Clarkson sits in the southwest corner of Mississauga, along the Lake Ontario shoreline, and is one of the oldest settled communities in the city. Unlike the newer suburban stretches further north, Clarkson still has a distinct village core and a genuine 19th-century history behind it, not just a retrofitted name.
The community traces back to 1808, when fifteen-year-old Warren Clarkson and his brother Joshua left Albany, New York for land near Lake Ontario. Warren stayed, and in 1835 opened a general store on what is now Clarkson Road North, a site that became known locally as Clarkson’s Corner. A railway station followed in 1853, built by the Great Western Railway near that same corner.
Clarkson’s other defining chapter is agricultural. Strawberry and raspberry cultivation were introduced to the area in the 1850s, and by the early 1900s Clarkson had become known as the “Strawberry Capital of Ontario.” A sign at the Clarkson railway station in 1915 reportedly declared that more strawberries passed through it than any other station in the province. Commercial fruit farming continued in the area well into the 20th century before the land gradually gave way to residential development.
Clarkson GO Station sits on GO Transit’s Lakeshore West line, which runs frequent, all-day service rather than the weekday-rush-hour-only pattern you’ll find on the Milton line through Streetsville. That makes Clarkson one of the more transit-convenient older neighbourhoods in the city for getting to and from Toronto. MiWay buses connect it to the rest of Mississauga. See our transit guide for the fuller picture.