In Your Neighbourhood: Guelph Junction (26 photos)

It’s called The Junction because there’s a junction at the heart of it – a convergence of rail-lines from four directions meeting right around Alma Street, going to points north, south, east and west.

The Junction neighbourhood is a rich blend of influences. A square zone west of the city’s downtown, it is bordered by Wellington Street to the south and Paisley Road to the north, Edinburgh Road to the east, and Silvercreek Parkway to the west.

Within that square is a lot of charm and character, a touch of history, a small amount of industry, and an oddity or two. There are a few historic mansions, a bible camp, an adult entertainment palace, and some of the most picturesque streets in the city.

Like St. Patrick’s Ward, The Junction has long been a more affordable place to buy a home, and there appears to be a high concentration of young families living here.

One of the oddities is the Graystone Residences along Waterloo Avenue. A former bus barn for the Guelph Transportation Commission - and before that, a car barn for the Guelph Radial Railway Line – the unusual heritage structures were converted in recent years to residences, with a large addition tacked on the back. The great angular chimney survives.

The Graystone is not far from The Manor, the former George Sleeman family mansion, completed in 1891 at an exorbitant cost of $30,000 at the time. The Sleeman’s beer brewing fortune paid for a home reputed to be the most opulent and grand of its time, sitting on a large expanse of land then on the outskirts of the new city of Guelph.

Now, of course, it is a strip bar and motel, sitting on the southwest corner of The Junction, festooned all around with neon lights advertising entertainment of an adult nature. The classic structure remains quite grand, though not the symbol of the upper class that it once was.

A highpoint of land just north of the mansion holds tiny Eden Street, where four cottage-style, century-old homes rest, somewhat isolated from the neighbourhood.

The Junction doesn’t have a lot of formal parkland, but it does have the old Lafarge aggregate pit in its midst. Silvercreek Parkway runs through it, sort of. The street winds around off of Waterloo, but comes to an abrupt dead-end at the railroad tracks.  

For several years the pit has been the subject of plans for a proposed retail and/or residential development. Environmental remediation work has been carried out on parts of the land, but development plans appear to be on hold. It has essentially become a dog-walking park for neighbourhood residents.     

The Junction is similar in some ways to the Ward, minus the inner-neighbourhood industrial component. There is little in the way of industry in the Junction, aside from the Guelph Twines plant on Crimea Street, a maker of plastic twines, monofilament rope yarns, and electrical cable fillers that has been around since 1972.

Just up the street is the 100 Crimea home of the Guelph Food Bank, a building that holds a number of artist and artisan studios and small businesses. A building across the street, connected by a skyway to 100, holds a daycare centre.

There are a few grand old homes sprinkled in among the two-storey brick houses, wartime homes, and middle class bungalows in the neighbourhood. No doubt, those old classics once stood out on open countryside before the city encroached. There’s one impressive limestone mansion on Galt Street at Edinburgh, and another even grander one on Woodycrest Drive, not far from the Guelph Bible Conference Centre, and thickly wooded complex dotted here and there with log cabins.

The Junction neighbourhood is a short walk to the Speed River park system, and about a 10-minute walk to the downtown.

Here in June, the hood is very beautiful, with its towering trees and creatively planted yards. There are a number of community gardens, many interesting boulevard gardens, and a few homes that keep chickens.

It’s a fun neighbourhood to explore on foot, and while there is a steep climb up from Waterloo, the neighbourhood is highly walkable.

This gallery of photographs was taken on a mostly cloudy Thursday morning, just as school children and parents walked to school.