Guelph is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Known as "The Royal City", Guelph is roughly (17 mi) east of Kitchener-Waterloo and (62 mi) west of downtown Toronto at the intersection of Highway 6 and Highway 7. It is the seat of Wellington County, but as a separated municipality it is not part of the county. Guelph was named after the British Royal Family of King George IV, the monarch at the time of Guelph's founding. Because of its low crime rates, clean environment and generally high standard of living, Guelph is consistently rated as one of the country's most livable cities. Before colonization, the area was considered by the surrounding indigenous communities to be a "neutral" zone. On selected dates members from these communities would meet and trade goods by the Speed River. Guelph was selected as the headquarters of the Canada Company, a British development firm, by its Canadian superintendent John Galt, a popular Scottish novelist who designed the town to attract settlers to it and to the surrounding countryside.