Lost Road: Fifth Line West

[Transportfan]

Mississauga's mighty Erin Mills Parkway follows what was once Fifth Line, a minor concession road. Nothing unusual in major arterials following old concessions, but in this case there were several bypassed sections and even a complete abandonment of Fifth Line:

In the 1954 pic, Fifth Line had this odd course shift (and a long farm driveway, later made into a street, running west off of it) north of the QEW , and only had an at-grade intersection with the QEW where it continued south (as Erin Mills still does) as Southdown Rd. By 1961, the now-replaced circular interchange with the QEW is under construction. The beginning of Erin Mills Pkwy. is also under construction following the "logical" course of Fifth Line up to Dundas St. By 1975, development is well underway, and the next phase of Erin Mills Pkwy. is complete to north of Dundas St. where it curves west to rejoin Fifth Line. Meanwhile, the diversion section of Fifth Line is being incorporated into Fowler Dr. Today, Fowler Dr. (now Court) has been dead-ended and cut off by the "new" Leanne Dr. Fifth Line itself has it's own "bypass", as a straight extension to Leanne Dr. that is named Fifth Line despite never being part of the original concession road at all.

Google Street View shot looking south down Fifth Line, which originally curved off to the left at what's now an intersection:

***

Near Burnhamthorpe Rd., Fifth Line breaks, and resumes at Eglinton Ave, meaning it was unimportant even by the standards of rural Toronto Township. By 1977, Erin Mills Pkwy. is present, and appears to have a split around where the future Highway 403 bridge will be constructed. The Erin Mills community is under development, and the present course of Burnhamthorpe is under construction, as is The Collegeway. The original course of Burnhamthorpe is still the main road, but as of 2020, is broken up into several streets, including Rogers Rd. and Burbank Dr.


***

Up at Thomas St. in the Vista Heights area of Streetsville, Fifth Line and Thomas intersect at the southwestern boundaries of the community. By 1977, the new Erin Mills follows a alignment that avoids houses on the east side of the road and Vista Blvd. has been extended west to meet it. Thomas St. is also shifted to meet Erin Mills, creating a new L-shaped street; Turney Drive. Today, newer development has swallowed Vista Heights and houses line Turney Dr. on what were the "far sides" of the original Fifth Line and Thomas St.

GSV grab looking south down Turney Dr. to what was once the corner of Fifth Line and Thomas St. The opposite of what happened near the QEW--a former intersection that's now a sharp bend:

***

Finally, up in Meadowvale, in 1954 Fifth Line ran uninterrupted straight up through to Chinguacousy Township (now Brampton). Even the 401 wasn't there yet...let alone the 407! By 1975, the diversion where Erin Mills turns to rendezvous with Mississauga Rd. is going in as Meadowvale develops, and the presence of Highway 401 forces the minor road to run beside the freeway to meet, and jog along, Derry Road, but by this time the remaining section of Fifth Line's days are numbered. Today, the road is obliterated between the curve at Battleford Rd. to north of the 401, but it's former course is still visible where it forms the boundary between residential and industrial areas. But up north near Highway 407, it returns as part of Meadowvale Blvd, and continues into Brampton as Heritage Road.

All aerials: Mississauga Maps

 

[Transportfan]

More effort for nothing...

 

[Tuscani01]

More effort for nothing...

Not for nothing! I enjoyed this. I used to live on Second Line which also got a similar chopping up while I was growing up. I remember a girl across the street lost her life when she was run over, and the community was so mad that they pressured to have it chopped up into smaller streets to avoid drive-thru traffic. Construction of the 407 helped too.

 

[Transportfan]

Terry Fox, Silken Laumann, Culmore, or Ormindale?

But seriously, the reason I said it was for nothing was because Lone Primate's "Lost Road" threads always generate lots of discussion.

 

[Northern Light]

Terry Fox, Silken Laumann, Culmore, or Ormindale?

But seriously, the reason I said it was for nothing was because Lone Primate's "Lost Road" threads always generate lots of discussion.

Patience; these threads sometimes take awhile to get noticed.

Good effort!

 

[Tuscani01]

Terry Fox, Silken Laumann, Culmore, or Ormindale?

But seriously, the reason I said it was for nothing was because Lone Primate's "Lost Road" threads always generate lots of discussion.

