Template:Wp-Mississauga, Ontario-History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Palaeo-Indian period (9000–8500 BCE)

A single site in Mississauga with Hi-Lo projectile points was registered in the Ontario Ministry of Culture database of archaeological sites. Lake Ontario was much smaller at this time, and sites from this period may be 500 m into the lake.^[1]

Archaic period (8000-1000 BCE)

According to Smith,^[1] there was a growing population at this time. There are 23 known Archaic sites in Mississauga, mostly in the Credit River and Cooksville Creek drainage systems. People would congregate at rapids and the mouths of these rivers to catch fish during spawning runs. They would harvest nuts and wild rice at the wetland margins in the late summer. During late Archaic times, there were large cemeteries.^[1]

Woodland period (1000 BCE–1650 CE)

"The accelerating upward population increase continued,"^[1] with 23 known sites from this period. Pottery first appears during this period in the style of the Point Peninsula complex, and near the end of the Woodland period, the first semi-permanent villages appear. Artifacts show that residents of Mississauga engaged in long-distance trade, likely as part of the Hopewell tradition.^[1]

Late Woodland culture (500–1650 CE)

"The band level of social organization that characterized earlier cultures gave way eventually to the tribal level of the Ontario Iroquoian Tradition,"^[1] and people began cultivation of crops such as maize, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco. This led to the development of the Wyandot or Huron, Iroquoian-speaking culture. The Lightfoot site with four to six longhouses was located on the Credit River near Mississauga's border with Brampton. Another village with many longhouses was on the Antrex site, located on a wide ridge bounded by two small tributaries of Cooksville Creek.^[1]

Arrival of the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe, and the Europeans

Around the end of the Woodland period, the Haudenosaunee, another Iroquoian confederacy, began to move into the area, and, as part of a long conflict known as the Beaver wars, they had dispersed the Wyandot by 1650. But by 1687, the Haudenosaunee had abandoned their new settlements along the north shore of Lake Ontario.^[2]

The Algonquian-speaking Anishinaabe Ojibwe people had been aligned with the Wyandot, and when they were dispersed, the Anishinaabe expanded eastward into the Credit River Valley area, clashing with the Haudenosaunee and eventually taking over when the Haudenosaunee retreated. The European traders would gather annually at the mouth of what is now known as the Credit River to give the Anishinaabe credit for the following year. "From this, the Mississauga bands at the western end of the lake became known collectively as the Credit River Mississaugas."^[3]

Toronto Township, consisting of most of present-day Mississauga, was formed on 2 August 1805 when officials from York (what is now the City of Toronto) purchased 85,000 acres (340 km²) of land from the Mississaugas under Treaty 14.^[4] A second treaty was signed in 1818 that surrendered 2,622 km² of Mississauga land to the British Crown. In total Mississauga is covered by four treaties: Treaty 14, Treaty 19, Treaty 22 and Treaty 23.^[4]

The original villages (and some later incorporated towns) settled included Clarkson, Cooksville, Dixie, Erindale (called Springfield until 1890), Lakeview, Lorne Park, Port Credit, Sheridan, and Summerville. The region became known as Toronto Township. Part of northeast Mississauga, including the Airport lands and Malton were a part of Toronto Gore Township.

After the land was surveyed, the Crown gave much of it in the form of land grants to United Empire Loyalists who emigrated from the Thirteen Colonies during and after the American Revolution, as well as loyalists from New Brunswick. A group of settlers from New York City arrived in the 1830s. The government wanted to compensate the Loyalists for property lost in the colonies and encourage development of what was considered frontier. In 1820, the government purchased additional land from the Mississaugas. Additional settlements were established, including: Barbertown, Britannia, Burnhamthorpe, Churchville, Derry West, Elmbank, Malton, Meadowvale (Village), Mount Charles, and Streetsville. European-Canadian settlement led to the eventual displacement of the Mississaugas. In 1847, the government relocated them to a reserve in the Grand River Valley, near present-day Hagersville. Pre-confederation, the Township of Toronto was formed as a local government; settlements within were not legal villages until much later. Except for small villages, some gristmills and brickworks served by railway lines, most of present-day Mississauga was agricultural land, including fruit orchards, through much of the 19th and first half of the 20th century.

1900 to today

In the 1920s, cottages were constructed along the shores of Lake Ontario as weekend getaway houses for city dwellers.

In 1937, 1,410.8 acres of land was sold to build Malton Airport (later known as Pearson Airport). It became Canada's busiest airport which later put the end to the community of Elmbank.

The Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) highway, one of the first controlled-access highways in the world, opened from Highway 27 to Highway 10 in Port Credit, in 1935 and later expanded to Hamilton and Niagara in 1939. The first prototypical suburban developments occurred around the same time, in the area south of the Dixie Road/QEW interchange. Development in general moved north and west from there over time and around established communities. In 1952, Toronto Township annexed the southern portion of Toronto Gore Township. Two large new towns; Erin Mills and (New) Meadowvale, were started in 1968 and 1969, respectively.

While the Township had many settlements within it, none of the hamlets were legally existent, and all residents were represented by a singular Township council (Malton had special status as a police village, allowing it partial autonomy). To reflect the community's shift away from rural to urban, council desired conversion into a town, and in 1965 a call for public input on naming it received thousands of letters offering hundreds of different suggestions. "Mississauga" was chosen by plebiscite over "Sheridan", and in 1968 the reincorporation went forward, absorbing Malton in the process. Port Credit and Streetsville remained separate, uninterested in ceding their autonomy or being taxed to the needs of a growing municipality. Political will, as well as a belief that a larger city would be a hegemony in Peel County, kept Port Credit and Streetsville as independent enclaves within the Town of Mississauga, but both were amalgamated into Mississauga when it reincorporated as a city in 1974. At this time, Mississauga annexed lands west of Winston Churchill Boulevard from Oakville in the northwest, in exchange for lands in the northernmost extremity (which included Churchville) south of Steeles Avenue which were transferred to Brampton. That year, Square One Shopping Centre opened; it has since expanded several times.

On 10 November 1979, a 106-car freight train derailed on the CP rail line while carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals just north of the intersection of Mavis Road and Dundas Street. One of the tank cars carrying propane exploded, and since other tank cars were carrying chlorine, the decision was made to evacuate nearby residents. With the possibility of a deadly cloud of chlorine gas spreading through Mississauga, 218,000 people were evacuated.

Residents were allowed to return home once the site was deemed safe. At the time, it was the largest peacetime evacuation in North American history. Due to the speed and efficiency with which it was conducted, many cities later studied and modelled their own emergency plans after Mississauga's. For many years afterwards, the name "Mississauga" was, for Canadians, associated with a major rail disaster.

North American telephone customers placing calls to Mississauga (and other post-1970 Ontario cities) may not recognise the charge details on their bills. The area's incumbent local exchange carrier, Bell Canada, continues to split the city into five historical rate centres–Clarkson, Cooksville, Malton, Port Credit, and Streetsville. However, they are combined as a single Mississauga listing in the phone book. The first Touch-Tone telephones in Canada were introduced in Malton on 15 June 1964.

On 1 January 2010, Mississauga bought land from the Town of Milton and expanded its border by , to Highway 407, affecting 25 residents. Also in January 2010, the Mississaugas and the federal government settled a land claim, in which the band of indigenous people received $145,000,000, as just compensation for their land and lost income.