Erindale Park | Hiking the GTA

January 27, 2024

Erindale isn’t a ghost town in the traditional sense because it is now part of the larger city of Mississauga. However the older homes that remain scattered through the area provide a ghost of the town that once was. Over the years we have written eight other blogs which focus on various aspects of the local history of Erindale and links to all of these can be found at the end of this post.

Erindale began in 1825 and was originally known as Toronto. It went through several name changes being known as Credit, then Springfield and finally Springfield-on-the-Credit. In 1900 it took the name of Erindale after a local estate owned by Reverend James Magrath. The town was a major stop on the journey along Dundas Street between Hamilton and York (Toronto). It started to decline after 1855 when the railway bypassed it but saw a revival in 1879 when the Credit Valley Railway built a station nearby. A fire in 1919 destroyed much of the town but several buildings were rebuilt.

The Grange was built sometime around 1828 for Sir John Beverly Robinson who was the first Chief Justice of Upper Canada. He was also considered to be the leader of the Family Compact which controlled the government leading to The rebellion of 1837. The regency styled house with it’s ornate windows was indicative of the status of it’s owner. Robinson only owned the house until 1833 when it began a rapid change of ownership until around 1910 having seen up to ten owners during this time. Then the Adamson family took up residence here and they stayed until 1973. Sometime during the Adamson years the outside of the home was given an exterior layer, or veneer, of brick from the local Cooksville Brickyards. The building was given to the city of Mississauga by the land developers and used by the Boy Scouts until 2004. It has now had it’s bricks removed and been fully restored to it’s original splendor. The Heritage Resource Centre of Heritage Mississauga is now the occupant of this home.

It is generally believed that the house below is the oldest surviving building in the main area of the village. It was likely built between 1835 and 1845 by a local miller named Ira Van Valkenburgh. It may also have been built by the local carpenter named John Blair. Tradition has it that a store was once located in the house.

The Anglican Rectory was built in 1861 on the site of a former inn that had burned down. The Georgian Style manse was sold in 1960 and converted to commercial uses.

The Royal Exchange Hotel was built sometime between 1819 and 1822, although some sources say 1828, and was once known as the Halfway House. The hotel may have been 100 years old in May of 1919 when it was destroyed by the village fire and never replaced.

In 1877 the Methodist congregation commissioned a new church building as they had been meeting in the room above the Royal Exchange Hotel. The adherents felt that they should no longer meet above a building where alcohol was being sold. Somewhere around 1921 the church lost its spire and in 1925 it became the United Church. When a new building was consecrated in 1964 the building was sold to a Presbyterian congregation. This is ironic as the Presbyterians had rejected a merger with the Congregationalists and the Methodists that saw the creation of the United Church. Local residents each donated $100 and the spire was replaced in 2010.

Emmerson Taylor was the owner of the Royal Exchange Hotel and also owned a saw mill, knitting mill and a fanning mill. This last structure produced furniture and grandfather clocks. He donated the land for the Methodist Church and had this house built around 1875 to 1878. The transom over the front door identifies the home as the Froebel House.

St. Peter’s Church history begins as a home church in 1825 in the home of Colonel Peter Adamson. Construction of a white frame church began in 1826 and it was consecrated in 1828. This building lasted until 1887 when it was torn down and replaced with the present stone church. The church tower was added in 1910. A basement was hewn out under the church in 1934 to be used for the church school.

Erindale Park has a long history and at one time was known as Erindale Lake. In 1902 Erindale Light and Power Company was formed to construct an hydro electric generating plant on the Credit River at Erindale. This large scale engineering project ran into several delays during construction and didn’t begin producing power until 1910. A dam was constructed across the valley flooding it and creating the 125 acre Lake Erindale. A power generating plant was built on the south end of town at the bottom of Proudfoot Street. A tunnel was constructed to connect the two. The power plant operated from 1910 until 1923 supplying power to Erindale and New Toronto. It was closed when Ontario Hydro began to supply the area with power from Niagara Falls. In 1941 the lake was drained and the dam was blown up. Between 1961 and 1965 the former lake bottom was used as a sanitary landfill. It has since been covered over with clean soil and Erindale Park has been created.

Erindale was served by School Section #4 and has had several buildings over the years. The bell from the 1872 school has been preserved and is now housed in the 1922 replacement building. This beautiful structure was built in the Colonial Revival and Neo-Classical style of architecture. It became the Springbank Community Centre in 1957 and is now part of the University of Toronto Mississauga.

In 1919 a fire destroyed several of the older buildings on the core of the town including the Parish Hall, Post Office and the Royal Exchange Hotel. A new community Hall was constructed and has operated under a board of directors for almost 100 years. It can still be rented for private functions.

