Guelph

Guelph (Canada 2006 Census population 114,943) is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as "The Royal City", Guelph is roughly 28 kilometres (17 mi) east of Waterloo and 100 kilometres (62 mi) west of downtown Toronto at the intersection of Highway 6 and Highway 7. It is the seat of Wellington County, but is politically independent of it. Because of its low crime rates, clean environment and generally high standard of living, Guelph is consistently rated as one of the country's best places to live.

The name Guelph comes from the Italian Guelfo and the Bavarian-Germanic Welf. It is a reference to King George IV (monarch at the time of the its founding, whose family was from the House of Hanover, a younger branch of the House of Welf) and a tongue in cheek reference to the then ascendant German population in neighbouring Berlin (Guelphs being the name given to the northern Italian factions who opposed the reign of the Holy Roman Empire, i.e. medieval Germany, in the 12th to 16th centuries).

History

Guelph was founded by John Galt, a popular Scottish novelist who designed the town to attract settlers to it and to the surrounding countryside.