Heritage Mississauga’s The Credits 2023 Annual Gala

On November 2nd, 2023 Heritage Mississauga’s annual The Credits: Good Vibrations gala took place. Award recipients, family, friends, businesses and organizations gathered at the Mississauga Grand Banquet and Event Centre, for entertainment, dinner, and a silent and live auction.

The Credits is Heritage Mississauga’s annual awards event, which honours members of the Mississauga community for their contributions and achievements with a celebration of our community heritage.  This awards program focuses on “giving Credit where Credit's is due”, recognizing “Heritage Heroes” in our community who often go unnoticed. We have honoured over 200 members of our community.

The 2023 Credits Award was unique. The award given to all recipients was created by Sidney Gendron, a Métis artist and owner of Sawmill Sid. The award was a paddle made from popular and white pine trees that are part of their urban wood initiatives program. The program repurposes trees in the GTA, within the Traditional Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation that have fallen due to disease or storm, these awards are MADE IN MISSISSAUGA. The award engraving includes the Anishinaabe Ojibway Moccasin from the Moccasin Identifier Project. We thank Sawmill Sid for their support in bringing this beautiful award to life.

Heritage Mississauga, together with our recipients, guests, sponsors, performers, staff, and volunteers, was able to host an unforgettable event. The theme of this year’s event was the ‘good vibrations’ of the 1960s- the decade that brought the world The Beatles and hippie culture. Enthusiastic attendees dressed in 1960s attire of groovy prints and peace emblems to pay tribute to the decade in which Mississauga was born. In 1968, the Toronto Township became the Town of Mississauga. The name, honouring the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, was chosen from thousands of suggestions.

The 1960s was also a time of unprecedented prosperity. The 1967 “Points System” made Canadian immigration less discriminatory. Mississauga attracted people from across Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. Mississauga’s population rose to 107,000 by 1969.

Today Mississauga is a special place with a rich and diverse culture and heritage. We are immensely proud and grateful to be a part of the community of Mississauga. The Credits gala 2023 honoured 42 award recipients, in categories of Lifetime Achievement, Architectural Heritage, Heritage Business Leader, Cultural Heritage, Volunteer Heritage, and more. Congratulations again to all the recipients and thank you for your contribution to our city’s heritage!

Attendees at the gala enjoyed entertainment from Culture Philippines of Ontario and the Portuguese Cultural Centre of Mississauga Folklore Group. Another testament to Mississauga’s rich, diverse, and collaborative community, that we can present joint entertainment from the Filipino and Portuguese communities at our event. This is the legacy of Mississauga’s heritage, people from all over the world working and living  together in our city, bringing their diverse ideas, values, and customs with them.

Our shared heritage is an important element in fostering and maintaining Mississauga’s sense of community, pride and history. Together with the support of community groups, corporations and individuals, Heritage Mississauga will continue to accept the challenge of advocating for the community’s most precious non-renewable resource.

The Credits gala simultaneously achieves two of our organization’s goals: to recognize the hard work of our extraordinary community members, while the fundraising efforts of the event assist our organization to continue the work we do. Heritage Mississauga is a not-for-profit charitable organization dedicated to promotion of local heritage. Heritage Mississauga’s mission is to celebrate Mississauga's heritage through research, promotion, and learning. Our vision is to be “Mississauga’s Heritage Advocate.”

This fun and celebratory awards night achieves our mission of celebrating Mississauga’s heritage and lets us continue our projects, events, publications, and programming. For that we thank you. Thank you for your generosity and continued support, you are apart of the residents, businesses, and organizations that make Mississauga the great place that it is.

Please visit The Credits website to see all the deserving recipients who were honoured this year: https://thecredits.mystrikingly.com/#award-recipients

Sidney Gendron with the 2023 Award he designed