You are here: VaughanCity.com > Woodbridge

Woodbridge is a medium sized town (2001 pop. 69,460) in the city of Vaughan, just north of Toronto. It is home to the largest Italian community in the Greater Toronto Area, though it is increasingly becoming more diverse. Its traditional downtown core is the Woodbridge Ave. stretch between Islington Avenue and Kipling Avenue north of Highway 7, but its current centre is further east along Highway 7, between Pine Valley and Weston Road.

Copyright © 2005 J. Alfred Prufrock & Co. All rights reserved.

Situated in hilly terrain, Woodbridge rests at an average elevation of 200 m. The geography was made up of farmlands before the suburban urbanization. Forests were at a width of as far as 500 m along the Humber especially to the north and to the south where forests are common and to the northwest. The east branch of the Humber empties into the Humber 500 m from Woodbridge. Today, much of the area are residential and industrial to the south, the further east and the west. The streets to the east are alphabetized as A, B and L but discontinued. Other tributaries include the Rainbow Creek to the west, the former Emerson and Jersey Creeks to the southeast.

The community was founded as Burwick and was named after Burr. In the 1850s, it was renamed Woodbridge after a wooden bridge because there was another settlement named Burwick. Construction of Highway 7 began in the 1900s and the Canadian Pacific rail opened three overpasses. Hurricane Hazel in the 1950s ruined a bridge over Highway 7 and devastated much of the community.

In the 1950s, Woodbridge experienced growth from suburban Toronto houses. The suburban expansion began east of the Humber and East Humber and to the northeast. Prior to the expanision, the urban area was up to Kipling Avenue and to the Humber. It later expanded in the west up to Martin Grove Road with a north to south width of about 800 m in the 1960s and to the north and portions of the northeast of Langstaff Road. It later expanded north in the 1970s and the 1980s. The housing developments in the west expanded north to Langstaff and in the central part of Woodbridge including aparth which transformed older stores into smaller units of housing in the early-1980s and west to Highway 27 in the late-1980s and in 1992. The houses expanded north to 400 m south of Rutherford Road in the 1980s and east up to Weston Road from Highway 7 to 400 m south of Rutherford Road and south to 200 m north of the present-day Highway 407. The Industrial areas began appear first to the west and then to the southwest and to the east. The housing developments in mid-1990s expanded Martin Grove Road northward. Woodbridge Highlands was formed in the northwest E of Highway 27 in the 1990s. In 1994 housing developments reached to Rutherford and continued until 1996 except for the northeast and the southeastern part. The condominiums began construction and now appear between Woodbridge Avenue and the Humber. Housing in the 1990s and the early-2000s continued in the northwest up to Major Mackenzie near Kleinburg and to the northwest and NE in Vellore Woods and Vellore Village outside the community. The industrial area is presently expanding in the west.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia.