St. Catharines
St. Catharines, ON, incorporated as a city in 1876, population 136,803 (2021 census), 133,113 (2016 census). The City of St. Catharines is the principal city of the Niagara Region. It lies south of Toronto across Lake Ontario (111 km by the Queen Elizabeth Way), 19 km inland from the international boundary with the United States, along the Niagara River. The city is named after Catharine Hamilton, wife of Robert Hamilton, an influential merchant of Queenston and a landowner with mills on Twelve Mile Creek; the growing community, then known as The Twelve or Shipman's Corners, was renamed in her honour after her death in 1796. After 1876, as the urban area of St. Catharines expanded, it was permitted to annex parts of the surrounding Grantham Township, culminating in 1961 in the complete amalgamation of the township as well as the adjacent towns of Merritton and Port Dalhousie. In 1970, the rural township of Louth to the west was split between St. Catharines and the new town of Lincoln.