Cambridge, Ontario

Cambridge (population 120,371 in 2006) is a located in Southern Ontario, Ontario, Canada. It is an amalgamation of 2 cities, namely Preston and Hespeler (called City of Galt).

Economy and Infrastructure
Cambridge has a wide variety of companies. In 1988, opened a plant in the city. Today there are two plants with around 4,500 employees in the city. This makes Toyota the city's largest employer. Other larger companies that have a location in the city are Process Group Inc, Gerdau Ameristeel,, Loblaw Companies Limited, Challenger Motor Freight Inc., Sutherland-Schultz Inc., Canadian General-Tower Ltd., ', Babcock and Wilcox, ', Tenneco Cambridge, Centra Industries and . In the service industry, the Langdon Hall, Coronation Dental Specialty Group, Gore Mutual Insurance Co., Cowan Insurance Group, and Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies are known.

Climate
The climate in Cambridge is typical of, and has a under the  (Köppen Dfb) with mostly moderate winters but the occasional deep freeze. In summer, the temperatures tend to be in the high twenties on the, and like most of southern Ontario, there can be stretches of high humidity creating some discomfort. On most days, Cambridge tends to be slightly warmer than Kitchener and Guelph, just to the north.

The last frost date of the season is around May 11, though most gardeners plant on the  to be safe. issues frost warnings for the area from October 30 through to May 9.

Traffic
Because of its rapid growth in the 20th century, Cambridge has a congested road network. The from east London terminates to the north-west of the city where it joins the A14, a major freight route which connects the port of Felixstowe on the east coast with the Midlands. The A428 connects the city with Bedford and St Neots, and the A10 connects the city to King's Lynn to the north via Ely, and to central London to the south.

As a university town lying on fairly flat ground and with traffic congestion, Cambridge has the highest level of cycle use in the UK. According to the 2001 census, 25% of residents travelled to work by bicycle. Furthermore, a survey in 2013 found that 47% of residents travel by bike at least once a week. In recognition of this, the 3rd stage of the 2014 Tour de France started in the city, adjacent to Parker's Piece.

Cambridge has several bus services including routes linking five Park and Ride sites all of which operate seven days a week and are aimed at encouraging motorists to park near the city's edge. Since 2011, the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway has carried bus services into the centre of Cambridge from, , and other towns and villages along the routes, operated by Stagecoach and Go Whippet. The A service continues on to the railway station and Addenbrookes, before terminating at a new Park and Ride in Trumpington.

Cambridge railway station has direct rail links to London with termini at (via the Cambridge Line and the ) and  (on the West Anglia Main Line). There is a non-stop train to King's Cross every half-hour during off-peak hours, with a journey time of 45 minutes. Trains also run to King's Lynn and Ely (via the Fen Line), Norwich (via the Breckland Line), Leicester, Birmingham, Peterborough, Stevenage, and. A second station, Cambridge North, is under construction and is due to open in December 2016, having originally planned to open in March 2015. The guided busway is currently being extended to cross Milton Road and join the new station. Direct trains linking Cambridge with Brighton and, via London St. Pancras, are due to start running in 2018.

Cambridge also has its own airport; was used mainly by charter and training flights as well as to fly in aircraft for maintenance. Regular flights to and European destinations such as  operated until the end of January 2016 when all scheduled and charter traffic from the airport was halted.

Theatre
Cambridge's main traditional theatre is the Arts Theatre, a venue with 666 seats in the town centre. The theatre often has touring shows, as well as those by local companies. The largest venue in the city to regular hold theatrical performances is the Cambridge Corn Exchange with a capacity of 1,800 standing or 1,200 seated. Housed within the city's 19th century former corn exchange building the venue was used for a variety of additional functions throughout the 20th century including tea parties, motor shows, sports matches and a music venue with temporary stage. The City Council renovated the building in the 1980s, turning it into a full-time arts venue, hosting theatre, dance and music performances. The newest theatre venue in Cambridge is the 220-seat J2, part of Cambridge Junction in Cambridge Leisure Park. The venue was opened in 2005 and hosts theatre, dance, live music and comedy The ADC Theatre is managed by the University of Cambridge, and typically has 3 shows a week during term time. It hosts the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club which has produced many notable figures in British comedy. The Mumford Theatre is part of Anglia Ruskin University, and hosts shows by both student and non-student groups. There are also a number of venues within the colleges.

Museums
Within the city there are several notable museums, some run by the University of Cambridge Museums consortium and others independent of it.

The Fitzwilliam Museum is the city's largest, and is the lead museum of the University of Cambridge Museums. Founded in 1816 from the bequeathment and collections of Richard, Viscount FitzWilliam, the museum was originally located in the building of the Perse Grammar School in Free School Lane. After a brief housing in the University of Cambridge library, it moved to its current, purpose-built building on Trumpington Street in 1848. The museum has five departments: Antiquities; Applied Arts; Coins and Medals; Manuscripts and Printed Books; and Paintings, Drawings and Prints. Other members of the University of Cambridge Museums are the Museum of Archaeaology and Anthropology, The Polar Museum, The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences,, The Whipple Museum of the History of Science, and the University Museum of Zoology.

