Many Mississauga streets are quite short, yet the numbers are usually in the 4000s and 5000s

Many Mississauga streets are quite short, yet the numbers are usually in the 4000s and 5000s. Why?—Maria Carrusca, Scarborough

Don’t worry, you didn’t somehow miss 4,000 houses between the corner and the cul-de-sac. Mississauga doesn’t number its houses in order like Toronto does. Instead, major streets are used as grid lines. Lakeshore Road is 1000, the Queen Elizabeth Way is 2000, Dundas is 3000, and so on. Buildings on north-south roads have addresses that indicate how far north they are from the nearest grid line. So 2150 Dixie Road, for example, would be 1,500 feet north of the QEW (the plan predates the metric system). Going east to west, the zero grid line is at Hurontario, which cuts through the centre of town, so 522 Dundas Street East would be 5,220 feet east of Hurontario. Grid systems like this are relatively new inventions. When Mississauga was incorporated in 1974, the smaller towns it amalgamated were allowed to keep most of their original addresses, but all new construction followed the grid. It makes navigation easier for citizens and emergency services alike—even if it causes confusion for the occasional interloper.