meadowvale Village in 1819. The village became the first heritage conservation district in Ontario.

Malton, settled by Samuel Moore in 1823, was named in the 1840s by blacksmith Richard Halliday, in remembrance of his home in England. After a history of agriculture and grain distribution, Malton was urbanized in 1937 with the construction of Pearson International Airport. Reverend James McGrath became the first minister of St. Peter's Anglican Church in 1827. Later, in honor of McGrath, the settlement was named Erindale, the name of his estate and his home in Ireland.

Port Credit, laid out in 1834, was first a lumber shipping center and then a center of the stone-hooking industry. Schooner crews using giant rakes pulled up stones from the bottom of the lake for use in building construction.

Streetsville was named for surveyor Timothy Street, who settled there in 1825 and stimulated the village's economy with his sawmill, gristmill, and tannery.

The Mississaugas lived in various locations until 1847, when they were relocated to Hagersville, Ontario, on the shores of Lake Erie. A plaque at the Mississauga Golf Club is the only reminder of their presence on the Credit River.

The settlements, except for Streetsville and Port Credit, banded together in 1968 to form the town of Mississauga. In 1974, when the town incorporated, Streetsville and Port Credit became part of the new city of Mississauga.

One of the biggest peacetime evacuations in North American history occurred in Mississauga on November 10, 1979, when a freight train carrying hazardous materials, including explosives, derailed. A fire resulted and was allowed to burn itself out, but because of a ruptured chlorine tank, 218,000 residents were evacuated. The efficiency of the evacuation caused other municipalities to study Mississauga's emergency plan and to model their own plans after it.

Trivia

• Famous personages from Mississauga include jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, science fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer, television news anchor Kevin Newman, and Don Cherry, sports commentator and founder of the Mississauga Ice Dogs.
• Mississauga has had only three mayors. Mayor Hazel McCallion, known as Hurricane Hazel, took office in 1978.

Bibliography

Discover Mississauga, City of Mississauga, www.discovermississauga.ca. Accessed 10 Nov. 2021.

"Economic Development Office Profiles." Mississauga, City of Mississauga, www.mississauga.ca/portal/business/profilefactsandmaps. Accessed 10 Nov. 2021.

Riendeau, Roger E. "Mississauga." The Canadian Encyclopedia, 24 Sept. 2020, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mississauga/. Accessed 10 Nov. 2021.

Riendeau, Roger E. Mississauga: An Illustrated History. Windsor, 1985.

Smith, Donald B. Mississauga Portraits. U of Toronto P, 2013.