For $30,000/acre you could buy a piece of the future.
The Ontario Research Community at Sheridan Park opened in 1965 to help Canadian companies capitalize on the emerging technological revolution.
It was the first industry-led research park in North America and remains one of the only research communities in the world managed exclusively to advance private-sector research and development (R&D).
The provincial government’s Ontario Research Foundation spearheaded the development of the former farmland, installing water, sewage, electricity and gas underground on 350 acres along the QEW’s north side, between Erin Mills Parkway and Winston Churchill Blvd.
They bought the land from Leonard Finch, head of United Lands Corp, who claimed to reporters that he sold the land for $300,000 less than he’d paid for it originally, gambling that the Park would increase the value of his other land holdings, which stretched from Lake Ontario to Dundas Street.
While industrial research wasn’t a new concept in Canada, the idea of bringing companies together to share research and access to technology was a new concept for Canadian firms.
However, in a post-war world, as industrial and technological innovations were ramping up in the United States and Great Britain, Canadian business and political leaders were beginning to feel the heat.
Canada needed to rapidly invest in industrial R&D or risk falling behind and suffering the loss of young engineers and professionals, fresh from Canadian universities or production facilities, drawn to bigger pay cheques and opportunities south of the border.
This was no idle threat, particularly for the big thinkers of Toronto Township. They, along with many other Canadians, had been devastated four years earlier when the Diefenbaker government had shuttered the Malton-based AVRO Arrow interceptor jet project.
After leading the world in jet technology, Canada was forced to watch some of A.V. Roe’s creative people move either to the U.S. to work at NASA or the U.K. to help build the Concorde commercial jet program.
By 1963 Canadians had a new name for this particular scourge of modern economics: brain drain.
“We have to face the facts of the 1960s,” said Ontario Economics and Development Minister Robert Macaulay at Sheridan Park’s January 1963 sod turning. “We have to utilize industrial research to promote our standards of living and industrial might.”
To do that, potential partners and researchers were sold an all-inclusive life in Sheridan Park.
First, there were the dust proofed, air-conditioned, dehumidified, temperature-controlled, light-diffusing, sound-proofed workspaces that were nicknamed ‘think rooms.’
For anyone looking for additional collaboration, there were nine universities within an easy drive via four highways, a nuclear reactor at McMaster University and for those with international connections, Toronto International Airport less than 30 minutes away.
After work, employees, whose average salaries were estimated to be almost three times higher than the national average, could join nearby golf clubs – the area boasted three courses that had hosted Canadian Opens – or go fishing or boating in nearby Port Credit.
And of course, there was plenty of housing for workers’ families. The Park Royal subdivision was located across the QEW and adjacent to the research centre, 330 acres were purchased and cleared for the Sheridan Park housing development.
As the research centre was breaking ground, next door British-American (BA) Oil, which owned the nearby refinery in Clarkson, erected its own 40-acre, $17-million research centre, which eventually joined with Sheridan Park’s original industrial partners, Dunlop Rubber Co., Consolidated Mining and Smelting Co.(Cominco), International Nickel (INCO) and the Ontario Research Foundation to create the Sheridan Research Park Association.
Sheridan Research Park shortly after it opened in 1968. (Photo courtesy Mississauga Library)
It was the responsibility of the Association to sell the remaining lands to companies and they set strict guidelines for entrance.
First, there could be no manufacturing of any kind in the Park.
Second, no one company could occupy more than 25 per cent of the land.
Third, every company must commit to maintaining the parkland to create a campus atmosphere.
By 1969, over 1,600 scientists, engineers, technicians and support staff worked at the Park with the addition of Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL), Abitibi, Mallory Batteries, Warner-Lambert, and Dunlop.
It boasted research in metallurgy, chemistry, fundamental and applied physics, textile science, and applied microbiology, access to an extensive library – and computers.
Today, Sheridan Research Park continues to be a centre of private sector R&D, with current companies Acanthus Research Inc., which specializes in pharmaceuticals, the National Research Council of Canada, the Ontario Centre of Innovation, The Core Mississauga life sciences centre, and Myant X, one of the most sophisticated advanced material deep tech facilities in the world.
You can hear more stories about the people and events that helped shape Mississauga via our podcast, We Built This City: Tales of Mississauga, available on your favourite podcast platform or from our website.