The dynamos on Toronto’s flank

Open this photo in gallery:

The most visible sign of Toronto’s dynamism is the downtown skyline, with its forest of high-rise office and condo towers jutting into the sky. But to get a fuller picture of how fast the Toronto region is growing, take a drive through the western flank of the metropolis. I have been doing it for 40 years, on the way to a cabin in the Caledon Hills, and the change has been staggering.

Once, the highway was lined by farmer’s fields, with the occasional country church, gas station or suburban McMansion thrown in. Now vast subdivisions stretch in every direction. Temples with fluttering pendants and Asian malls with crowded parking lots have sprung up. The main traffic artery, Highway 410, is often clogged with traffic despite a recent expansion. Skyscrapers rise from the growing downtown of Mississauga, not long ago almost exclusively a low-rise suburb.

It is in recognition of this vast and exciting transformation that the government of Premier Doug Ford announced this week that it would make Mississauga and its next-door neighbour, Brampton, fully fledged, first-tier cities. The change is overdue.

With 650,000 residents, Brampton boasts of being Canada’s ninth largest city, ahead of Hamilton and Halifax. Mississauga stands at around 775,000 and expects to top the one million mark by mid-century. The city’s mayor, Bonnie Crombie, says she expects 25 towers to rise in the core over the next five years and another 35 in the coming three decades. A new light-rail transit line connecting the two cities is under construction, a symbol of their maturation.

What used to be bedroom communities for Toronto have turned into vibrant, rapidly urbanizing cities in their own right. It only makes sense to give them the full city status they deserve.

Ms. Crombie has been lobbying for independence, claiming that her city has been a cash cow for the regional government and that it would save a billion dollars over 10 years by becoming independent. Her famous predecessor, the white-haired fireball Hazel McCallion, campaigned for years to free Mississauga from Peel Region. Now Mr. Ford says he will make it so, dissolving Peel by Jan. 1, 2025, and letting Mississauga and Brampton stand on their own feet. A transition council will work out the details, including resolving a dispute between the cities about who owes whom for what.

Both cities are experiencing growing pains. The cost of providing services to a swelling population is straining their finances. Housing prices are sky high and rents are soaring, as they have been all over. Many newcomers struggle to get by. The pandemic threw a spotlight on the struggles of thousands of low-income truck drivers, warehouse workers and others. With big-city status comes big-city problems.

But this is mostly a success story, and a very Canadian story at that. The face of this country has changed beyond the wildest imaginings of our grandparents, and you see it most vividly in Brampton and Mississauga. Four-fifths of all immigrants to Ontario in the last two decades settled first in Greater Toronto. Many of them took up residence in these two edge cities, drawn by the abundance of new housing and the lure of employment in the huge logistics hub that has grown up around Pearson airport.

Just over half the residents of both cities came from another country. Two hundred and fifty cultures and 171 languages are represented in Brampton, its website reports. Four-fifths of its residents are what Statistics Canada calls visible minorities, though the term seems archaic in a place where they are the obvious majority. Two-thirds of that group is of South Asian background.

And this is only the beginning of the story. The population of Greater Toronto grew from 3.9 million in 1986 to 7 million in 2019, provincial figures show. It is expected to hit 10 million by 2046. By far the biggest share of this increase will come from immigration, a huge advantage for Toronto in an age of stagnant birth rates and an aging populace.

All of this change has come about with a remarkable lack of friction. Toronto’s thriving edge cities bear no resemblance to, say, the alienated banlieues of Paris, with their hulking, rundown housing projects. A New Canada is rising in these places. In a world full of division, it is inspiring to behold.