Rexdale was originally a post World War II residential development within Etobicoke, and today is applied to a general area from Malton and Toronto Pearson International Airport in the City of Mississauga to the west, Highway 401 to the south, Steeles Avenue to the north, and the Humber River to the east.

Rexdale was named after local real estate developer Rex Heslop, who purchased farmland in the area in 1955 for a cost of $110,000, and installed water mains, streets and sewers, as well as houses that listed for sale at either $9,000 or $10,000.

[2] Rexdale's first residents were mostly English and Scottish, Italian but it evolved into a multicultural neighbourhood in the following decades, led by those from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent.

[citation needed] In 2006, Christopher Hume, a journalist with the Toronto Star, wrote that Rexdale "has become shorthand for suburban blight, social breakdown and gang violence.

The vision of Rexdale's planners, Hume wrote, was a patchwork of separate precincts for working, living, shopping and playing, connected by expressways.