Silken Laumann. My parents still refuse to call it that to this day though. You can't even bring it up without it turning into a heated discussion. We lived right at the end of the street where it now meets Bancroft. My Aunt/cousins lived across the 401 in Meadowvale, so it ruined the quick walk or bike ride to their place and we started driving there instead.

 

[Transportfan]

^^ I worked as a temp for Mississauga Parks and Rec in 1989 and we'd drive up 2nd Line to the conservation area to collect garbage. Houses were already being built along it long before it was broken up with gaps between them where the new streets would join it. There was also a traffic light at Derry Rd. for a few years before the bypass.

1992:

 

[Tuscani01]

^^ I worked as a temp for Mississauga Parks and Rec in 1989 and we'd drive up 2nd Line to the conservation area to collect garbage. Houses were already being built along it long before it was broken up with gaps between them where the new streets would join it. There was also a traffic light at Derry Rd. for a few years before the bypass.

1992:

Feels like that was just yesterday. We were one of the first houses to occupy in that subdivision off 2nd Line (Circled in red on the left). The day we moved in, it was still a farm across the street and land was just starting to be cleared for the houses you see there. We moved shortly after 2nd Line got chopped up to McCracken, circled on the right - on what was once the farm across the street.

 

[adma]

Boy, that's a flashback to the "Rhythm Is A Dancer" era...

 

[adma]

I'm also intrigued by the 1961-era straightening of Fifth Line/Erin Mills N of the QEW--given that that was a decade before the actual subdivision of Erin Mills was underway, I wonder if that was meant as a direct connector btw/Hwy 5/Dundas and the Royal Windsor industrial zone, or as a deliberate presaging of the suburbanization of the "Sheridan lands" to the west over the following decade. (Once upon a time, an undertaking like that connector likely would have been a designated King's Highway--but by the time Erin Mills Parkway extended inexorably northward in the 70s, suburban arterials didn't need highway numbering as an alibi)

 

[Lone Primate]

Heh, I just noticed this thread had responses from last month and I hopped on to see what had been said. I assumed this was a thread of mine! Fifth Line was actually where I got my start in exploring lost roads. I used to live in Meadowvale, and one day in September of 1990 I was out driving around with a high school buddy and on what's now Heritage Road just on the north side of the 401, we found an old abandoned trailer that had the mock-ups for the subdivision I lived in. When I got home, I looked at a map of western Mississauga and where we'd been, and I suddenly realized you could draw a straight line down all these little chunks of roads and gaps till you got to Erin Mills Parkway. I knew I was onto something. Got heavily invested in the history of it all. I'll have to dig up what I have and post it. I'm ashamed you got there first, Transportfan. I let down my first love.

 

[Lone Primate]

There was also a traffic light at Derry Rd. for a few years before the bypass.

I remember that. It's the only intersection I've ever seen that went from being signaled to being signed. When they built the bypass to the north, or not long afterward, they took the lights out and replaced them with stop signs. Very strange. When I first had my license, the guys and I spent a lot of time on Derry going back and forth to 5 and 10, going down Creditview and Second Line. I remember the crazy little zig-zag we had for a while on Derry at Mississauga Road.

 

[Lone Primate]

This is a journal entry I wrote about Fifth Line West back in June, 2005.

Discovering the lost city: Fifth Line West

Fifth Line West, south of Hwy 401, MapArt

For years now I've had this interest in old, abandoned roads. I don't know for sure what it is. Maybe it's the fascination and slight horror I find in the idea that a public place, once so important, can not only be eclipsed by improvements, but fall into disuse and, in fact, be completely forgotten, or forgotten by all but a few hikers and dog-walkers.

Back when I was university, I was out driving with a buddy of mine in our neighbourhood. We were just wandering around, killing time on a Saturday. We came to what was then the end of Aquitaine Avenue, which at that time terminated in a cul-de-sac with a short, crumbly road running from it, which itself ended a few dozen yards south at a creek. The sign gave the name of the stub as Fifth Line. I knew that most of the major north-south streets in Mississauga were once numbered concession lines (McLaughlin was once First Line, Creditview was Third...). But this one? To our backs was the 401. Obviously this particular road had been bisected by the superhighway in the 50s and never bridged. I went home, consulted a map, and realized that this little chunk of road had once been part of one of those concession lines. South, it had become Erin Mills Parkway, a major thoroughfare. But the section between the 401 and Battleford Drive had been erased between the mid-70s and the mid-80s. The little strip in these photos was all that remained.

