Toronto Airport to Guelph & the University of Guelph

How do I get from Pearson Airport to the University of Guelph?

The public route is the GO Transit bus from Pearson's Terminal 1 to Square One and a second bus or the GO train from Union to Guelph Central, then a city bus up Gordon Street — two and a half to three hours with the changes and the luggage carried at each. A taxi from Pearson is a metered gamble on the 401. The chauffeur is an hour door to door at a fixed fare, with the vehicle sized to the luggage and the trip ending at the residence rather than at the station downtown; the Kitchener-Waterloo route page covers the same stretch of the 401 hour by hour.

The campus, the residences and the OVC

Guelph's campus fills the block between Gordon Street, Stone Road, College Avenue and the arboretum, with the residences on its south and east sides. The traditional halls — Johnston Hall on the front lawn, Lennox-Addington, Lambton, Mills, Maids and Watson — are reached from the ring road inside the campus at Gordon Street; the South Residences — Mountain, Prairie and Maritime Halls — have a drive off South Ring Road; the East Residence towers and the East Village townhouses are on the east side with their own entrances off College Avenue; Arts House and the graduate townhouses are scattered on the edges. The Ontario Veterinary College is on the north-east corner of the campus with its own drive off Gordon Street and its own traffic: the students, the referring veterinarians, the animal owners from across the province and the visiting specialists. The chauffeur knows which entrance serves which hall, which matters at move-in when the ring road is one-way and marshalled. Upper-year students in the houses and towers along Gordon Street south of the campus and in the Old University neighbourhood are an ordinary Guelph address.

Move-in, orientation and the international arrival

Guelph's move-in runs the weekend before Labour Day with assigned windows per residence and the ring road marshalled by the residence staff; the orientation week that follows is one of the friendliest in the province and the reason the university tops the student-satisfaction surveys. A family flying in for it lands at Pearson, is at the residence an hour later in a Sprinter sized for everything a room needs, and stops at the Stone Road Mall on the way for the things left behind. International students arrive in the last week of August: a single arrival from a long-haul, met inside Terminal 1 or 3 with a name board on the meet-and-greet add-on, driven an hour and delivered to the residence check-in with the luggage inside and a text to the parents overseas. The pickup page explains the meeting points; the family and accessible page the luggage allowance and the extra time.

Parents, visits and where to stay

Guelph's hotels for a visit are the Delta Guelph on the south side by the Hanlon, the Holiday Inn and the Best Western on the same side, the Staybridge on Gordon Street closest to the campus, and — for families who prefer a city — the Kitchener-Waterloo hotels twenty minutes west; the Best Western page lists the doors. A parents' weekend is the Friday arrival, a Saturday with the student, the Sunday departure, with the airport legs on one confirmation. The Saturday is where Guelph rewards a car: the chauffeured half-day to the arboretum and the Guelph Lake conservation area, to St. Jacobs and the Mennonite country twenty minutes north-west, to the Elora Gorge and the village of Elora thirty minutes north, or to the Stratford Festival an hour west. Convocation in June is on Johnston Green with the family car on Gordon Street.

The OVC, the agri-food sector and the working visitor

Guelph's professional traffic is agricultural and veterinary: the Ontario Veterinary College brings referring veterinarians, animal owners on long drives with a pet in the back, visiting specialists and the pharmaceutical companies whose research sits in the college; the university's agriculture and food science faculties and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture headquarters on Stone Road bring the industry's executives and the government's officials; and the food companies in Guelph's industrial parks bring the auditors and the customers. A visitor's day is a hotel pickup, a chauffeured block between the campus, the OVC, the ministry and the industrial parks, and the departure timed to the flight, on a corporate account with monthly invoicing. An animal owner arriving at Pearson with a pet for treatment at the OVC is an arrival the chauffeur handles with the crate in the boot and the extra time at the curb.

From the campus: Guelph, the region and the airports

Guelph sits between Toronto and Waterloo, an hour from Pearson and twenty minutes from the Region of Waterloo airport at Breslau, which is the better arrival for the few flights that land there. The Waterloo and Laurier campuses are twenty minutes west for a student with friends at both; Hamilton and McMaster are forty minutes south on Highway 6; Toronto is an hour for a weekend downtown. The Sleeman Centre downtown for the Storm and for concerts, the River Run Centre and the Guelph Jazz Festival in September are on the event pattern, and Guelph Central station is the connection for a student going to Toronto by GO train after a chauffeured start.

Winter and the Highway 6 drive

The January intake and the return from the winter break put the drive into the snowbelt's edge: the 401 through Milton and the Hanlon Expressway are exposed to squalls off Lake Huron on a west wind, and the stretch of Highway 6 between the 401 and the city drifts. The chauffeur reads Ontario 511 before leaving, the vehicles run winter tyres, and a drive that cannot be made safely is rescheduled rather than attempted. Students returning from Christmas overseas land into this, and the fixed fare and the tracked flight are what make the trip routine.

Departures and what the fare includes

The departure is planned backwards from the flight — pickup at the residence at the time that reaches the terminal ninety minutes before a domestic departure and two and a half to three hours before an international one, with the Milton-to-Mississauga stretch of the 401 as the buffer and the terminal finder confirming which terminal. The fare is fixed by vehicle class for the Guelph address and includes the chauffeur, the vehicle, fuel, tolls, taxes, curbside pickup at the pre-arranged area and the included waiting; meet and greet is the paid add-on; gratuity is never added; a cancellation before dispatch is free.

Graduate students, exchange terms and the mid-year arrival

Guelph's January intake, its exchange students on a single term and its large graduate programmes in the sciences bring the arrivals outside move-in weekend: a master's student in the first week of January, a visiting scholar with a family and a year's luggage, a veterinary intern arriving for a placement at the OVC's teaching hospital. The addresses are the graduate townhouses on the campus's edge, a rented apartment on Gordon Street whose keys are collected from a leasing office, or a hotel for the first week, and the booking carries each of them; the child seats are fitted before the pickup for a family arriving with small children. The winter arrival is where meet and greet inside the hall earns its price: a student who has never seen snow, landing at 9 pm in a squall, walked to a warm car by a chauffeur with a name board and driven an hour to a door that is expecting them.

Groups, camps and the summer campus

Guelph's campus fills between May and August with the sport camps, the language schools, the international summer programmes and the conferences that use the residences, and each brings its own airport traffic: a group of thirty teenagers from Brazil or Japan arriving on the same flight for a three-week programme, met at the group meeting point inside the terminal and driven in the Sprinter and the coach on one manifest; a conference's delegates arriving through the day on the pearson shuttle pattern; the camp families on a Sunday afternoon. All price as the same Guelph fare by vehicle class, and the group bookings are invoiced to the programme on a corporate account.

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