Smack in the middle of Mississauga, just north of its shimmering new skyline, sits 200 acres of fenced-in, desolate land entrusted to the local education system in 1833 by King William IV of England.

Almost two centuries later, after developers and golf course planners and former mayor Hazel McCallion tried unsuccessfully to get their hands on it, the Peel District School Board and the city are about to launch a historic project — Mississauga’s very own Central Park. But don’t call it a park, it’s an urban farm.

“I was looking at the land around there and asked some people, ‘what’s this farm?’,” recalls Mississauga Councillor George Carlson, reminiscing about his election as a school trustee in 1985, when he first heard about the massive tract of land owned by the board. “I got some vague answers about 200 acres that we owned and it was given to us by the king.”

At the time, Carlson says much of the area surrounding what is known as Britannia Farm, was also agricultural land, as Mississauga was at the epoch of its transformation from a collection of rural townships into Canada’s sixth largest city.

“If it hadn’t been for old King William the Fourth — I don’t know how visionary he was — but there’s an override on that property for educational use for the children, and that particular codicil has probably protected that land from a hundred bad ideas over the years.”

On Dec. 12, after the fortuitous congregation of three key players, the school board took a vote, adopting a master plan for the site. It features 168 acres for agricultural and environmental programming, an educational urban farm, trails, wetlands, forest areas, a sugar bush where maple syrup will be made, observation centres overlooking acres of conservation land and 32 acres in the south-east corner for a mixed-use development that will finance the rest of the project.

“I was first elected to the (school) board in 1988,” says PDSB chair Janet McDougald. She joined Carlson and Carolyn Parrish, who was chair of the board at the time. Carlson, who now sits on Mississauga city council, is chair of the planning committee. Parrish is now the city councillor for the ward, and McDougald heads up the school board’s trustees.

Together, the three of them decided, it’s time to finally put King William’s entrusted lands to use for the people of Mississauga. Shortly after the board vote, the plan was presented to city council and was received with widespread excitement.

The lands will be re-zoned for the residential development on the corner and the urban farm, on a tract that is more than half the size of Toronto’s High Park.

“I have chaired the Britannia Farm task force since about 1995,” says McDougald, outlining previous educational uses for the space that were tried, but never took off, largely because of a lack of sustained funding.

In the meantime, the vast open field with its historic farm buildings, has caught the eye of developers and politicians looking to cash in on the central location of the property.

“The mayor, which was Hazel McCallion, she very much wanted to use that piece of property for the Hershey Centre (the city’s main sports arena which was eventually built close to Mississauga’s northern border). The golf course was proposed to us by a private, third-party. But the school board has protected it well,” McDougald says of the cherished land entrusted to the local education system three decades before Canada’s confederation.

She and others credit Parrish, the former school board chair, who has served Mississauga in Ottawa as an MP and now sits as the ward’s city councillor, for driving the project forward.

“The land will go to at least $3 million an acre,” says Parrish. She explains the financing plan. Since her election back onto council in 2014, she hasn’t wasted any time figuring out how to finally put the Britannia Farm land to use for what was intended all those years ago.

The 32 acres that will be used for mixed-use development by the private sector should generate about $100 million, a small portion of which will be used to regenerate parts of the forest, cultivate fields, build trails, observation decks and any restoration of the old farm buildings, Parrish explains. The rest will be used for an endowment to fund operations.

“The LRT, which will run on Hurontario, right along the east-side of the farm land, is a huge attraction for developers already looking to participate. Those buildings they will construct will be right along the LRT corridor,” says Parrish, referring to the $1.3 billion Hurontario light rail train that will connect the farm with the rest of the transit corridor, scheduled to be completed by 2022.

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She and McDougald say they hope to have shovels in the ground in 2018.

Parrish pauses when asked why the project has become one of her obsessions.

“During the last election (in 2014) I put in my pamphlet that something has to be done about Britannia Farm, because as we were canvassing all around there, the first question people asked me was, ‘what’s going to happen to the property across the road?’ It’s been sitting there just stagnant for so long.”

Many residents, Parrish said, told her they didn’t want another subdivision, big-box stores or a wall of high-rises.

“Our city is going through a dynamic transformation. It’s really exciting, all the growth, the downtown, the lakeshore, all the other big projects. But one of the things cities forget when they grow out and up, is the green spaces you need in between.”

“This space will be for everybody to enjoy being outdoors. We have protected these 200 acres for decades. Now it’s time to give it to the people.”

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