“The Board of Education is legal agent of the land, but morally speaking, the land belongs to the young children of Peel.”

That’s John Fraser, former director of the Peel Board of Education writing in a 1986 report about the Britannia Farm, the magnificent 200-acre greenspace in the demographic centre of the region. The untouched heart of Peel is bounded by Matheson Blvd. on the north, McLaughlin Rd. on the west, Bristol Rd. on the south and Hurontario St. on the east.

Fraser goes on to say that, “it could be argued that the (legal) trust placed in the school board could best be served by retaining the land to a large extent in a natural state so that this small vestige of the children’s roots could continue to be accessible to them. One could imagine a ‘children’s place’, a large tract of land in the centre of one of Canada’s most densely-populated areas, dedicated to the education and development of the child, enriching their lives. Nowhere in Canada, to the best of my knowledge, is space of this magnitude given over entirely to the needs of the very young. The plastic artificiality of Canada’s Wonderland or the commercial trappings of West Edmonton Mall are no substitute for the natural foundation that underlies our history in southern Ontario.”

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Mississauga News, March 18 2016.