Erindale sits on the east bank of the Credit River in south-central Mississauga, built up around the old crossing of Dundas Street West and the river itself. It’s one of the oldest settled parts of the city, and one that went through more name changes than almost any other local village before settling on the one it has today.
The land here opened for settlement in 1822, when speculator Thomas Racey bought the tract along the Credit River following an 1820 land purchase in which the Mississaugas ceded land on both sides of the river to the Crown. Racey’s plans for mills on the site ran into financial trouble, and the land was broken up and auctioned off to settlers in 1825.
The resulting village went by several names before its current one stuck. Early accounts call it Toronto, then Credit, then Springfield, and eventually Springfield-on-the-Credit, a name tied to the water-powered mills that the river’s bend made possible. The Credit Valley Railway reached the village in 1879, and around 1900 residents renamed it Erindale, after the estate of Reverend James Magrath, who drew on “Erin” as a nod to Ireland. A fire in 1919 destroyed much of the old village core.
In the early 1900s, a hydroelectric company dammed the Credit River at Erindale, creating a reservoir known as Lake Erindale to power a plant on the site. The dam was later decommissioned, and its ruins are still visible today along the trails of Erindale Park. Erindale joined the other villages of Toronto Township in 1968 to form the Town of Mississauga, which became a city in 1974 after absorbing Streetsville and Port Credit.
Erindale GO Station, on the Milton line near Mississauga Road and Rathburn Road, sits close to the University of Toronto Mississauga campus on the river’s west bank; see our Erin Mills guide for more on that side of the Credit. Service on the Milton line runs mainly during weekday rush hours rather than all day, so check GO’s schedule before planning a trip. MiWay buses connect the area to the rest of the city; see our transit guide for the wider picture.