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St. Catharines The city of St. Catharines, with its 130,000 people, is the largest city in the country's Niagara Region, and the 6th largest in Ontario, occupying the area of nearly 100 sq. km. It is located in Southern Ontario, only 19 km inland from the international border with the US along the Niagara River. The city has the official nickname of "The Garden City" thanks to its thousand acres of groomed parks, trails and gardens. The city was originally established by Loyalists in the early 1780s. At the same time the first business, which was a goods storehouse, was founded in 1783 by Robert Hamilton. Three years later, the first mill called Crown Mills was established. After the surrounding land was explored, the townships were created.
St. Catharines was originally a small settlement named “The Twelve”. At the end of the eighteenth century, the town has got its first inn, constructed by Thomas Adams. The inn was situated on the east side of Ontario Street, not far from the nowadays St. Paul Street. The inn soon turned into a community meeting place and the rest stop for stagecoach, and the place renamed into “Shipman`s Corners”, after Paul Shipman, the new owner of the inn. It was only in the middle of the nineteenth century that the Town of St. Catharines was incorporated, and later, 1876, it became a city. Today the City of St. Catharines features multicultural community, with the largest ethnic groups including the half of British, 13% each of German, French and Italian, and 6% of Dutch. Besides, there are many people of southern European origin in the city.
The City of St. Catharines has a moderate climate thanks to the influence of the two Great Lakes: Ontario and Erie, which means that the area has many frost-free days in winter. As for the summer, it is largely hot and humid, and the average temperature peaks at 27°C in the middle of the season, though felt closer to 40°C because of the humid factor. The main industry of the city is manufacturing. For example, General Motors run 2 factories in St. Catharines, being up until recently the largest employer in the area. However, today this honour belongs to the District School Board of Niagara.
Among other plants located in the city, there are those of Foster-Wheeler and TRW. Nevertheless, the recent years showed that the employment has been shifting rapidly from manufacturing and heavy industry to services. Since the city is located on one of the major telecommunications backbones between two countries, a few call centres work in St. Catharines. Those call centres, if combined, now employ most of the city’s citizens. The headquarters of NuComm International, a national call centre operator, is located in downtown St. Catharines. The entertainment in the city is represented by the Niagara Grape & Wine Festival, which is a non-commercial group presenting 3 popular wine festivals in the city and Niagara throughout the year.
This event, called by most locals simply as "Grape and Wine", usually attracts hundreds of thousands of guests to the area every year. The types of visitors to the festival vary from young party-goers to old wine connoisseurs. Besides, it’s fifth year in a row that the Art of Peace Festival is held, seeking to improve the community engagement in art and peace. During the festival, Montebello Park is filled with an elementary school art exhibition, workshops, performing arts events, vendors, and Peace-Through-Art Stations, where peace groups reveal their information and offer various arts activities. The St. Catharines’s goal is to increase the ties between the public and artists, and increase community and youth engagement in peace issues.
