Guelph

Sister cities

• Loria
• Castelfranco Veneto
• Quetzaltenango

History

First Nations peoples inhabited present-day Guelph as early as 11,000 years ago. 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". The majority of this nation, about 4,000 people, lived in a village near what is now the Badenoch area of Puslinch, near Morriston. In 1784, the British Crown purchased a tract of land, that included present-day Guelph, from the Mississauga people for approximately £1,180. 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. 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. The street plan was laid out in a radial street and grid system that branches out from downtown, a technique which was also employed in other planned towns of this era, such as Buffalo, New York. That was St. George's Day, the feast day of the patron saint of England. The name Guelph comes, via the Italian Guelfo, from the Bavarian German Welf. It is a reference to the House of Welf, and was chosen to honour King George IV—the reigning British monarch at the time of the city's founding—whose family, the Hanoverians, descended from the Welfs. It is for this reason that the city has the nickname The Royal City. The directors of the Canada Company had actually wanted the city to be named Goderich,…

Geography

Downtown Guelph is situated above the confluence of the Speed River and the Eramosa River, which have numerous tributaries. The Speed River enters from the north and the Eramosa River from the east; the two rivers meet below downtown and continue southwest, where they merge with the Grand River. There are also many creeks and smaller rivers creating large tracts of densely forested ravines, and providing ideal sites for parks and recreational trails. The city is built on several drumlins and buried waterways, the most notable being an underground creek flowing below the Albion Hotel, once the source of water used to brew beer. Guelph is the largest Canadian city to rely almost entirely on groundwater for its drinking supply, which is sourced from two main aquifers. This region of Ontario has cold winters and warm, humid summers, falling into the Köppen climate classification Dfb zone (humid continental), with moderately high rainfall and snowfall. It is generally a couple of degrees cooler than lower elevation regions on the Great Lakes shorelines, especially so in winter, the exception being on some spring afternoons when the lack of an onshore breeze boosts temperatures well above those found lakeside. The highest temperature ever recorded in Guelph was on August 6, 1918, and July 13, 1936. | metric first = Y | single line = Y | Jan record high C = 16.7 | Feb record high C = 15.5 | Mar record high C = 26.4 | Apr record high C = 29.2 | May record high C = 32.2 | Jun record high C = 36.2 | Jul record high C = 38.3 | Aug record high C = 38.3 | Sep record high C = 36.7 | Oct record high C = 29.4 | Nov record high C = 23.9 | Dec record high C = 19.1 | year record high C = 38.3 | Jan high C = −2.8 | Feb high C = −1.7 | Mar high C = 3.5 | Apr high C = 10.8 | May high C =…

Most-observed species

• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  44,633
• American Crow

  Corvus brachyrhynchos C.L.Brehm, 1822 · Aves
  43,226
• Northern Cardinal

  Cardinalis cardinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  40,593
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  38,319
• American Goldfinch

  Spinus tristis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  34,908
• Canada Goose (canadensis Group)

  Branta canadensis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  34,387
• Blue Jay

  Cyanocitta cristata (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  33,217
• Mourning Dove

  Zenaida macroura (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  32,955

Most recent

• M 2.58 — 2009-09-20
  20 km ESE of Oakville, Canada
• M 2.78 — 2005-03-28
  16 km NW of Virgil, Canada