The historical community of Erindale can still be experienced via a walking tour. Heritage Mississauga has provided the details for one and a brochure can be accessed at this link: Erindale Tour. There’s a considerable amount of history in this area and you can read more in the various stories listed below.

Google Maps Link: Erindale

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Sat. Jan. 3, 2014

The day started off nice at -2 but was predicted to have a storm starting around noon. We parked one more time in Erindale Park. The plan was to enter the west side of the Credit River just south of the Sawmill Valley Creek’s confluence with the Credit. We wanted to try and get to a point across the river from the Erindale Power Plant that we had been seeking when we hiked the Credit River at Erindale on January first. We walked down the edge of Sawmill Valley Creek and turned south along the west side of the Credit River. Almost immediately we came to the foundations of an old building which we identified as a house when we found the swimming pool in the back yard.

Keeping to the river side of the fence line, we made our way along the river. Soon we were past the point where we were stopped two days earlier by the shale cliffs on the east bank of the river. Presently we found a raccoon who, contrary to their normal nocturnal habits, was sitting on the ground in broad daylight. Suspecting that he was ill we acted with caution but there was no aggression. In captivity a raccoon can live for up to 20 years but the normal life expectancy of a raccoon in the wild is less than 3 years. Ones like this that aren’t in peak condition can become dinner to the local coyote helping to keep that number low.

As we approached the bend in the river we started to see that the shale banks farther along would pose a problem like the one we experienced a couple of days earlier. At the bend in the river we found the mouth of a small stream and so we followed it west toward Mississauga Road.

A little way upstream we started to find extensive sections of old pipe along with concrete foundations in the creek.

As we contemplated what their original purpose had been we noticed two people working in the woods with a Bobcat cleaning up fallen trees. The man approached us and we had an opportunity to ask about the pipes. He shared with us that the area above the ravine had been an extensive orchard and in the 1930’s a pump house had been built to irrigate the orchards. He also told us that the creek was named Loyalist Creek. Pipes still run up the side of the hill on the south of Loyalist Creek toward orchards that were already gone by the 1960’s.

We crossed Loyalist Creek and made our way as far along the shale cliffs as was reasonable and then turned back. The shale along here has layers of thick harder stone that stick out like rows of broken teeth.

Right at the mouth of Loyalist Creek are several pieces of old concrete. We met the gentleman a second time and he had actually never noticed them. It is likely that a dam was placed at the mouth of Loyalist Creek to retain a pond of water for consistent irrigation of the orchards during dry seasons. As we were leaving we encountered the Bobcat operator who was quick to inform us that we were on private property, a fact that her husband had already failed to mention twice. When we got to Mississauga Road we discovered that the property was very well marked with No Trespassing signs. We had missed them by entering along Sawmill Valley Creek. This is one hike that you can’t try yourself. The old concrete at the mouth of the Loyalist Creek is shown in the photo below.

Returning home it was time to do some research to see what could be learned. I discovered that the 1880 Historical Atlas shows extensive apple farms around Erindale including the farm of Thomas Hammond. In the 1971 aerial photo below, the Hammond farm has a large orchard that by quick calculation contains over 900 trees. They appear as the straight rows of little dots. The Hammond farm house appears just to the left of the orchard at the top of the picture. It was designated as a heritage building in 1991 and so a quick follow-up appeared to be in order. The area was sold for development shortly after this picture and by 1976 houses had replaced the orchards.

(Sunday, Jan. 4) We returned and parked near the old Hammond house which was built by Oliver Hammond. Oliver was born in 1812 and is featured in the cover photo. Oliver built his house in 1866 and it currently sits on a large property tucked in the middle of the subdivision which was his farm’s final crop. Loyalist Creek flows through the property close to the house. A developer’s proposal suggests that the open space around the house will soon hold 7 new homes. Hammond’s house will become just an odd old house, looking out of place, amid the modern homes on a small cul-de-sac.

All that remains of the orchards is three rows of old trees in the park along the side of Lincoln Green Close. It seems like these trees might still produce fruit in spite of their age. Apple trees are not native to North America but were introduced by the French around 1606. The McIntosh apple is named after John McIntosh who discovered a sapling on his farm in Upper Canada in 1811 and cultivated the tree which produced an exceptional fruit. By the early 1900’s the McIntosh was the most commonly cultivated apple in North America. This was due to the fact that it was good for both eating and cooking. I’m not sure what kind of trees these are but they were planted around the right time to be McIntosh.

The old Erindale Power Station remains elusive, but there is always future explorations to be made.

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Hiking the GTA

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