Brantford

City and administrative headquarters of Brant County, southern Ontario, Canada, on the Grand River, 96 km/60 mi southwest of Toronto; population (1991) 82,000. It developed as an industrial, agricultural, and transportation centre, but has recently witnessed many plant and business closures; surviving enterprises include car parts manufacturers.

The Scottish-born US scientist and inventor Alexander Graham Bell made pioneering telephone experiments here in the 1870s, and his homestead is to the south, in the suburb of Tutela Heights.

History Land was granted here in 1784 to the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant for the settlement of Iroquois who had fought with the British in the American Revolution. White settlement began in 1805, and in 1830 a community by the name of Brant's Ford had been established. Brantford remains the headquarters of the Six Nations of the Iroquois confederacy.