Old town in new town
Port Credit deftly plays dual roles: a genteel place to live by the lake, and a perennially creditable Main Street destination amid sprawling suburbs
All over the GTA older Ontario towns are knitted into our neverending megalopolis. They’re noticeable because they’re like miniature downtowns, with a main street, shops, and people out and about. Port Credit, in the middle of Mississauga’s southern coast at the mouth of the Credit River, is one of the biggest and oldest of these old-town downtowns.
Port Credit is older than most by GTA standards. The Mississaugas, an Anishinabe First Nations group, settled by the mouth of the Credit around 1700, after hundreds of years of indigenous activity in the area. The village of Port Credit was founded in 1834, the same year as Toronto. In 1847 the First Nations population moved to land near Brantford where the Mississaugas of the New Credit group was established.
Port Credit remained independent until 1974, when it became part of Mississauga, itself only six years old. Lakeshore Rd. here still has the look and feel of the golden postwar era, with a dozen blocks lined with oneand two-storey mid-century buildings. Everything from hubcaps, pet reptiles, and wedding gown storage can be had here. Mississauga widened the sidewalks in 1980 for pedestrians, taming Lakeshore and making this one of the longest walkable strips in the outer suburbs.
Mississauga’s waterfront historically had large industrial or utility uses, though some of those parcels have become residential or park areas, like the St. Lawrence Starch Company site, a huge operation from 1889 to 1990 at the foot of Hurontario St. Today that site is a cluster of town homes, lakeside condo buildings, and a new two-block retail strip that mimics the older Main Street style.
To the east, along the lake, residential homes of various eras and designs seem like oversized cottages by the lake, feeling a bit more like Muskoka than Mississauga, save for the monster homes that have replaced some of the older, modest structures.
Near the Port Credit GO station a cluster of mid- and high-rise towers, some new, some old, huddle by the train tracks, with a few old single family homes here and there. Most of these buildings are door-to-train in under five minutes, a commuter fantasy come true. If a hockey game is playing in the magnificent 1959 barrel-vaulted Port Credit Memorial Arena, the reverberations of fan cheers can be heard a block away. Inside the arena there’s a display of the products St. Lawrence Starch used to produce. Hometown pride is strong here.
North of the tracks the neighbourhood of Mineola rolls through wooded hills and running streams. It’s idyllic and almost rural, with 1920s craftsman bungalows and post-war modern ranch homes blending in with the landscape, the kind of place Mad Men characters left Grand Central Station for every night.
There are more monster homes here, too, dominating once-substantial yards. Who needs all that grass when there could be Doric pillars and a third garage instead?
Port Credit is new and old Mississauga at the same time; a small town for its residents and a waterfront downtown for everybody else. Shawn Micallef