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If there's a spot where Mississauga's past and future intersect, it's on Eglinton Ave. W., just west of McLaughlin Rd.
There, for years, on the south side of Eglinton sat a little patch of paradise - the farm owned by Earl Madill.
I'm sure lots of folks thought it had no business being there, perched as it was on the northern flank of the Mississauga City Centre and dividing, as it was, the two halves of the Heritage Hills subdivision.
For contrarians like me, it gladdened the heart every time you drove by the spot. It was inherently pleasing that someone recognized the value of green, open space - for its own sake - and was resisting the lure of so-called progress. It seemed a conscious choice of the agrarian past over the cookie-cutter, ticky-tacky present.
My wife used to get positively giddy at the sight of real, live cows in the middle of the field. "Good for him," she'd say, knowing that the land must have been worth a fortune for development. "Good for him."
If you've driven by there lately, you've seen the skeleton of the Confederation Pkwy. extension going up through the property. Confederation will open from its current terminus at Burnhamthorpe, fly over the 403 and then align with McLaughlin Rd.
But the farm isn't disappearing just yet, according to Ben Madill. Ben is the heritage firebrand who was the late Earl's brother and was largely responsible for the saving of the Britannia Schoolhouse which he attended on his first day of school in September of 1921.
Madill, who will turn 91 on May 20, said his brother bought the 100 acre farm around 1942 for some $4,000. Earl's son Joe has sold some of the property, but has retained 45 acres that he'll continue to work. Joe lives in a house in the subdivision, right beside the farm.
The way things are going, he may have the last working farm in the city in a few years, within spitting distance of City Hall.
Ben has heard from a lot of people who valued the symbolic significance of Earl's farm.
"I was in the bank one day and I happened to meet a lady who was telling me about how she and her kids used to feed the cattle through the fences. After we talked for a while, I asked her where it was and it turned out it was Earl's place," laughed Madill.
"It's a sad thing that things we really need are disappearing," Madill said. "The farms, the scenery. It's nice to see some parkland."
As for the much-discussed Britannia Farm, another touchstone to a past when gridlock referred to too many cattle trying to get through too narrow a gate, Madill would like to see the minimalist approach adopted there, too.
"There's nothing wrong with doing nothing with it," he said.
Amen.