Stratford is a charming town in southwestern Ontario that shares its name with the English birthplace of William Shakespeare, and it has made that coincidence its cultural reason for being. Every year, from April to November, the famous Stratford Festival turns this quiet town on the banks of the Avon River (yes, also named after Shakespeare's) into one of the great centres of classical theatre in North America, drawing hundreds of thousands of theatregoers.
Beyond the theatre, Stratford is a bucolic, elegant town of tree-lined streets, Victorian houses, gardens by the river, swans gliding on the water and a lively food scene. Its human scale, its artistic atmosphere and its offering of good restaurants, cafés, chocolate shops and stores make it a pleasant destination even for people not coming just for the plays. In summer, its parks along the Avon invite you to stroll and picnic.
This guide answers what people look up before travelling: what to see in Stratford, how much festival tickets cost and when the season runs, how to get there from Toronto and how to get around. From the festival and its theatres to walks by the river, the food scene and even the trail that follows in Justin Bieber's footsteps (he is from the town), Stratford is a cultural destination on a human scale, ideal as a break from Toronto.
Founded in the 19th century around a mill on the river its settlers named the Avon, the town took the name Stratford in homage to Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's English hometown. It grew as a farming town and a railway junction. In 1953, local journalist Tom Patterson pushed for the creation of a Shakespearean theatre festival which, under the direction of British theatre figures such as Tyrone Guthrie, became the Stratford Festival, transforming the town's fate for good. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Canada's economic and demographic heart: land of the Iroquoian and Algonquian nations, refuge of the Loyalists, cradle of Upper Canada and the country's industrial engine, home to Toronto, to the national capital Ottawa and to Niagara Falls.
Read the history of Ontario →If you only have one day, take a guided tour on the first one: it sets up the rest of your trip and saves you a lot of walking. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 15 activities in Toronto. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Three are below so you get the idea: tap any of them and they all open.
They depart from Toronto, 133 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
In 1952, Stratford was a declining railway town at risk of fading away along with the steam locomotives. A year later, thanks to an idea almost everyone thought was crazy, it would become the capital of Shakespearean theatre in North America. But to understand that astonishing turn you have to start at the beginning, and the beginning also has to do with Shakespeare. Stratford was born in the second quarter of the 19th century as a settlement around a mill, in an area of woodland and future farmland in what is now southwestern Ontario. The settlement company that developed the region, tied to British interests, named the stream that turned the mill the Avon River and the town Stratford, in deliberate reference to Stratford-upon-Avon, the English town where William Shakespeare was born. So long before the festival existed, the town's name was already paying homage to the great playwright.
The town grew as the service centre of a fertile farming region and, above all, as an important railway junction. The arrival of the railway in the mid and late 19th century drove its economy: Stratford became a key point for the area's railway shops and operations, which brought in people, work and industry, and gave it a solid base for decades.
That origin left the town a legacy of Victorian architecture, tree-lined streets and a layout along the Avon that, in time, would prove perfect for its cultural reinvention. The coincidence of the name with Shakespeare, almost a whim of the founders, would end up being prophetic.
By the middle of the 20th century, the decline of the railway industry threatened Stratford's economic future. That was when a local journalist named Tom Patterson had an idea as bold as it was unlikely: to use the coincidence of the town's name with Shakespeare's to create a Shakespearean theatre festival that would give Stratford a new identity and a new engine. Patterson had almost no experience in theatre and very little money, but inexhaustible determination: he won the community's backing and, with enormous nerve, convinced the famous British theatre director Tyrone Guthrie to come and lead the project in that out-of-the-way Ontario town.
On the night of 13 July 1953, under a giant circus tent pitched beside the Avon River, the curtain rose on the first performance: 'Richard III', starring none other than Sir Alec Guinness, one of the great stars of British theatre and film. Before 1,500 spectators — among them 85 critics who had come from Canada and the United States — Guinness delivered the famous opening line: 'Now is the winter of our discontent…'. The amphitheatre-style thrust stage, designed by Tanya Moiseiwitsch, broke with the proscenium theatre and brought the actors closer to the audience, revolutionizing Shakespearean staging. The impossible gamble had paid off: the critics were dazzled and the initial four-week season was extended to six.
Over the years, the tent gave way to permanent theatres, headed by the Festival Theatre, and the event grew into the Stratford Festival, one of the most important and prestigious repertory theatre seasons in North America. What began as a desperate attempt to save a railway town turned into a cultural institution of international stature.
After the success of the first seasons under the tent, the festival gave itself permanent infrastructure. In 1957 the Festival Theatre opened, a building designed around the revolutionary amphitheatre-style stage that had marked the event from the start. Over the following decades other venues were added, such as the Avon Theatre and, more recently, the modern Tom Patterson Theatre, reopened in a new building in 2020 and named in honour of the festival's founder.
The event widened its repertoire far beyond Shakespeare: to the Elizabethan playwright's tragedies and comedies were added classics of world theatre, musicals and contemporary plays. Great names of English-language theatre passed across its stages, and the festival became a genuine school for actors and directors, as well as a tourist magnet that sustains much of the local economy during the season.
The season lengthened until it ran from spring to autumn, with more than a dozen productions running at once. From that modest experiment of 1953, Stratford came to have one of the largest and most respected repertory theatre companies in North America, capable of drawing hundreds of thousands of theatregoers every year from Canada, the United States and the rest of the world.
More than half a century after Alec Guinness, Stratford gave the world another star, though in a very different genre. Justin Bieber was born on 1 March 1994 and grew up in Stratford, in a family of modest means. As a boy, with no money for music lessons, he taught himself guitar, drums, piano and trumpet, and started singing in the street to collect a few coins: his favourite stage was the stone steps in front of the Avon Theatre, the same festival theatre, where he played for the tourists queuing up.
In 2007, aged twelve, he came second in a local singing contest, and his mother uploaded the video to YouTube so the relatives who could not attend could see it. That video, and the ones that followed, ended up in the hands of music promoter Scooter Braun, who was impressed and travelled to find him. The rest is pop history: Bieber became one of the biggest stars in world music. In 2011, his hometown honoured him with a star on the pavement in front of the Avon Theatre, right where as a boy he sang for tips.
Today, the Stratford tourist office offers a self-guided map of the Justin Bieber Tour taking in the places of his childhood — his school, the corners where he sang, his favourite spots — an itinerary that draws young fans from all over the world and coexists, quite happily, with the pilgrims of Shakespearean theatre. Few towns can claim to have launched both Alec Guinness and Justin Bieber to stardom from the same theatre.
Since that 1953, the Stratford Festival has completely transformed the town. Theatre became the axis of local life and the local economy: every season, from spring to autumn, hundreds of thousands of theatregoers come to the many productions spread across four theatres, generating intense activity in hotels, restaurants and shops. Stratford thus built a cultural identity that goes far beyond its small size of some 33,000 residents.
Around the festival a notable food scene also flourished, driven in part by the farming wealth of Perth County and by local culinary institutions such as the Stratford Chefs School. Chef-driven restaurants, bakeries, chocolate shops and cheese shops turned the town into a destination for food lovers, with themed trails — the Chocolate Trail, the Bacon & Ale Trail — that invite you to wander and taste. Add to that art galleries, themed gardens and the ever-present Avon River with its swans.
Today the town combines its theatrical prestige, its culinary fame, its Victorian heritage, its pop culture side and its peaceful riverside atmosphere, showing how a visionary idea — that of a journalist who wanted to save his town with Shakespeare — can completely reinvent the fate of a community. Stratford is perhaps the best proof that culture can also be the engine of a place's economy.
