December 2024
Across many older towns and cities, ruins of structures from the past can occasionally be found, crumbling and forgotten, hidden by vegetation
Erindale Park, found in the Erindale area of Mississauga, Ontario, is a community park complete with a playground for children, picnic areas and miles of walking trails in and around the park. At the west end of the park, stands a worn and battered concrete wall, sloped up on one side, with a straight drop on the other. This is the weather-worn remains of the an abandoned dam, built in 1902 by the Erindale Light and Power Company across the Credit river and the floodplain, creating a 125-acre man-made lake, named Lake Erindale.
This dam created the water supply needed to power their hydro electric generating plant, which was built at the east end of the lake, with a water tunnel running between them A pair of sluice gates were used to control the water flow into the tunnel at the bottom, which powered the turbines.
The Erindale Light and Power Company generation plant operated for a brief 13 years, supplying power to Erindale and New Toronto Township from 1910 until 1923, when Ontario Hydro took over, supplying the area with power from the Niagara Falls Generation Station. The generation plant continued to supply power to the local areat fell into disuse and in 1941, most of the dam was demolished and the lake drained.
The former lake bottom was used as a garbage dump from 1961-1965, after which it was covered over with clean soil and turned into Erindale Park over the next decade. The power station and the power house, were demolished in 1977, leaving only part of dam to slowly and silently crumble.
The remains of the old dam can be found near the entrance to Erindale Park.
Erindale Power Project Technical Data
Dam:
700 feet long with 100 feet concrete spillway section and three sluiceways; the remainder was an earth embankment with a concrete core at its centre.
Tunnel:
900 feet long with a 12-½ foot horseshoe cross-section made of reinforced concrete 18 inches thick.
Powerhouse:
2 turbines, one for each unit, were a single runner, Horizontal Francis type 50 inches in diameter, built by Charles Barber Sons, from Meaford, Ontario. Rated at 840 HP operating under a head of 56 feet, each wheel was controlled by a governor connected to a three-phase, 60-cycle, 13,200-volt generator that ran at 200 RPM.
Sources: Erindale Hydro Electric Dam | Hiking the GTA, Erindale Power Dam | Hiking the GTA, Way Back Wednesday: The fascinating history of Mississauga’s Erindale Hydroelectric Dam – Heritage Mississauga, Erindale, Mississauga – Wikipedia.
