Mississauga - The Missing City

Our college campus is named after our long-serving former mayor and is called the Hazel McCallion Campus.  The students in my campus clubs rooted for Toronto in a basketball match but Hazel always rooted for Mississauga - because her love for the city was not about an affiliation for a well marketed brand but wanting the world to know Mississauga.

It is not only the campus that is named after her but now the college has also appointed her as its first chancellor.  McCallion this year is 95 years old.   To put that in perspective, last nights losing team the Toronto Raptors have been officially in existence for 21 years - and the partnership with McCallion is to see through the college attaining university status.  At her age this very well maybe the swansong moment of a woman who does not have the word "retirement" in her vocabulary. 

She stepped down as Mayor of Mississauga in 2014 after serving 36 years, having made her mark very early on in the way she organized and lead the city in its worst crisis which was a city wide evacuation in 1979.  She then held power not because she was a wiley politician but because she was fierce and determined to get the best deal and recognition for Mississauga.

Mississauga is better known by the business community than it is to people, and that is a community that was forged by McCallion's policies.  What is not known about Mississauga is that it is the 6th largest city in Canada and 49th biggest in North America - and that fact means that Mississauga is bigger than Seattle or Denver or Detroit or Washington or Boston or Vancouver, all of which are cities with major sports franchises.

If there is one things members of club really don't care about is the size of Mississauga.  Nor do they need to be because not all of them reside in Mississauga and even if they do, they consider themselves to be a part of that enveloping term GTA or Greater Toronto Area.  It is not something that McCallion cares for because one of her fights was for the correction of Toronto YYZ as an airport because she pointed out that when people arrive at Lester Pearson Airport and see the "Welcome To Toronto" sign, that she wants them to know which city they are landing in.

Again, no passenger cares much about the fact that planes are landing in Mississauga nor again the students in my college toastmasters club.  Yet it makes me wonder how my fellow toastmaster club members can go ever so potty supporting a basketball team that is the picture postcard of marketing and branding, with no tradition or history to speak of, but walk into a college in the heart of Mississauga and not wince an eye about where they study or live.

I can well understand the miracle in the Leicester story as a movie-worthy story because Leicester City football club has been around since 1884 and on a shoe-string budget and a moneyball approach assembled a group of cheap, rejected misfits into a cohesive team that revealed how much even a billion dollar industry like association football can miss, but the likelihood of Mississauga City ever emulating Leicester City is zero - because beyond a local Ice hockey team there is no sports tradition in Mississauga.

This means that Mississauga remains the missing city that borders Toronto and while our particular club is named after the sports tradition of the college, the heart of the students is in the well oiled and well marketed sports franchises of Toronto.  If people cannot see Mississauga and Toronto are two different cities is one thing, but both cities represent the names of native people.  Which means that Canada was founded on their land, except of course the indigenous people of Canada did not "own" land - they thought such a concept was both bizarre and primitive - and that is the true reality of wisdom - if you can buy it, it does get sold.

McCallion did not hold power for nearly two decades without creating enemies but she should not find enemies within her new role at the college, but it is the indifference to the college campus which now bears her name which needs to be rethought - for this champion of the city is at the end of her own runway - and if there is one legacy that hopefully does take hold, it is recognizing the name Mississauga within the the three campuses, which are also located at Brampton and Oakville.  This is something that I want to factor in while living in my missing city.

The chief reason Mississauga will remain a shadow city on the west side of Toronto is that its city core was not built on the lake - and for that reason that it has no visible character like cities like Chicago and Toronto that have a great lakes skyline - and its initiative to be designed for people began far too late because the core infrastructure of Mississauga had been built.  By the time Jan Gehl spoke to urban planners in Mississauga - it was an idea that this city needed decades earlier.  Sometimes one has to accept the cards we have been dealt with today.

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