Oakville is a town in Halton Region, Ontario, Canada. It is located on Lake Ontario between Toronto and Hamilton. At its 2021 census population of 213,759, it is Ontario's largest town. Oakville is part of the Greater Toronto Area, one of the most densely populated areas of Canada.
History
In 1793, Dundas Street was surveyed for a military road. In 1805, the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada bought the lands between Etobicoke and Hamilton from the indigenous Mississaugas people, except for the land at the mouths of Twelve Mile Creek (Bronte Creek), Sixteen Mile Creek, and along the Credit River. In 1807, British immigrants settled the area surrounding Dundas Street as well as on the shore of Lake Ontario.
In 1820, the Crown bought the area surrounding the waterways. The area around the creeks, , ceded to the Crown by the Mississaugas, was auctioned off to William Chisholm in 1827. He left the development of the area to his son, Robert Kerr Chisholm, and his brother-in-law, Merrick Thomas. Chisholm also formed shipbuilding business in Oakville Navy Street and Sixteen Mile Creek (Halton Region) and lasted until 1842, but shipbuilding in Oakville lasted into the late 20th century.
The population in 1846 was 1,500. The community shipped large quantities of wheat and lumber via schooners and the railway. There were three churches, a grist mill and saw mill, and various small companies making threshing machines, wagons, watches, saddles, and metal goods. There were also tradesmen of various types.
Oakville's industries also included shipbuilding. In the 1850s, there was an economic recession and the foundry, the most important industry in town, was closed. Basket-making became a major industry in the town, and the Grand Trunk Railway was built through it. In 1869, the population was 2,000. The community was served by the Great Western Railway and it was a port on Lake Ontario.
The town eventually became industrialized with the opening of Cities Service Canada (later BP Canada, and now Petro Canada) and Shell Canada oil refineries (both now closed), the Procor factory (no longer manufacturing), and, most importantly, the Ford Motor Company's Canadian headquarters and plant, all close to the Canadian National Railway and the Queen Elizabeth Way highway between Toronto and Fort Erie (Buffalo).
In 1962, the town of Oakville merged with its neighbouring villages (Bronte, Palermo, Sheridan, and the remainder of Trafalgar Township) to become the new Town of Oakville, reaching northwards to Steeles Avenue in Milton. In 1973, the restructuring of Halton County into Halton Region brought the northern border southwards to just north of the future Highway 407.
Geography
Neighbourhoods
Oakville's Planning Department divides the town into communities. These are based on traditional neighbourhoods.
Climate
Like much of Southern Ontario, Oakville has a Humid continental climate straddling Dfa/Dfb classifications, with cold, but not extreme, winters and warm, to very warm summers. Like most lakeside municipalities on the Great Lakes, there are varying temperatures within town boundaries, generally warmer days further from the lake, the exception being on the colder days in winter.
Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Oakville had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.
According to the 2021 census, the median age in the town is 41.6 years. 18% of the population is under 15 years of age, 66.3% is between 15 and 64 years, and 15.7% is 65 and over.
In 2016, immigrants made up 35.9% of the population. The top 10 places of birth of the immigrant population were the United Kingdom (11%), China (9.3%), India (7.6%), Pakistan (4.2%), Poland (3.8%), Philippines (3.7%), the United States (3.4%), Portugal (3.3%), Egypt (3.1%), and South Korea (2.9%).
Language
The most common mother tongues among the population in 2021 were English (57.4%), Mandarin (7.0%), Arabic (3.5%), Spanish (2.3%), and Urdu (2.2%).
Ethnicity
The 2016 census found the most reported ethnocultural background to be White (68.5%), followed by South Asian (8.9%), Chinese (7%), Arab (3.2%), Black (2.9%), Filipino (1.9%), Latin American (1.9%), Korean (1.6%), West Asian (1.1%), and other backgrounds. Aboriginals make up 0.7% the population: 0.4% First Nations and 0.3% Métis.