City of Toronto Archives, 1967, plate 188 detail

To orient the image: north is at the top. The broad diagonal path is Highway 401, today the busiest superhighway in North America. The horizontal east-west road near the bottom is Derry Road. Running north-south at centre-left is Fifth Line West. All sections you see here south of the 401 are closed, including the section immediately south of the highway, which is being discussed here. The property of Bill Arch is between the railroad line and the 401, west (left) of Fifth Line...

Corner of Fifth Line West and Argentia Blvd., winter of 1990-1991

Looking south down Fifth Line West, winter, 1990-1991

Looking south, 1997 or 1998

Closed, Feb. 2002

Even this little chunk has slowly been debilitated. When I first found it in 1990, I could (and did) drive it all the way to the lip of the creek. By the mid-90s, first portable concrete barriers and later permanent wooden ones were erected half way down. You can see them in some of these shots. Then, a couple of years ago when I was passing through in the winter (2002, I think), I noticed the road had finally been closed off to vehicles for good. Large boulders had been placed at the mouth of the street where it connected to Aquitaine, by then a through street all the way to Winston Churchill Blvd.

Looking north, 1997 or 1998

Passing through again on the weekend, I got the biggest shock of all. The road is now entirely gone. Closed, it’s apparently been sold to the adjacent properties. The warehouse it once ran beside has consumed it for its parking lot; the stand of trees that once lined the east side completely gone. I could hardly believe it. These two views are essentially the same, except that I’m probably standing a few yards further right in the new shot. They’re separated by about seven or eight years. The road’s completely gone; not a hint of it remains. No one will ever again stumble upon it, wonder at it, glance at a map and ponder the history. The whole reason the road survived so long is that the other property, which is still treed, was once the home of Canadian general who fought in the Second World War, a man named Bill Arch, who had a lumber business that was (last time I checked in the 90s) still a going concern in Streetsville, due south of these shots. He had a large home in the copse there, with a duck pond that’s still there, and in 1990, his driveway and pillars at its entrance were still there. There’s not a hint of it now.

Looking north towards the 401, 1997 or 1998

Looking north towards the 401, 2005

Looking south towards the creek, railroad tracks, warehouse, and Derry Road, 1997 or 1998

Looking south towards the creek, railroad tracks, warehouse, and Derry Road, 2005

I find such losses of communal memory wistful, generally. But this one has a personal sadness to it. In the mid-90s, I stood with a buddy of mine out there one summer evening. His marriage was coming to an end, and we’d gone out there to talk about his plans. He was about to move out to British Columbia, where his folks were, and I stood there knowing that, odds are, it was one of the last times we would have together. While we were there, the Northern Lights appeared. It’s the only time in my life I can actually remember seeing them. They were beautiful, and they really do make a sound. Like breath, or soft wind, but not quite. They make you feel like a momentary blip in something much more ancient and permanent in a way the stars are much too ever-present to really manage. And I stood there with this high school chum about to disappear from my life, watching these sheets of pink, blue, and green shift above us, shielded from the city lights by the trees, just listening. And now even the place itself is gone.

 

[Lone Primate]

The following is information I compiled about the property on the west side of these shots (the area in trees in all shots, opposite the warehouse) in October of 1990...

COMPILED INFORMATION CONCERNING FIFTH LINE WEST, PEEL REGION AND A CERTAIN PROPERTY THEREON

Began investigation Saturday, September 15, 1990 (returning from Cooksville and following Argentia Rd. to its intersection with Fifth Line West in the company of a friend; stopped to investigate Argentia-extension to Winston Churchill Blvd. under construction and stumbled upon remnants of demolished property with driveway on Fifth Line West).

Telephone poles and manhole covers on Argentia Rd. north of Derry Rd. dated 1982; probable construction date: map dating from 1979 does not show Argentia crossing Derry Rd.

Telephone poles on remnant of Fifth Line West south of 401 and north of Derry Rd. dated 1954; spikes in them read "HEPC [(Ontario) Hydro-Electric Power Corporation] 55", possibly the installation date (1955?). Possible extension of Hydro service up Fifth Line West at this time if not sooner (???).

