Golden Mile (Scarborough)
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The Golden Mile in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, is a stretch of Eglinton Avenue East that is the site of intensive industrial and commercial development. It was one of Canada's first model industrial parks. The Golden Mile runs along Eglinton from Victoria Park Avenue east to Warden Avenue.
The area was farmland prior to World War II when it became the site of a number of factories geared to war production. Following the war, the area was purchased from the federal government by the Township of Scarborough. The township built several municipal buildings along Eglinton and sold the rest to private industry to develop the area as "The Golden Mile", patterned after the Golden Mile in London, England. In the 1950s and 1960s, numerous factories producing mostly consumer goods operated along the Golden Mile.
Golden Mile Plaza was opened in 1958 by Queen Elizabeth II marking the further transformation of the area into a series of strip malls. The area has recently become the site of one of Toronto's largest concentrations of power centres and big box stores.