Mississauga’s urban growth confronts a tree canopy first protected by the people who gave the city its name

By Rachel Morgan  Local Journalism Initiative Reporter First enjoyed by the Mississaugas some three hundred years ago, the awesome tree cover that provided natural and spiritual benefits has since fallen victim to wide scale deforestation. Some Ojibwe, whose homelands spread to the easternmost area of the Anishinaabe people, migrated south to the banks of the Great Lake now called Ontario, around the early 1700s. They came to be known as the Mississaugas. Framing what are now known as Etobicoke Creek and the Credit River, the mouths where these flowing water bodies met one of the “five freshwater seas” (as described by the Anishinaabe) were surrounded by towering White Pines, Sugar Maples, Poplars and White Cedars. As Europeans settled along the shores of the Great Lakes, where shipping routes carried the…

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