Markham Electricity Retailers and Natural Gas Providers
Residents and business owners in the city of Markham have a wide selection of retail electricity and natural gas providers to choose from, in addition to their local utilities. Just a few of the energy retailers currently serving Markham include:
Markham energy providers offer plans with a variety of rate structures, including fixed rate, variable, and fixed fee monthly plans. To find out what companies and rate options are currently available, please try our energy rate comparison form above, which offers up-to-date information on the natural gas and electricity options in your local area.
Markham Electricity and Natural Gas History
With a population of more than 300,000 people, Markham is the largest city in the Regional Municipality of York, and the 16th largest city in Canada. Originally settled by German immigrants in the late 1700s, Markham owes much of its development to its ample supply of lumber, and later, its suitability for agriculture. However, this industry only sustained a small population of less than 10,000 people through the end of the 19th Century.
Due to the lack of major industry, there was little impetus for industrialization of the area, with the exception of local farmers’ need for a convenient railway, in order to transport their produce to Toronto and other large cities utilizing train-based transport. Based upon this need, local business owners pushed for a local station, with the Toronto and Nipissing Railway Company opening a station in the city in 1871 on the Scarborough-Uxbridge line.
While the presence of the railway drove manufacturing in the region for a short while, Markham simply found itself unable to keep up with the industrialization and ease of transport in areas closer to Toronto. As a result, Markham lapsed back into agriculture, with little to drive the town to modernize. Ultimately, it was overflow from Toronto that transformed the sleepy township into a modern city, with a population of 56,000 people in 1976, and an additional increase of nearly 500% in the 40 years since then.
Markham relied on the services of Ontario Hydro (now Hydro One) for many years, until the creation of Markham Hydro through the York Municipal Hydro-Electric Service Act in 1978. Markham Hydro provided power distribution services to Markham, supplying electricity produced by plants throughout Ontario and transported partway via Hydro One. Markham Hydro merged with two other utilities and formed PowerStream in 2004, which provides transmission services for nearly 400,000 customers in Central Ontario.
While Markham relied strictly on outside energy sources for many years—and still does to a large degree—a major ice storm in the late 1990s that affected much of Ontario made it clear that smaller cities and rural areas needed to take an active part in energy production. Deregulation of the Ontario power industry at around the same time made this sort of local involvement more affordable, as now district energy companies could sell electricity back into the grid. In 2000, the city of Markham’s thermal energy utility, Markham District Energy, completed its first energy plant, and has since built a number of other small plants to serve residential customers, as well as IBM Canada and other major industrial clients.
