Guelph

More or less by chance, I have been reading about a once famous writer called Elinor Glyn, of whom I shall have more to say in due course.

In the meantime, a writer whose grandparents moved to a place called Guelph in Ontario in around 1830, drawn by the promise of cheap land and to arrive to find that the place was, at that time, little more than a collection of 30 shacks.

Not having heard of this town before, I asked google, to find that it is now a very successful town of more than 100,000 people, recently promoted to the status of a two Walmart town and presently in the middle of a very serious heat wave. The town web site (reference 2) exhorts moderation in the use of water ('The current level is Level 2 Red – reduce and stop nonessential use') and suggests that residents spend part of each day in the relative comfort of a municipal library, all of which are air-conditioned.

Guelph in honour of the Hanoverian royal house - there were plenty of Germans as well as British in the area - the same gang as the Guelphs and Ghibellines who used to run around in Italy.

The place also runs to rather a large church, illustrated, and about which wikipedia says, rather breathlessly: '[the] Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate is a Roman Catholic minor basilica and parish church located in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. A Gothic Revival style building designed by Joseph Connolly. It is considered Connolly's best work. To serve a Roman Catholic parish of predominantly German settlers the church was built between 1875 and 1883. The monumental church contains decorative carving and stained glass executed by skilled craftsmen. The church was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1990.Pope Francis designated the church a basilica on 8 December 2014'.

While the satellite bit of gmaps suggests that a huge swathe of southern Ontario, including Guelph, Hamilton and Toronto, is laid out in rectilinear leafy suburbs: a large scale, tidied up version of Epsom. Tens of miles of it in all directions.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guelph.

Reference 2: http://guelph.ca/.

Reference 3: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@43.5704907,-80.2374238,147369m/data=!3m1!1e3.