Toronto Pearson International Airport has gone through a variety of name changes through the years.

News reports on the proposed airport in 1937 already called it “Malton Airport,” for the nearby village.

The name "Toronto International Airport" was first pitched in 1960 by Federal Transport Minister George Hees. While most of Mississauga, including the Malton area, was then known as “Toronto Township,” the move didn’t win favour locally. Newspapers reported that they wanted to keep the moniker of Malton.

Hamilton Mayor Lloyd D. Jackson also objected to the name, noting that downtown Hamilton and downtown Toronto were equal distances from Malton. Suggesting his city might soon outgrow Toronto, he asked, “Would they change its name to the Hamilton International Airport” if that happened?

The name-change was called off in late 1960.

Toronto council was miffed. They had William Allen (namesake of Allen Road) send a letter to Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, asking him to ensure the name change to Toronto.

Cancellation of the name change made Frank McKechnie, Malton’s Toronto Township councillor, “most happy.” He suggested to one Toronto newspaper that Toronto wanted the name but not the convenience of noise from air traffic.

The preservation of the airport’s name was short-lived: Hees’s successor, Léon Balcer, renamed the site again as Toronto International in November 1960. He used Montreal International Airport as his defence, noting that it was in Dorval.

In mid December 1983, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced that the airport would be renamed for Lester Pearson, as of January 1, 1984. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his work at the United Nations to resolve the Suez Crisis in the Middle East. Pearson also had relatives in Peel and visited the area as a youth.

A Transport Canada representative told newspapers that the department had a policy for years to only use geographic locations for airport names but admitted that it was never a formalized policy. Pundits in the Toronto newspapers suggested it unlikely that people would ever refer to the airport as “Pearson.”