Stratford City Hall's Victorian clock tower and red-brick turrets over Market Square

Living in Stratford · Perth County · Ontario

Welcome to the Festival City.

Stratford is the kind of place that shouldn’t quite be possible — world-class theatre and a celebrated dining scene, set in a small Victorian city where swans drift down the river past the park. It surprises visitors every summer, and it delights the people lucky enough to live here all year. Whether you know Stratford well or you’re just beginning to picture a life in it, we’d love to help you find your place here.

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The heart and soul

A world stage, at the end of your street.

The bronze-and-glass curves of the Tom Patterson Theatre rising behind summer gardens beside the Avon River

Since 1953

It began with a big idea in a small city: a festival worthy of Stratford's name. Seven decades on, the Stratford Festival is the largest classical repertory theatre company in North America — built on Shakespeare, and long since grown into dazzling musicals, contemporary drama and world premieres that share the season's stages.

Four stages, one town

The Festival Theatre on its hill, the Avon on Downie Street, the Studio tucked behind it, and the Tom Patterson curving along the river in bronze and glass — on a summer evening the whole town moves to curtain time, and the walk to the show is part of the show.

A cosmopolitan hum

Actors, directors, set designers, musicians and theatregoers from around the world spend their seasons here, and it gives Stratford an energy most cities ten times its size would envy — international conversation at the next café table, in a place where the barista still knows your order.

Pop-culture impact

Long before the stadium tours, a Stratford kid named Justin Bieber busked on the steps of the Avon Theatre — and the Stratford Perth Museum keeps a warm little exhibit about his rise. The town smiles about it the way it smiles about most things: proudly, and without making a fuss.

The lifeblood

A small city that eats remarkably well.

A school for great cooking

The Stratford Chefs School has been training some of Canada's finest chefs since 1983 — and from October to March its students cook for the public, multi-course dinners that turn a winter evening into an occasion. Great theatre needs a great dinner first, and Stratford has taken that seriously for generations.

Farm to table, honestly

The farmland starts where the streets end, and the restaurants act like it — Perth County meats, produce and dairy travel minutes, not provinces, to reach the plate. What shows up on the menu is what the season actually looks like a concession road away.

The Chocolate Trail

Stratford keeps a well-documented sweet tooth. The town's confectioners — Rhéo Thompson Candies and its famous Mint Smoothies chief among them — anchor a self-guided trail of chocolate and treats that has become a beloved little ritual for visitors and locals alike.

Dinner before the show

A culinary scene grown up alongside a festival audience means a remarkable table for a city this size — patios and dining rooms that fill with pre-theatre conversation at six and encore reviews at eleven. You will not run out of places worth trying.

The setting

Victorian charm, with a river through its heart.

The white gazebo and flowerbeds of the Shakespearean Gardens in Stratford, framed by willows

A namesake taken to heart

Stratford was laid out to echo its English namesake — the Avon winding through the middle, the wards named from Shakespeare, the sense that the river is the city's front garden rather than its back fence. Few places commit to an idea this completely, and fewer still make it feel this natural.

The swans

A regal flock of white swans rules the Avon through the warm months, gliding past the parkland like they hold office. They are the city's unofficial mascots, and watching them from a riverside bench is a perfectly legitimate way to spend an afternoon here.

Gardens from the Bard's own pages

Tucked below the Huron Street bridge, the Shakespearean Gardens grow the herbs and flowers Shakespeare actually wrote into his plays — a manicured riverside spot where the literary theme goes all the way down to the flowerbeds.

Streets that kept their promises

Stratford fiercely protects its 19th-century architecture, and it shows — Victorian storefronts downtown, century homes on tree-lined streets, City Hall presiding over Market Square as it has since the 1890s. It is a highly walkable city that has never needed to reinvent itself, only to keep its word.

Live here

Historic wards, modern neighbourhoods, one small city.

Stratford maps itself two ways: by the Shakespeare-named wards laid out when the city was young, and by the modern neighbourhoods locals use today. From century homes within a stroll of the theatres to brand-new streets that end at open farmland — with the rural properties of the old Bedford Ward rolling past the city’s eastern edge — there’s a corner of Stratford for every stage of life.

Select a neighbourhood to jump to it

All 10 neighbourhoods, by area

The Historic Wards

Downtown Core — Curtain up at the Avon, dinner reservations two doors down, and City Hall presiding over Market Square as it has since the 1890s. Victorian storefronts, independent everything — the whole festival city, condensed into a few lively blocks.

Avon Ward — Stratford's oldest quarter wears its age like a well-kept garden — verandas and gables along Avondale and Hibernia, on streets that have grown old gracefully under their trees. Downtown is an easy stroll, and always has been.

Romeo Ward — Stratford's practical east side: the Romeo corridor starts down near the river and runs north through streets that work for a living. Shops at one end, open country at the other — and nothing in town more than a few minutes away.

Hamlet Ward — A pocket-sized neighbourhood folded between the core and the green riverbank, where century homes line streets barely three blocks long. It is the kind of quiet that comes from being surrounded by everything and hurried by none of it.

Shakespeare Ward — Mature shade over mid-century porches, Victorian rooflines a street over, and Dufferin Park where the neighbourhood's summers have played out for a century. Families put down roots here generations ago and never saw a reason to leave.

Falstaff Ward — Laid out in 1853 and named for Shakespeare's merriest knight, the ward still carries a little of his good cheer. Character homes line Waterloo and Cobourg, and the whole of downtown waits at the end of the block.

Modern Residential Areas

Coventry — Stratford's newest chapter, written in fresh brick and open sky out where McCarthy Road West meets the countryside. The Rotary Complex is minutes away, and open farmland starts right where the streets end.

Romeo Street North — Verona Village, North Pointe, and the newer streets stretching north — this is where Stratford is growing, one driveway at a time. The corridor keeps groceries close and the Country Club's fairways in easy reach.

John Street South — The leafy west-side corridor where the T.J. Dolan trails slip into the trees and the Catherine East Memorial Garden blooms beside the bridge. Streets here are older, slower and greener — kept, not manicured.

Avon West — Out along Huron Street, where the city finally exhales: newer homes with farmland over the back fence and the Avon's quietest stretch close by. Evening light lasts longer out here — nothing tall enough to get in its way.

Thumbnail sketches only — every one of these deserves its own conversation. Ask us about any of them.

Thinking about calling Stratford home?

We help families find their place here every week — video tours, neighbourhood shortlists, and remote-friendly closings, with your questions coming straight to Dave.

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Neighbourhood map derived from OpenStreetMap data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Photography: Ken Lund (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Crisco 1492 (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Chris Woodrich (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Chris Woodrich (CC BY-SA 4.0)