Wedding in Brampton
Brampton is a city in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada and the seat of Peel Region. As of the 2006 census, Brampton's population stood at 433,806. As one of Canada's fastest growing municipalities, the city has found it difficult to cope with such significant growth, in terms of the provision of adequate public infrastructure and services. It celebrated its sesquicentennial anniversary in 2003, marking 150 years since its incorporation as a village in 1853, taking its name from the rural town of Brampton, Cumbria, England.
Brampton was once known as The Flowertown of Canada, a title it earned due to the city's large greenhouse industry, which included Dale's Flowers, a company that won many international rose awards for nearly half a century.
The city is home to Canadian Forces Army Reserve unit The Lorne Scots (Peel, Dufferin and Halton Regiment).
A new hospital is being built in north Brampton, to supplement the Peel Memorial Hospital.
Brampton's 2003 Sesquicentennial celebrations were a booster to community spirit, restarting the tradition of a summer parade (with 100 floats), and creating other initiatives. To commemorate the Flowertown history, the City under Mayor Fennell reintroduced floral projects to the community, including more plantings around town, the restart of the Flowercity Parade in 2005, and participation for the last few years in the Canada Communities in Bloom project.
With a growing multicultural population, the Peel Board of Education introduced evening English as a Second Language (ESL) classes at high schools. Originally taught by volunteers, the classes eventually became daytime courses taught by paid instructors. In the 1980s, the public and Catholic board expanded its languages programs, offering night classes in 23 languages. These were introduced by the urging of parents who wanted their children to learn their ancestral heritage and language.
Carabram was founded in 1982, after volunteers from different ethnic communities wanted to organize a festival celebrating diversity and cross-cultural friendship. With a name based on Toronto like-event, Caravan Festival of Cultures, Carabram's first event included Italian, Scottish, Ukrainian, and West Indian pavilions. By 2003, forty-five-thousand visitors visited 18 pavilions. Canada itself had an anchor pavilion in the late-1980s, early-1990s, but ceased when it failed to get sponsorship.
Brampton has a total land area of 265 square kilometres. The City of Brampton is bordered by Highway 50 (Vaughan) to the East, Winston Churchill Boulevard (Halton Hills) to the West, Mayfield Road (Caledon) to the North and the Hydro Corridor (Mississauga) to the South.
Bramalea was built as a "satellite city", Canada's first when built in the 1960s. It was annexed into Brampton in 1974, but still remains essentially autonomous in spirit, with even new residents responding that they live in Bramalea. Chinguacousy and Toronto Gore were two townships incorporated into Brampton mid-way through the twentieth century. From this merger, communities such as Bramalea, Heart Lake and Professor's Lake, Snelgrove, Tullamore, and Mayfield, were formed.
Rural villages, such as Claireville, Ebenezer, Victoria, Springbrook, Churchville, Coleraine, and Huttonville were merged into the larger city. While only Huttonville and Churchville still exist as identifiable communities, other names like Claireville are re-emerging as names of new developments.
The early 1980s brought new development, as the city released large tracts of land to residential developers. The large new suburban community of Springdale was developed in 1995 and is the area where most of the urban sprawl has taken place.This land began in its largest boom in 1999, when development started to appear as far north as the city's border with Caledon. The Region has designated this border as being the line of demarcation for urban development until 2021. However, neighbouring communities not part of Peel have also been massively affected by the city's sudden spurt. The end of Brampton and start of Georgetown, for example, is essentially non-identifiable.
Local transit is provided by Brampton Transit, with connections to other systems such as Mississauga Transit, York Region Transit, and Toronto Transit Commission. Brampton is currently planning a new Bus Rapid Transit system, called Acceleride along Main/Hurontario and Queen Streets, which would form the backbone to its bus network. Acceleride received funding from the provincial government in 2006 to begin implementation of this system.
Both Canadian National Railways and the Orangeville-Brampton Railway short line (formerly part of the Canadian Pacific Railway line) run through the city, CN's Intermodal Yards are located east of Airport Road between Steeles and the former Highway 7/Queen Street East. The CN Track from Toronto's Union Station, is the Georgetown GO Transit Rail Corridor providing commuter rail and bus services to and from Toronto with rail station stops at Bramalea, Downtown Brampton, and Mount Pleasant. There is GO Bus service to York University and Yorkdale Mall in Toronto. VIA Rail connects through Brampton as part of the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor.
Canada's busiest airport, Toronto Pearson International Airport (CYYZ), is located near Brampton, in Mississauga. For general aviation the city is served by the privately-owned Brampton Airport (CNC3), located to the north of the city in neighbouring Caledon.
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