Port Union, Toronto

Port Union, also known as Centennial Scarborough is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located in the south-east corner of Toronto, within the former suburb of Scarborough. The neighbourhood is bounded by Kingston Road to the north, Port Union Road to the east, the Lake Ontario shoreline to the south, and Highland Creek to the west. The neighbourhood originated as the small lakefront town of Port Union in the 19th century, within the area now known as West Rouge, until 1974 part of the Township of Pickering. It was later developed as a suburban bedroom community after the Second World War. Since the 1990s, the industrial lands along the waterfront have been transformed into new subdivisions, along with a paved walkway and bike path along the shore of Lake Ontario. The neighbourhood has many mature trees, parkland and waterfront. It is an affluent neighbourhood with 93% home ownership. The area was settled in Charles Annis (1793) and by Thomas Adams (1808), but a community did not emerge until the 1830s. The original village of Port Union was founded in the early to mid-1800s immediately south-east of the current-day intersection of Port Union Rd and Lawrence Avenue. While currently part of Toronto, the original area of the community was within Pickering Township. By 1865 the community had a post office. In 1974, as part of the municipal government reforms that introduced the Regional Municipality of Durham, the West Rouge area of Pickering (bordered by Port Union Rd in the west, the Rouge River in the east, and Twyn Rivers Drive in the north) was annexed by Scarborough, which in turn was amalgamated into Toronto in 1998. One of the census tracts within the Port Union community is census tract 5350361.01. According to 2006 census data, this portion of the Port Union community is made up mostly of individuals of third generation or more status, meaning that they and their parents are born in Canada. Approximately 38% of the population within this census tract in Port Union are of third generation status or more.