Brampton
February 5th, 2010
Only a mere two kilometres north of Meadowvale, in Brampton, is another “lost” village, Churchville. Both communities share a lot in common: both were established as mill towns on the Credit River, both were served by the Credit Valley Railway when it arrived in the 1870s and the Toronto Suburban Railway, which ran from 1917 to 1931. Both are removed from major roadways, perhaps helping their survival.
In “Toronto’s Lost Villages” by Ron Brown, published in 1997 and one of the inspirations for this series, the author lamented that Churchville was about to be inundated by suburban development. Luckily, because of strengthened historical interest, and the proximity of floodplains that restrict new development, it remains relatively intact and somewhat interesting.
Churchville was the most northerly settlement in Toronto Township (which in 1968 became the Town of Mississauga) and is somewhat older than Meadowvale, established in 1815. At its peak, Churchville had several stores, a church, a hotel, mills and other local services. An ambitious network of streets was laid out, some of which do not exist today, but still appear on some maps (such as the Google Map linked above). After a a period of growth, the population level stagnated after nearby Brampton grew larger with the 1856 arrival of the Grand Trunk Railway and designated as the county seat. Many of the stores left, the mill was lost to time, and fire destroyed at least one of the churches.
June 5th, 2009
In my hometown of Brampton, suburban development has continued to erode the old country landscape that even up to about 20 years ago, made up most of the city’s land mass. The ever-creeping urban frontier of the GTA has finally hit a road with an ironic name, Countryside Drive.
Countryside Drive used to be known as part of 15th Sideroad, Chinguacousy Township, and 15th Sideroad, Toronto Gore Township. Chinguacousy Township, now a historical name that remains in some local landmarks, was eliminated in 1974 with the municipal restructuring that turned the County of Peel into the Peel Regional Municipality. Chinguacousy was split between Brampton and the new Town of Caledon, and Toronto Gore was joined with the Town of Brampton to create the City of Brampton.
Brampton, like most other towns and cities in Ontario that resulted in amalgamations of townships and villages, named all the remaining numbered lines and concessions in the 1980s. Second Line West of Hurontario Street became Chinguacousy Road. The name given to Countryside Drive at the time was probably appropriate - the nearest subdivisions were at least four kilometres away, and the road was a two-lane, only recently paved, country lane. But the urban frontier advanced, and Countryside Drive became a misnomer.
By 2005, the subdivisions of Springdale caught up. The transitional landscape created by the advancing bulldozers and work crews is rather strange and eerie - farmhouses and outbuildings are often still standing, but abandoned and left to fall apart, or boarded up. Ubiquitous white zoning proposal signs and survey markers are common. And not too far behind are bulldozers clearing land, excavators digging basements (leaving temporary hills of fill), and then road crews, carrying out the latest widening to convert the now over-burdened country lanes into four and six lane arterials.
Probably the most unintentionally ironic sign I found.
May 12th, 2008
Downtown Brampton, with the 1880s Dominion Building and the Rose Theatre behind.
I grew up in the suburban city of Brampton, just north-west of Toronto. Today, it is one of the most interesting suburban cities in Canada, experiencing rapid population growth and demographic change. I hope to make this one of several tours of my hometown over the summer here at Spacing Toronto. I may have left, wanting something closer to downtown Toronto, but it being so close, I pass through Brampton and can remark on some of the changes over the past few years. A few days ago, I attended a local meeting and took the opportunity to walk around after getting off the GO Train.
Until it was influenced by Toronto’s rapid suburban growth in the 1950s, Brampton was a small town of about 5,000 to 6,000 people, the seat of Peel County and a minor railway junction. Its main industries were mass horticulture (the massive greenhouse complexes gave it its nickname, Flowertown), brick production and a few smaller industries (namely shoe and skate production), a tannery, and a paper cup plant. The shoe and skate plants still stand, but only the paper cup plant is still operational. Today, with a population of nearly 450,000, Brampton could be a mid-sized city in its own right if it weren’t so integrated into the Toronto region.
The first subdivisions were built immediately surrounding the old town in the 1950s and early 1960s, but with the construction of nearby Bramalea (the gigantic post-Don Mills “master planned” community) and piped water access from Lake Ontario with regionalization, the city was consumed by sprawl.