Highway 401 opened in Peel in two segments. Between Highway 10 (Hurontario St.) and Highway 27, the 401 opened on November 3, 1958. Further west, between Highway 10 and Highway 25, the 401 opened a year later on November 26, 1959; this is the section that intersects Fifth Line West. Maps prior to the 1950s show Fifth Line West here as a through street. South of Britannia Rd., Fifth Line West was County Road 18. Fifth Line West formerly made a correction several yards to the northwest at Eglinton Ave. (formerly it ran through what is now the Credit Valley Hospital); this correction was smoothed into continuity by a gentle curve as it now exists on Erin Mills Pkwy.

According to 'A History of Peel County', the 401 "crossed Peel in 1952". Presumably this is when construction began and when Fifth Line West was interrupted.

Fifth Line West at one time ran unbroken between the 401 and Britannia Rd. Between Battleford Rd. and Derry Rd. it ran along what is now the border between Meadowvale's east residential boundary and its west industrial boundary. It was deleted in sections according to by-laws; the section between the corner of Battleford Rd. and Erin Mills Pkwy., and Surveyor Rd., was closed by By-Law 904-81 (81, presumably, is the year of the order); the section between Surveyor Rd. and the corner of Millcreek Dr. and Aquitaine Ave. was closed by By-Law 740-83; the section between Millcreek Dr. and Derry Rd. was closed by By-Law 141-75. North of Derry Rd., Fifth Line West was cut back to its present dimensions (and separated from Derry Rd.) by By-Law 637-83. All these deletions post-date Mississauga's incorporation in 1974.

Manhole covers on Surveyor Rd. date to 1975; it appears on a map dated 1979, intersecting a now-deleted section of Fifth Line West.

The house was probably never serviced with sewage or storm drains; the City has no records of existing or abandoned drains in that area that would have serviced the residence. There is a large, loose patch on the property that could alternately have been either a basement or, it seems more likely, a septic tank.

The property in question is HSW Concession 6, Lot 11. Records from 1877 show the property as part of a larger property stretching from Winston Churchill Blvd. to Fifth Line West, along Derry Rd. and as far north as the point that the 401 intersects Fifth Line West; its is noted as belonging to one Mrs. Isaac Waite. On the property is a house, just to the east of a church, both fronting on Derry Rd. (the church was torn down within living memory; today there is a parkette there; directly across Derry Rd. there is a small cemetery).

The last recorded residential owner is one William C. Arch, recorded as owner and resident in a 1978 survey for 1979 taxation purposes. His mailing address is given as "85 Queen St. N., Streetsville, ON, L5N 1A4". The property is presently, and was then, a wedge of 9.8 acres in the eastern quarter of the land recorded as Mrs. Waite's (in 1877), widening from a point as it heads north. The map from 1979 records a lone structure on the west side of Fifth Line West between Derry Rd. and the 401; although there are several on the east side (where the Canara building now sits). There was also, according to the record, a tenant on the property; there were two tenant portions on the property on record.

The property's deed now resides with the Erin Mills Development Corporation. It now fronts on Argentia Rd., with the address 2785 Argentia Rd., leading one to wonder if the remaining section of Fifth Line West in question is shortly to be deleted as well.

A well-drilling record for the property exists as follows:

Hurontario St., West Concession 6, Lot 11 Well #49-2690; easting 599670, northing 4828042 Elevation 640'
Drilled July 24, 1962, by licence holder 1307 Fresh water at 20'; 75 GPM; domestic use 30" diameter
Brown topsoil to 10', then gravel; well depth 30' Owner, Bill Arch
License 1307 held by Maurice Babiuk
361 West Mall, Apt. 304 Etobicoke, ON

According to Bob Bell, Supervisor of the Northern District (with whom I spoke Oct. 2, 1990; reference, telephone no. 677-0181), Bill Arch was a general in the army; he kept a garden on the property which he tended himself; the pool formed by the stream running through the property was a duck pond; he owned a lumber business called Forest Products on Mississauga Rd. below Derry Rd. near the railroad tracks. Mr. Bell says Fifth Line West was never paved, but was a "Grade B surface" road. Mr. Bell has worked for the City out of the Streetsville office for sixteen years (probably since the Incorporation).

Forest Products is listed in the phone book as 826-1117, with the address of 85 Queen St. N. (Mississauga Rd. is called Queen St. where it runs through Streetsville, since Streetsville was, up till 1974, a separate town). This is the same address as the mailing address on Bill Arch's 1978 survey record.

