Alderwood

Alderwood is a residential neighbourhood in south Etobicoke, generally bounded by Brown's Line to the west, the rail corridor to the north, Islington Avenue to the east, and the Queen Elizabeth Way to the south. Like its lakeshore neighbours New Toronto, Mimico and Long Branch, it grew up as a working-class community tied to the industrial belt that developed along Toronto's western waterfront in the early twentieth century. The name is generally attributed to the alder trees that grew along Etobicoke Creek, which forms the neighbourhood's western edge.

A post-war building boom

Alderwood's biggest period of growth came after the Second World War, in step with the broader housing boom across Etobicoke Township as returning veterans and their young families needed affordable homes within reach of factory and service jobs. Blocks of modest brick bungalows went up through the late 1940s and 1950s on a fairly regular grid of residential streets, giving Alderwood the tidy, low-rise character it largely still has today. Etobicoke Township, and later the City of Etobicoke, absorbed the area into its planning framework before the 1998 amalgamation folded it into the current City of Toronto.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Alderwood, Toronto
• City of Toronto — Alderwood neighbourhood profile