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The modest manufacturing town of BRANTFORD , to the west of Hamilton beside the Grand River, takes its name from Joseph Brant, who led a large group of Loyalist Iroquois here after the American War of Independence, then worked to form a confederation of Iroquois to keep the United States out of Ohio. His dream was undermined by jealousies amongst the Indian nations, whereupon he withdrew to Burlington and lived the life of an English gentleman. The town was later the birthplace of ice-hockey's greatest player, Wayne Gretzky, but no one's built a museum yet. The most interesting thing to see in the town itself is the Brant County Museum , 57 Charlotte St (Wed-Fri 10am-4pm & Sat 1-4pm, plus Sun in summer 1-4pm; $2), where there's a reasonable collection of Iroquois artefacts. However, Branstford's main sight - the Bell Homestead , 94 Tutela Heights Rd (Tues-Sun 9.30am-4.30pm; $3.25) - is located about 4km south of the centre, in the low wooded hills overlooking the river. Alexander Graham Bell left Edinburgh for Ontario in 1870 at the age of 23, a reluctant immigrant who came only because of fears for his health after the death of two close relatives from tuberculosis. Soon afterwards he took a job as a teacher of the deaf, motivated by his mother's loss of hearing and, in his efforts to discover a way to reproduce sounds visibly, he stumbled across the potential of transmitting sound along an electrified wire. The consequence was the first long-distance call, made in 1876 from Brantford to the neighbouring village of Paris. The Homestead consists of two simple, clapboard buildings. The first, moved here from Brantford in 1969, housed Canada's original Bell company office and features a series of modest displays on the history of the telephone. The second, the cosy family home, fronts a second small exhibition area devoted to Bell's life and research. There's no public transport from Brantford to the homestead.
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