Another interviewee recalls a struggle to remove "an old man" from the nub of Fifth Line West sometime in the early 1980s (possibly 1982 or 1983); she identified the property in question as this same contested property to her brother, Alan. The property had been re-zoned as industrial by then; the City was probably attempting to secure the land from Bill Arch at the time. This would explain the deletion of Fifth Line West north of Derry Rd. in 1983 stopping exactly at the southern edge of the property's driveway. Presumably the house (along with whatever structures accompanied it) was demolished sometime after 1983.

MISC. HISTORICAL NOTES

Toronto Township was named in 1805.

The survey of the northern section of Toronto Township was completed on Oct. 1, 1819, by Richard Bristol, partnered with Timothy Street (founder of Streetsville); herein is the origin of Fifth Line West.

Toronto Township became the Town of Mississauga (named by a vote in December, 1967) on Jan. 1, 1968.

To counter the territorial claims of the Towns of Streetsville and Port Credit in 1973, the Town of Mississauga counter-sued to annex them and form the City of Mississauga. It succeeded; on Jan. 1, 1974, the City of Mississauga and the Regional Municipality of Peel were proclaimed. Mississauga lost Churchville and half the land between Steeles Ave. and the 401 to Brampton, but acquired Streetsville and Port Credit, as well as Halton's Tenth and Eleventh Concessions between the 401 and Dundas St. Otherwise the external boundaries of Peel County did not change with the inception of the Region.

In March, 1989, Peel Region, along with the regions of Halton, York, Metro, and Durham, formed the Greater Toronto Area. Ruth Grier was named the first Minister Responsible for the GTA on Oct. 1, 1990.

 

[Lone Primate]

McCarron farm, Fifth Line West

McCarron farm location on (closed) Fifth Line, MapArt

This is the other end of the closed section of Fifth Line, about a mile south of the section above that’s now vanished into a parking lot. It’s just north of spot where Erin Mills Parkway (once Fifth Line) suddenly heads northeast to link up with Mississauga Road. The old road surface is closed, and the clearance east and west of the centre line has been sold off the adjacent properties: to the west, a high school built in the 80s, and to the east, a small, 10-acre section of property that was once a little farm. Last time I checked, in the mid-90s, it was actually still zoned agricultural. People lived here until 1974. The road was closed, and the house was torn down.

City of Toronto Archives, 1967, plate 157 detail

In the image above, taken in 1967, the McCarron farm property (then inhabited by a couple named Shortell) is the treelined square just to the upper left of centre. North is at the top. To the west (left) is the Nixon farm. Between them is Fifth Line West, a section closed since the 1980s. To the east is the Canadian Pacific Railway. The fence in the views following is smack in the middle of the road allowance, and end at the upper left of the property. Surveyor Road runs along the north side of the property, from Millcreek Drive, which runs today roughly northwest about half way between the property and the CPR line.

In 1877, a map of Peel County (today Peel Region) shows this property. It belonged to a certain Owen McCarron. I discovered the place in 1990, when the whole story of the road closure was just coming to my attention.

Fence, circa 1990

Fence, Feb. 1999

Fence, Feb. 2002

Fence, June 2005

Back then, there was a new fence that had only recently been put up between the properties, down what had once been the middle of the road. One either side, tall trees stood in long, wind-shielding lines. The whole 10-acre property, in fact, was lined with trees on all sides. You can see the trees that lined both side in the earlier shots. The ones on the McCarron property were cut down in the late 90s. Back then, the property was not so wild. It was easy to move around in it, and I found the foundations of the house that once stood there. There was something like a root cellar, and it was clearly used by teenagers as a hangout to drink. I made a panorama of shots I took there in the mid-90s, and you can see the place was attractive.

More recently, the fence has suffered from repeated snow loads (it’s at the of Surveyor Drive, so snowplows dump tons of snow there every winter). There are posted plans to build a warehouse on the property, but so far, nothing’s been done. The property is increasingly overgrown; I found it far too much trouble when I was there on the weekend to make my way to the house foundations, even if I could have remembered exactly where they were.

Interestingly, in the late 90s, I was briefly in touch with a young woman who was the grandchild of the people who owned the farm and home just the other side of the road from here (on what’s now the land of the high school). The family name was Nixon, and they inhabited their home there till the 1970s as well, when the city closed off this section of Fifth Line.

Looking south, 1997 or 1998

Looking south again, 1997 or 1998

Looking south, 2005

Looking further south, 2005

Panorama, 1997 or 1998

Panorama, 2005

Property foundations, 2002