Random Access

For the second time in the past decade, the heritage plaque on the site of the former Credit Mission native village, on what is now the Mississaugua Golf and Country Club, has gone missing.
When it happened the first time in the late 1990s, there was a happy ending. After months of appeals to the vandals who might have stolen the plaque, which commemorates the aboriginal community which was built on the property in the mid-1820s, the plaque was discovered to be in the City’s possession. Oops.
A crew had accidentally knocked it from its base and it was discovered months later on a warehouse shelf in a recreation and parks storage facility.
This time, Heritage Mississauga Historian Matthew Wilkinson has done the due diligence, checking the warehouses and other likely municipal sources. “We’ve searched every City yard with no luck,” says Wilkinson.
It looks like someone simply decided the plaque, which mentions the contributions of Revs. Peter Jones and Egerton Ryerson to the Indian village, was a great keepsake.
Or the plaque — one of 100 or so across the Province (there are a dozen in Mississauga) that has been vandalized — may be a victim of the value of its scrap aluminum.
There is evidence on the site, located right outside the entrance to the golf club just south of the Queen Elizabeth Way, that someone did it grievous bodily harm. “If you visit, you can see that it looks to be physically broken,” explains Wilkinson. “If you look at the pole, there’s a portion of the sign mounting still there. It looks like it was reefed on, to pry it away.”
The sign went missing late last year.
Heritage Mississauga asked the Ontario Heritage Trust, which administers the 1200 plaques around the province, about replacement but the response from Beth Anne Mendes, provincial plaque coordinator was not encouraging. “As the Ontario Heritage Trust is a not-for-profit agency of the Ontario Government our resources are very limited with regard to the replacement of plaques that are stolen, damaged or vandalized. At present, the cost to produce a new plaque is approximately $3,750. Ideally we would like to be able to attend to all of these cases but are simply not able to so, due to financial constraints and a lack of
field resources.”
The plaques are replaced when the local municipality or heritage body absorbs most or all of the costs. Even then, only three or four are replaced each year.
Heritage Mississauga plans to replace the plaque, but will have to raise additional monies to provide security to ensure it does not go missing again.
It is considering moving the plaque to a spot on the shoulder of the road a little farther north, where there is more space. “We are thinking about some kind of cairn, which would provide more security, perhaps with a garden feature,” says Wilkinson.
If the heritage board, the City, Ward 8 Councillor Katie Mahoney (a keen heritage supporter) and everyone else agrees, fundraising could begin this fall.
Which is good, in a way, but really irksome in another since it should be totally unnecessary.
What kind of person is so thoughtless and so callous that they would knowingly destroy a memorial to the people who settled this community and gave us our name?