Mississauga has many layers over time, and the history of our city’s development peeks through on our landscape in many different ways. One of the major development milestones of our city was the creation of Erin Mills Parkway. It was the spine that spurned one of the largest transformations. The oldest section of Erin Mills Parkway runs from what is now Fowler Drive northward to Dundas Street, in the vicinity of Sheridan Mall (Sheridan Centre, Sherwood Village). The road was planned as a major arterial road (a kind of an internal highway) anchoring the Erin Mills New Town development by Cadillac Fairview Corporation.

The Cadillac Corporation acquired control of vast acreages of land in Mississauga in 1968 which had been assembled by E.P. Taylor for future development by his company, Canadian Equity and Development Corporation. A subsidiary of the Canadian Equity and Development Corporation was the Don Mills Development Corporation, which had completed the “new town” development of Don Mills between 1953 and 1965. In 1956 the name of “Erin Mills Development Limited” began appearing in property acquisitions here in historic Mississauga. In 1959 Taylor sold his land holdings to the Cadillac Corporation, who continued with the planned “Erin Mills New Town” development of Erin Mills. A plan for the “Erin Mills New Town” development was unveiled in 1969.

Development Phases, Erin Mills, from 1969 plan

The Cadillac Corporation merged with the Fairview Corporation in 1974, creating Cadillac Fairview. The Erin Mills New Town was initially designed in four phases: Erin Mills South, Erin Mills West, Erin Mills Centre and Erin Mills Ridge, and the project was managed under the umbrella of the Erin Mills Development Corporation.

As for the name itself, Erin Mills was selected partly in reference to the nearby historic village of Erindale, to the many mills that had operated along the Credit River, and in homage to its predecessor development in Don Mills.

The backbone of the evolving “New Town” landscape of Erin Mills was (and still is) Erin Mills Parkway. As the development progressed, so too did Erin Mills Parkway, linking the first wave of development in the south during the early 1970s (north of Dundas Street), to the second wave anchored around South Common Mall, which opened in 1980) to Erin Mills Town Centre (which opened in 1989), and northward from there. As for the route of Erin Mills Parkway itself, as it traced its way northward from Dundas Street, the road veered to the west and followed the historic right-of-way for Fifth Line West. This jog in the road can be seen where Erin Mills Parkway crossed South Millway today, just to the North of Dundas Street. The route of Erin Mills Parkway was completed by 1975, linking the QEW in the south (linking with the Southdown Road alignment) to Mississauga Road and the Highway 401 in the north, and also connecting the New Town developments of both Erin Mills and its northern neighbour of Meadowvale (being developed at the same time by Markborough Properties).

Although the roots for Erin Mills begins in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and Erin Mills Parkway itself was completed in 1975, the road became the main north-south thoroughfare for thousands of new Mississauga residents in the decades of growth that followed, particularly through the 1980s and Mississauga’s suburban boom. In many ways, Erin Mills Parkway can be viewed as that permanent link on our landscape between the “before and after” times of Mississauga’s growth.

In that sense, the story of Erin Mills Parkway also links to concepts behind Heritage Mississauga’s annual awards gala, The Credits, which in 2022 is themed on the idea of looking “Back to Our Future” and with remembering the 1980s – which, for the City of Mississauga, was a period of time that saw immense development, growth, population increases, and a drastic evolution of the landscape.

For more information on The Credits, which take place on Thursday, November 3, 2022, please visit: https://heritagemississauga.com/the-credits/