The, formerly known as the Cambridge & County Folk Museum, is a social history museum located in a former pub on Castle Street. The Centre for Computing History, a museum dedicated to the story of the Information age, moved to Cambridge from in 2013. Housed in a former sewage pumping station, the Cambridge Museum of Technology has a collection of large exhibits related to the city's industrial heritage.

Education
The non-denominational English-language schools are run by the Waterloo Region District School Board. This runs 26 elementary schools and five secondary schools, which lead to the twelfth grade, the high school graduation. High schools include the 150-year-old Galt Collegiate Institute and Vocational School and the Southwood Secondary School; Glenview Park Secondary School; Preston High School; Monsignor Doyle Catholic Secondary School, St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School and the Jacob Hespeler Secondary School.

The Catholic schools are run by the Waterloo Catholic District School Board. The Waterloo Catholic District School Board operates 15 primary and two secondary schools as well as one French teaching school in the city.

Universities
The School of Architecture Campus is right on the river. The building is also known as the Tiger Brand Building. In addition to lecture halls and a library, the campus has a theater, fitness studio and a “Design at Riverside” gallery. This gallery is one of two, with a focus on Architecture in Canada, that is run with public funds. 380 students are enrolled on campus.

Another university is the Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. The university focuses on engineering in the field of robotics, process automation, communication and information technology.

Popular music
are the most notable band with roots in Cambridge. The band's former songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Syd Barrett was born and lived in the city, and he and another founding member, Roger Waters, went to school together at Cambridgeshire High School for Boys. , the guitarist who replaced Barrett, was also a Cambridge resident and attended the nearby Perse School. Bands who were formed in Cambridge include, Henry Cow, Katrina and the Waves, The Soft Boys, Ezio Horace X, The Broken Family Band, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats, and the pop-classical group King's Singers, who were formed at the University. Solo artist Boo Hewerdine is from Cambridge, as are artists (and brothers) Nu:Tone and Logistics. Singers, of the rock band Muse, Tom Robinson, and were born in the city. 2012 Mercury Prize winners Alt-J are based in Cambridge.

Live music venues hosting popular music in the city include the Cambridge Corn Exchange, Cambridge Junction and the Portland Arms.

Contemporary art
Cambridge is home to the internationally regarded Kettle's Yard gallery and the artist run organisations Aid and Abet, Cambridge Art Salon, and Changing Spaces. Wysing Arts Centre, one of the leading research centres for the visual arts in Europe, is associated with the city, though is located several miles west of Cambridge. Anglia Ruskin University operates the publicly accessible Ruskin Gallery within the Cambridge School of Art.

Literature and film
The city has been the setting for all or part of several novels, including ' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Rose Macaulay's They Were Defeated, Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, Rebecca Stott's Ghostwalk and Robert Harris's Enigma, while Susanna Gregory wrote a series of novels set in 14th century Cambridge. Gwen Raverat, the granddaughter of, talked about her late Victorian Cambridge childhood in her memoir Period Piece and The Night Climbers of Cambridge is a book written by Noel Symington under the pseudonym "Whipplesnaith" about nocturnal climbing on the colleges and town buildings of Cambridge in the 1930s.

Fictionalised versions of Cambridge appear in Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden and Minnow on the Say, the city renamed as Castleford, and as the home of Tom Sharpe's fictional college in Porterhouse Blue.

Religion
Cambridge has a number of churches, some of which form a significant part of the city's architectural landscape. Like the rest of Cambridgeshire it is part of the Diocese of Ely. A Cambridge-based family and youth organisation, Romsey Mill, had its centre re-dedicated in 2007 by the Archbishop of York, and is quoted as an example of best practice in a study into social inclusion by the East of England Regional Assembly.

has the status of "University Church". Many of the University colleges contain chapels that hold services according to the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, while the chapel of is Roman Catholic. The city also has a number of theological colleges training clergy for ordination into a number of denominations, with affiliations to both the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University.

Cambridge is in the Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia and is served by the large Our Lady and the English Martyrs Church at the junction of Hills Road and Lensfield Road, St Laurence's on Milton Road, St Vincent De Paul Church on Ditton Lane and by the church of St Philip Howard, in Cherry Hinton Road. There is a Russian Orthodox church under the Diocese of Sourozh who worship at the chapel of Westcott House, and a church under the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. There are three Quaker Meetings in Cambridge, located on Jesus Lane, Hartington Grove, and a Meeting called "Oast House" that meets in Pembroke College.

An synagogue and Jewish student centre is located on Thompson's Lane, operated jointly by the Cambridge Traditional Jewish Congregation and the Cambridge University Jewish Society, which is affiliated to the Union of Jewish Students. The Beth Shalom synagogue which previously met at a local school, has recently opened a purpose-built synagogue. There is also a student-led egalitarian  which holds services on Friday evenings.

The Abu Bakr Jamia Islamic Centre on Mawson Road and the Omar Faruque Mosque and Cultural Centre in Kings Hedges serve the city's community of around 4,000 Muslims until a planned new mosque is built.

A centre was opened in the former Barnwell Theatre on Newmarket Road in 1998. A shrine was opened in 2010 at the Bharat Bhavan Indian cultural centre off Mill Road

Twinned cities
Cambridge is with two cities. Like Cambridge, both have universities and are also similar in population;, Germany since 1965, and , Hungary since 1987.