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The driving distance from Parliament Hill to Brant is 504 km, with just an additional 10 km to arrive in Brantford. The drive takes about six hours.
The Grand River and surrounding forests are a hotspot for wildlife, including beavers, otters, muskrats, deer, foxes, coyotes, wild turkeys, bald eagles, king rails, and red-shouldered hawks.
A number of waterways flow through this riding, including the Grand River, Fairchild Creek, Nith River, and Big Creek. The Nith River and Grand River bisect the riding.
This is Canada’s most populous riding, with 132,443 residents in 2015.
The median age is 40.5.
Around 11% of the riding’s population are immigrants, with the largest groups coming from the United Kingdom, Poland, and the United States. After English, the most common non-official languages are Polish, Italian, and French.
Almost 10% of Brantford—Brant’s population identifies as Indigenous, Métis, or Inuit.
The “Great One” has a sports centre named after him. Yes, there are ice rinks, but the Wayne Gretzky Sports Centre also boasts four pools, a 45-metre waterslide, a training room, gymnasium, and fitness centre.
Gretzky grew up in Brantford before leaving in his early teens for junior hockey and a more anonymous life in Toronto.
The centre is home to the GOJHL’s Brantford 99’ers men’s junior B Team. The hockey team gets its name from Gretzky’s iconic sweater number.
Notable past residents also include comedian Phil Hartman, Group of Seven painter Lawren Harris, inventor Alexander Graham Bell, and former Ontario lieutenant governor William Ross Macdonald.
The community of Paris gets its name from the discovery of gypsum deposits, which are used to make plaster of Paris, a type of building material.
Manufacturing is the main industry in the riding, followed by retail trade and construction. Around 16% of the riding’s workforce is employed in the manufacturing sector. About 47% of the workforce has some sort of post-secondary education.
Wilfrid Laurier University has a campus in Brantford and it hosts a number of green initiatives for students. Laurier Brantford initiated an organics program in 2014, where students can dispose their food waste and biodegradable containers and packaging.
There’s also an E-waste program where students can dispose of old electronics, and a battery recycling program where students can drop off used batteries.
Brantford is known as “The Telephone City” because it’s where Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1874 at Melville House, his father’s homestead.
The site was designated a National Historic Site of Canada on June 28, 1997, after Queen Elizabeth II unveiled a commemorative cairn to mark the designation.
Indigenous communities in this riding include:
Bay of Quinte Mohawk
Six Nations of the Grand River
Upper Mohawk
Oneida
Delaware
Walker Mohawk
Lower Mohawk
Niharondasa Seneca
Konadaha Seneca
Upper Cayuga
Lower Cayuga
Bearfoot Onondaga
Tuscarora
Onondaga Clear Sky
Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation
