2025/11/01 – Mississauga / Lakeview Hydro

Good morning from Oakville GO/VIA Station. Today I’ll be following a hydro and pipeline corridor east from here through Mississauga. Let’s go.

An uneventful and less than pleasant start. There’s no public access to the first stretch of the corridor, and then it’s eaten up by Canadian National’s yard primarily serving the Ford plant. Necessitates a detour beside the QEW and along Cornwall Road.

The TransNorthern Pipeline parallels Cornwall Road for a bit before slinking behind some commercial lots. The corridor becomes more defined east of Maple Grove Drive, where the pipeline intersects the Oakville Transformer Station, and joins some electrical transmission lines.

Finally, east of Royal Windsor Drive, I come to a defined corridor. It also has a typical work access road, although it has to navigate around the Ford Drive underpass as it flanks the GO Transit Lakeshore West line.

After a bit, I cross the Oakville-Mississauga border. This also marks a transition from a gravel truck road to a formal multi-use trail. This is the Nine Creeks Trail. There’s also an off-road bike park here. Overall, a more efficient use of the utility corridor.

Onwards down the meandering trail, and past a playground. Across Bromsgrove at a formal crossing, and around a small construction zone to get to the first creek crossing. This is also a connection to the Sheridan Creek Trail and Clarkson GO Station.

The trail steers you to the intersection at Southdown and Hartland to cross. Then it’s onwards across another creek and past a pipeline junction, presumably to the pier at the Mississauga Lubricants Centre.

Across a couple local roads and then you get to the longest creek bridge yet, presumably to accommodate a meander belt and/or wetland. Then towards and through Whiteoaks Park. This is surprisingly well vegetated for a combo utility corridor. Across another creek, past a school and a library.

The trail continues, across local roads and creeks until Woodeden Drive. Here, the Lorne Park Transformer Station offers some sketchy space around its perimeter, but it’s not ideal, and is a major gap in the trail.

I totally blanked on this portion when I planned this walk. As part of the QEW widening over the Credit River, a new multi-use trail will also connect the banks via its underside. But it’s not done yet. So now I have to take a 7+ km detour to the next river crossing at Lakeshore Road to get back to the corridor.

The pedestrian bridge over the QEW at Stavebank and Pinetree is unfinished as well, so it’s not until Hurontario that I see the corridor again, and even then, trying to navigate through the highway interchange was a whole circus. Back on corridor (and the Nine Creeks Trail) east of Sherobee Road.

The trail continues in a typical fashion. West of Cawthra, the Cooksville Transformer Station will suggest you can’t go through, but a footpath is firmly worn around it to provide a logical connection.

At Westfield Drive, the trail ends, and the hydro infrastructure gets a little crazy. One corridor splits off to the north, another plunges underground, and the spine of it all continues east. But the stations and junctions are fenced off in a way that you’re boxed into a dead end.

Ditching the main corridor to pursue a former branch. Using a recently replaced pedestrian bridge over the QEW, I got to this junction point. This corridor used to run to the Lakeview Generation Station, a coal-fired power plant on Mississauga’s lakefront. The plant was demolished 20 years ago, so no wires here.

The corridor goes south from the QEW, and does a bit of a jog at Halliday Avenue. This is where Season Creek appears as well. A bit further and it goes over the GO Transit Lakeshore West line. A remains of a spur to the Lakeview Generation Station offer an interesting perspective.

The corridor continues south to Lakeshore Road, where the last remaining structure stands. South of that, part of the corridor lives on as a garden until you hit the active construction zone for Lakeview Village. That’s going to mark the end of today’s long walk. Thanks for joining.