History
John Galt, founder of Guelph, assisted by his surveyor, planned the community. He plotted a series of large public "squares" of varied shape; this unique street design provided one of the earliest examples of town planning in Ontario.
Tradition relates that John Galt, or one of his companions, laid his outstretched hand on a tree stump and predicted that the streets of the new town would radiate from a central point such as his fingers radiated from his palm. It is true that the main streets of downtown Guelph do follow such a pattern, but which came first, the legend or the plan, remains in doubt.
Read more about this topic: Downtown Guelph
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)