March 2025
Over the past century, since the Wright Brother’s first successful flight, there have been almost two-dozen airports and aerodromes in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). From international to general aviation to military airports, the GTHA has always been a busy area for aviators and airplanes of all sizes. Some, like Armour Heights Aerodrome and De Lesseps Field had disappeared by the late 1920s, leaving absolutely no trace, while others have closed in the last two years, like Buttonville Airport and Downsview Airport. The long-proposed Pickering international Airport is one airport that will never come to be.
First proposed in the late 1960s, when the federal government was looking for a reliever airport for Malton airport, now known as Toronto Pearson International Airport. An early plan to expand the Malton Airport caused strong opposition from Malton’s residents, resulted in the federal government looking elsewhere to build a second Toronto airport in 1968. By 1972, farmland in Pickering Township, east of Toronto, was selected for the future airport.
Pickering Airport was envisioned as a large regional airport, with three 10, 000 foot runways, to serve the anticipated exponential growth in air passenger traffic in the coming decades. At the time, it was anticipated that the GTHA would see passenger volumes of 100 million by 2041. Pickering would be able to take over the shorter, regional routes, leaving Toronto Airport to concentrate on long-haul and international travel.
As part of the planning process, properties in Pickering Township, with some in Uxbridge and Markham Townships, were expropriated for the airport, starting in 1972. Farms and homes, some owned for generations by the same family, were bought up and demolished, a total of about 18, 600 acres of farmland, along with the hamlets of Brougham, Claremont and Altona.
The plans ground to a halt three short years later, when the Government of Ontario withdrew its agreement to provide the necessary infrastructure for the airport, leading to an on-again, off-again, announcements on the airport’s future that would go on for the next five decades. While Transport Canada continued to own the land, the federal government began to lease the farmland and houses to tenants, some of whom were the former owners of the properties.
Transport Canada attempted to resurrect the airport project in 2001, but as many times before, nothing came of these plans. In 2002, the federal government withdrew 7,540 acres from the proposed airport site, as it was no longer deemed required, and set it aside as green space in perpetuity.
As recently as January 2018, feasibility studies were being generated stressing the urgent need for a new airport to handle the increasing demand for air travel in the GTHA. All that changed in January 2025, when the Federal Government officially cancelled all plans for the Pickering Airport. The remaining land holdings will be transferred to Parks Canada and incorporated into the Rouge National Park, an urban national park that had been officially created on 15 May 2015.
Sources: Brougham – Ghost Towns of the GTA | Hiking the GTA, Plan for Pickering airport dead after more than 50 years of debate, Ottawa says | CBC News, Pickering Airport Lands – Wikipedia, List of airports in the Greater Toronto Area – Wikipedia.
