Guelph (/ˈɡwɛlf/ ⓘ GWELF; 2021 Canadian Census population 143,740)[3] is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as The Royal City, it is roughly 22 km (14 mi) east of Kitchener and 70 km (43 mi) west of Downtown Toronto, at the intersection of Highway 6, Highway 7 and Wellington County Road 124. It is the seat of Wellington County, but is politically independent of it.
Guelph began as a settlement in the 1820s, established by John Galt, who was in Upper Canada as the first superintendent of the Canada Company. He based the headquarters, and his home, in the community. The area—much of which became Wellington County—was part of the Halton Block, a Crown reserve for the Six Nations Iroquois.[6][7] Galt is generally considered Guelph's founder.
For many years, Guelph ranked at or near the bottom of Canada's crime severity list.[8] However, the 2017 index showed a 15% increase from 2016.[9] It had one of the country's lowest unemployment rates throughout the Great Recession.[10] In late 2018, the Guelph Eramosa and Puslinch entity had an unemployment rate of 2.3%, which decreased to 1.9% by January 2019, the lowest of all Canadian cities. (The national rate at the time was 5.8%.[11]) Much of this was attributed to its numerous manufacturing facilities, including Linamar.[12]
First Nations peoples used land on present-day Guelph as early as 11,000 years ago.[13] Before colonization, the area was considered by the surrounding Indigenous communities to be a "neutral" zone and was inhabited by the Neutral Nation. According to the University of Guelph, "the area was home to a First Nations community called the Attawandaron who lived in longhouses surrounded by fields of corn".[14] The majority of this nation, about 4,000 people, lived in a village near what is now the Badenoch area of Puslinch, near Morriston.[15] In 1784, the British Crown purchased a tract of land, that included present-day Guelph, from the Mississauga people for approximately £1,180.[13]
John Galt, the first Superintendent of the Canada Company, was hired to help colonize Upper Canada.[16] He selected Guelph as the headquarters of this British development firm. Galt was a popular Scottish poet and novelist who also designed the town to attract settlers and farmers to the surrounding countryside.[17] His design intended the town to resemble a European city centre, complete with squares, broad main streets and narrow side streets, resulting in a variety of block sizes and shapes which are still in place today.[18] The street plan was laid out in a radial street and grid system that branches out from downtown,[19] a technique which was also employed in other planned towns of this era, such as Buffalo, New York.[17]
The founding was symbolized by the felling of a tree by Galt and William "Tiger" Dunlop, who would be significant in the history of Goderich, Ontario, on April 23, 1827.[20][21] That was St. George's Day, the feast day of the patron saint of England.