Waterfront piazzas, a 1.5 kilometre beach, new lakefront land the size of 48 football fields and mixed-use neighbourhoods housing 20,000 people on 250 acres of reclaimed industrial land — Mississauga is set to kick off a project on the shores of Lake Ontario that promises to be the envy of the world.

On Saturday, Ontario's finance minister will realize a dream that has driven him for more than a decade, as he and other dignitaries announce the “ground making” of new waterfront land and islands next to where a colossal power plant formed a barrier between the city and nature for almost 50 years.

The grand undertaking — involving the city, the province and Credit Valley Conservation — is part of a major reclamation of Mississauga’s waterfront called Inspiration Lakeview.

“There probably isn’t another city in the world that has this much space on the waterfront to do what we’re going to do here,” says Finance Minister Charles Sousa, also the local MPP.

The planned 300-acre development will feature boardwalks, canals lined with restaurants and boutiques, wetland trails, commercial and residential space, buildings to house cultural events and possibly even a Great Lakes research facility.

But it will not feature a particular, ugly urban trend.

“There will not be a wall of condos cutting people off from the lake,” says Sousa emphatically.

As a child, Sousa woke up early near the lake for morning ball practice at his school, a stone’s throw from the Four Sisters, he says. The 45-storey chimney stacks at the Lakeview plant, which spewed coal ash and smoke night and day to power much of the province, are burned into his memory.

“What I saw as a kid growing up was a lot of smoke, and you could see the remnants of the emissions even on your car, in the lawns and so forth. But what was worse for me was I never saw the view of Lakeview. It was kind of disheartening. You lived by the water, but you had no access to it,” he say.

That’s about to change.

Saturday’s announcement will focus on 64 acres of newly created lakefront land, featuring a forest, meadows, two new wetlands, trails, a new 1.5-kilometre beach and three islands to act as a break wall, all next to new residential, cultural and commercial spaces also to be built on the waterfront.

The $60 million budget for the conservation area will be covered by the Region of Peel. It’s expected the private sector will finance much of the rest of the project, according to the provincial government.

Sousa says Lakeview residents have suffered long enough, now it’s time to give them their waterfront.

Mississauga Mayor Bonnie Crombie calls the project “globally unprecedented” and “a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

“It has an unrivalled potential to be transformed into a world-class community, for culture, business, education, innovation and a place to call home. It opens up our waterfront trails, and it allows our residents unfettered access to the lake. It will be a catalyst for future development along that lakeshore corridor, as a result,” says Crombie.

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Crombie and Sousa say Inspiration Lakeview would never have reached this stage without the efforts of Councillors Jim Tovey and Carolyn Parrish. Parrish partnered with Sousa when he was a Queen’s Park backbencher to stop the Lakeview site from being used for a new, gas-powered plant, which former Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion had championed.

“It’s a new beginning,” Parrish says. “It’s pretty exciting. It’s fine to talk about things theoretically, but as soon as you see a truck and a shovel in the ground everybody gets excited.”

Tovey, the local councillor, lives a kilometre from the site. Even before he was elected in 2010, he was the public face of the project as a community activist, working long hours to get Lakeview demolished — which it was in 2007 — while preventing a new power plant from replacing it. He can barely talk about what Saturday’s announcement represents.

“There was an enormous amount of pollution being emitted from Lakeview, things like aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, hydrochloric acid, mercury. I just got a call this morning. This fella just phoned me and said he heard about the announcement. His wife has had cancer twice. Her mother and her sister both passed away from cancer. He just wanted to thank me,” Tovey said, fighting back tears.

“He just wanted to say he’s glad it’s gone. This is why we do this job.”

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