The name “Erin Mills” refers to a New Town Development that began in the 1960s.

 The early history of Erin Mills is tied to E.P. Taylor (of race horsing fame) who began to buy up farmland in this area in the early 1950s. He sold his interests and land holdings to Cemp Investments Ltd. and the Cadillac Fairview Corporation in 1959. E.P. Taylor, whose company “Don Mills Development Corporation”, had built the New Town of Don Mills in Toronto between 1953 and 1959. “Don Mills Development Corp” was also acquired by Cadillac Fairview in 1959.

 In 1969, the Don Mills Development Corporation announced its plans to build a “New Town” within the Town of Mississauga in four phases – their extensive land holdings had been previously acquired by E.P. Taylor and his company, the Canadian Equity & Development Corporation. The name Erin Mills was chosen to honour the nearby historic village of Erindale , to recognize the mills which once operated along the Credit River and provided the early settlement foundations for early pioneer communities, and to connect with their landmark development on Don Mills in Toronto . Erin Mills was designed in four main phases: Erin Mills South (begun in 1969), Erin Mills West (begun in 1974), Erin Mills Centre (begun in 1986) and Erin Mills Ridge (begun in 1994). It is important to note that the concept of Erin Mills was not to build a subdivision or bedroom commuter community, but rather to plan, design and build a completely functioning new town – the central core of which is reflected in the shopping centre: Erin Mills Town Centre. Together with the New Town of Meadowvale development from the same time period and located just North of Erin Mills, this reflected a new wave of town planning and social thinking in North America and has received a number of awards and has been covered by a great deal of media and academic studies over the years. The development of modern town planning and social engineering through town planning in Canada can be seen in Don Mills, followed by Erin Mills and Meadowvale. It is important to note that upon the beginning of Erin Mills, the City of Mississauga as a municipal entity did not yet exist, and the newly amalgamated Town of Mississauga was only 1 year old at the time.

 As for its much earlier history, all land within the southern limits of Mississauga (from the waterfront to modern
Eglinton Avenue – thereby encompassing much of the area now covered by the Erin Mills developments) was ceded to the British Crown by the Native Mississaugas in Treaty 13-A, signed on August 2^nd , 1805. The land was surveyed the following year, in 1806, divided into 200-acre parcels of land, and opened for settlement. Most of this land was given as grants – and much of the land within modern Mississauga we have property history for, and if not, it is readily available. This treaty reserved land on 1-mile on each side of the Credit River to be set aside as an Indian Reserve. In 1818, a second treaty was signed, Treaty 19, which opened all land north of modern Eglinton Avenue throughout Peel County for settlement. It was surveyed in 1819 into 100-acre lots of land, and usually sold rather than granted. 1 in 7 parcels of land were reserved as Crown Reserves, and 1 in 7 lots were reserved as Clergy Reserves. Two more treaties were signed in 1820 which divided and sold the land within the 1-mile strip reserved as the Indian Reserve in 1805. These were divided a little more haphazardly, some as 50, 70, 90 or 100 acres, with many amounts somewhere in between. The last holding of Indian Lands along the Credit River was abandoned in 1847.

  So, in brief, all land within the border of the City of Mississauga was at one time Crown Land . These were acquired, either through grants or by purchase, by settlers between 1806 and 1835 (with some exceptions). To the best of our knowledge, all land was occupied and owned privately by the 1850s (the last holdout of land being the former Credit Indian Reserve). Parcels of farm land, many of which were owned by descendants of early pioneer settlers, were gradually acquired by development companies through the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. There are a few notable “hold outs”, still visible amidst modern subdivisions, that have refused to sell and still continue to farm in our city. The McCracken farm is probably the most visible, still maintaining and farming 90-acres of land just northwest of the intersection of modern Winston Churchill Blvd. and Eglinton Avenue . There are a few other farms still operating as well. Needless to say, the landscape of the city today is a much different vista than what was evident a mere 40 years ago when this was predominantly an agricultural area.

This information was generously provided by: Matthew Wilkinson

Historian

Heritage Mississauga

905-828-8411 x29

history@heritagemississauga.org

www.heritagemississauga.com

Thank you Matthew