The street is pleasant but ordinary, and so is the house, a two-story monument to the forgettable architecture of the late 1960s. There's a two-car garage, a neatly kept lawn and a driveway flanked by a pair of coach lamps. But look closer, and you realize that this is a very special house indeed.
There is a windowless brick addition that looks like a military command centre, and on the front door, carved into the wood so subtly that you might miss it, is the face of one of the world's most famous and respected musicians — jazz legend Oscar Peterson, once described as "the maharaja of the piano."
Mr. Peterson, who died this weekend at 82, put Canada on the world musical map and helped forge a new era in race relations. Yet he spent much of his life in a world drawn straight from The Brady Bunch, a universe of suburban tract homes, strip malls and winding avenues with names like King Forrest Drive and Friar Tuck Boulevard.
Although his choice of neighbourhoods surprised many, Mr. Peterson loved Mississauga. "He felt at home there," said his niece, Sylvia Sweeney. "It was his world."
Mr. Peterson's house was tweaked to his special needs. There was a soundproof brick studio that held his Bosendorfer grand piano and multitrack recording suite. The bay windows that faced the street were replaced with opaque glass blocks, to prevent the curious from spying. But this was not the home of a star.
"All he wanted was an ordinary life," Gene Lees, who authored a biography of Mr. Peterson, said. "He wasn't a celebrity show-off."
To those who knew him best, Mr. Peterson's address was the result of his love-hate relationship with Canada and its approach to visible minorities. The musician chose Mississauga in the early 1970s after being snubbed by a landlord in Toronto's wealthy Forest Hill neighbourhood who refused to rent to him because he was black.
In the suburbs, Mr. Peterson found a new, more open society. Although it was largely white, Mississauga seemed more amenable to change, if only because it lacked the crushing social history of downtown Toronto, still a WASP bastion at the time.
"I think it was a case of not being rejected," Ms. Sweeney said. "In Mississauga, he got a chance to know his neighbours and build a history together."
Mr. Peterson, the son of a railroad porter, was a musical icon by the time he reached his mid-20s. He learned to play the piano from his sister Daisy (who went on to become a world-renowned music instructor) and dazzled fans around the world with his impeccable technique and musical imagination. But in Canada, where blacks were still a tiny minority, Mr. Peterson felt himself largely shut out by a white-dominated musical and cultural establishment that controlled access to key venues — particularly the CBC, which Mr. Peterson loathed until the end of his life.
Mr. Peterson played a critical role in the battle for equal rights, using his professional stature and personal dignity to help erode long-standing barriers. Mr. Lees, a former Hamilton Spectator reporter who went on to become the editor of a music magazine and Mr. Peterson's biographer, met him in 1951, when Mr. Peterson was caught up in a racial dispute. Mr. Lees was assigned to cover the story when a Hamilton barber refused to cut Mr. Peterson's hair because he was black.
Mr. Lees came away impressed by Mr. Peterson's strength of character, and by his humanity. Although he pursued the complaint against the barber because he was offended by the man's prejudiced attitude, Mr. Peterson later spoke on the barber's behalf when Hamilton city officials moved to revoke his business licence.
