Fifty years ago, the Malton Airport’s first purpose-built terminal was demolished. The Mississauga News suggested at the time that demolition started in late March 1968.

The building featured an observation deck on top, for watching the planes take off and land. The News speculated that by watching the planes’ safe entry and exit, people gained “confidence in travelling by plane.”

In the words of the Mississauga News that May, “inevitably, each time a well-known building is torn down somebody claims an era has ended. But in the case of the old airport, the destruction of the terminal marks the quiet passing of an age of realization, the realization that air travel is the fastest and safest way to transport people and freight over long distances in a rapidly diminishing world.”

Plans for a second terminal were already underway in 1968, to accommodate the “jumbo jets” expected to arrive in the 1970s. Air Canada and Canadian Pacific both hoped to build new hangars on the site, in “an aesthetically developed prestige hangar area along the strip” of Airport Road, replacing the existing “unorganized” layout.