Random Access

Twenty years doesn’t seem like a long time in the life of a village that’s nearly 170 years old.
But, if it’s the last 20 years and you’re talking about historic Meadowvale Village, the past two decades have seen a transformation that is truly staggering.
That was evident Wednesday morning when Craig Wilson, who spent his youth in what is now the heritage district of Meadowvale Village, popped the lid on a plexiglass time capsule that was buried on a sunny June day in 1986 on the occasion of the village’s 150th birthday celebration.
The time capsule was originally supposed to come out of its resting place under a large rock near the community hall for the 200th anniversary of the village's founding.
Wilson, an avid photographer who took most of the slides and photos that were buried in the time capsule, knew that the home-made version that was used wasn’t likely to last until its designated unearthing.
In the basement of the Anchorage, where the capsule was opened with the assistance of Mississauga Museums Collections and Exhibitors’ Co-ordinator Stephanie Meeuwse, Wilson’s concerns were immediately confirmed by the obvious odour that emanated from the box. There was mould on the secondary plan for Meadowvale Village and the heritage district conservation plan, among other items, and the seal had been broken and a little water was standing in one corner of the box.
Later, in the upstairs tea room of the Anchorage, Wilson and Gord Handley, who grew up together in the village, pored over the contents of the box. Handley is a professional photographer who took shots of the time capsule opening.
Wilson had documented the ownership of every single lot in the village in 1986 and taken a photo of each.
“That’s the blacksmith shop,” he said leafing slowly through the photo album.
“We used to go down on our bikes and the blacksmith would weld things up for nothing for us,” recalled the Mississauga firefighter.
“Remember this little cottage. The guy would come out every morning with two buckets and walk down to the Credit River and fill them up.”
Handley recalled that, “it was a community where everyone knew everyone else. Christmas carollers would come to your house and sing songs. It was right out of the movies.”
The items that stopped Wilson and Handley dead in their tracks were two aerial photos of the village. There it sits, in splendid isolation, a string of homes that stretches one lot deep along Derry Rd. and Second Line West, with a few more offshoot streets north of Derry.
Surrounding it is....nothing, just woodlots, the river and open fields.
“Look at that," said Wilson in amazement. “That was just 20 years ago.”
Now the heritage district is ringed with colourless “lifestyle communities” that have encroached right up to its edges.
Wilson would like to redocument today’s Meadowvale Village and include the appropriate material from the 1986 box and perhaps create a new, archivally-correct time capsule to be opened in 2036, when he will be 73 years old.
Mississauga has lost so many of its villages: Palestine, Sheridan, Summerville, Frogmore, Hanlan etc. etc. that Meadowvale now stands as a metaphor for all of them.
Anything we can do to celebrate and document its survival is to be cherished.