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Home | Settlement R | Regional Municipality of Peel
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Mississauga occupies the southernmost portion of the region, and is, with 668,549 residents, the largest in population (the sixth largest in Canada). It reaches from Lake Ontario north to near Highway 407. In the centre is Brampton, a smaller city of 433,806 (ranked 11th by population). Finally, by far the largest in area and the most sparsely populated part of the region is Caledon, which is home to only 57,050 residents. The Region of Peel was created by the government of Bill Davis in 1974 from the former County of Peel, and was legislated to provide community services to the (then) rapidly urbanizing area of south Peel County (now Mississauga and Brampton). The region is responsible for the services and infrastructure related to water delivery and wastewater treatment, waste collection and disposal, regional roads, public health, long-term care centres, Peel Regional Police, Peel Regional Paramedic Services, planning, public housing, paratransit, judicial and social services. Other municipal functions are provided by the three local-tier municipalities. These responsibilities have changed over time, as functions have been uploaded and downloaded to and from the provincial and regional levels, as directed by the Province of Ontario. Peel County (and therefore, Peel Region) may be named after Sir Robert Peel, the nineteenth-century Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. An alternative theory holds that it was named after John Peel the folk hero from Cumberland, where many of Peel's first settlers originated from and where the original Brampton is located. |
