People power fuelled rebuild of Lakeview power plant site
Massive Mississauga lakefront project, officially announced Saturday, would not have happened without local residents who fought the odds

thestar.com
By San Grewal
Sept. 25, 2016

Call it a victory for the little guy.

Saturday’s historic announcement to kickoff Mississauga’s monumental Inspiration Lakeview project, with 26 hectares of newly created conservation land connected to a 100-hectare mixed-use community to house 20,000 residents next to the city’s waterfront, should never have happened.

“It started before 2006,” Councillor Jim Tovey said during a boat tour Saturday around the site, just offshore and on the edge of the city’s border with Toronto. Elected officials from every level of government were on board.

The Lakeview project will feature a mix of commercial, residential and cultural buildings on the western side of the site, which will be connected to a man-made 26-hectare conservation area featuring meadows, a forest, wetlands and trails on what is currently still part of the lake.

Tovey spoke about how before becoming a councillor in 2010, he and a group of local citizens organized themselves, partnering with a University of Toronto expert, to unite residents against the powerful forces pushing for a new gas-fired power plant where the giant coal-fired Lakeview generating station had stood for almost 50 years.

At the time of the plant’s demolition in 2007, the province had a plan in place to simply replace coal with gas, with an ally in former mayor Hazel McCallion.

Even before the plant was torn down, “We wanted to create the Lakeview legacy project,” Tovey said. The push to get rid of the plant seemed incomprehensible in a province whose thirst for electricity could barely be quenched. But Tovey and others knew demand in the area was actually beginning to decline, with the loss of manufacturing and renewable energy sources coming online.

The idea “to build the world’s most environmentally sustainable community,” right where one of Ontario’s worst polluters had belched out a hazardous stew of chemicals from four giant stacks, would be a symbol of what citizens could do if they united, Tovey said.

Dalton McGuinty’s provincial government committed to doing away with coal power, but the plan to replace Lakeview seemed like an insurmountable obstacle.

Tovey said that with the help of local MPP Charles Sousa, elected in 2007, and Mississauga’s powerful former mayor, who came around to the idea, his group of citizen activists gathered momentum.

With the help of John Danahy, a University of Toronto landscape architecture and urban design professor, Tovey and his group put together a sophisticated master plan for the ambitious reclamation project.

“Our plan was to finally establish wetlands and to restore our coastal area after decades of destruction.”

In 2008, the province, under energy minister George Smitherman’s guidance, announced that Lakeview would no longer be used for generating electricity.

“Because gas-fired plants are very small and efficient as compared to these monster coal plants, I concluded we didn’t need to clutter a huge bulk of prime waterfront any longer,” Smitherman said.

The city then endorsed the master plan put together by Tovey, Danahy and others. The official master plan for the project today is largely created from Tovey’s original.

“It’s fun, because now we get to build it.”

Saturday’s event to announce the start of the project included speeches by dignitaries and an aboriginal water ceremony conducted by a member of the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation, who originally settled the area.

Resident Jean Williams, who lives near the lake and has lived in Mississauga since 1966, before the city was even created, marvels at the accomplishment.

“I find it very peaceful coming to the water,” Williams said. “You think you’re miles away from everything. And to imagine that this project was because of the people, what the people of Mississauga did.”