Clifford is an unincorporated community in the Town of Minto in Wellington County in

Southwestern The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

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. It is on Ontario Highway 9 and Coon Creek, a

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...

in the

Saugeen River The Saugeen River is located in southern Ontario, Canada. The river begins in the Osprey Wetland Conservation Lands and flows generally north-west about before exiting into Lake Huron. The river is navigable for some distance, and was once an im ...

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

. The village of Clifford was founded around 1855 as Minto Village. Also . After the opening of the post office in 1856, the settlement was renamed Clifford by the first postmaster Francis Brown after Clifford in

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Clifford was incorporated as a village in 1873. In 1999, Clifford was amalgamated with

Palmerston Palmerston may refer to: People * Christie Palmerston (c. 1851–1897), Australian explorer * Several prominent people have borne the title of Viscount Palmerston ** Henry Temple, 1st Viscount Palmerston (c. 1673–1757), Irish nobleman an ...

, Harriston and Minto Township to create Minto. The first telephones in the community were installed in 1890 by

Bell Canada Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in t ...

. Wightman Telecom, based in Clifford and owned by the Wightman family, has owned and operated a communication system in Clifford since 1908, with a telephone system that was originally operated out of a kitchen in Howick Township. Wightman bought out Bell's operations in Clifford, Ayton and Neustadt in 1928. The firm continues to operate the system . On 17 March 2016 a wide EF1

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...

touched down near the community.

Demographics

In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; french: Statistique Canada), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and cultur ...

, Clifford had a population of 875 living in 377 of its 389 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 823. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Notable people

Famous people from Clifford include John A. Kruspe, a former CFL player. Kruspe was a member of the

Ottawa Rough Riders The Ottawa Rough Riders were a Canadian Football League team based in Ottawa, Ontario, founded in 1876. Formerly one of the oldest and longest-lived professional sports teams in North America, the Rough Riders won the Grey Cup championship nine ...

during the 1973 Grey Cup win against the

Edmonton Eskimos The Edmonton Elks are a professional Canadian football team based in Edmonton, Alberta. The club competes in the Canadian Football League (CFL) as a member of the league's West Division and plays their home games at the Brick Field at Commo ...

References

Other map sources: * * *

External links

* {{authority control Communities in Wellington County, Ontario Former villages in Ontario Designated places in Ontario Populated places disestablished in 1999