Brantford is connected to Woodstock in the west and Hamilton in the east by Highway 403 and to Cambridge to the north andSimcoe to the south by Highway 24.
Brantford is sometimes known by its style The Telephone City, as a former city resident, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone on the community's outskirts and conducted the first distant telephone call from the Brantford to Paris, Ontario in 1876. It is also the birthplace of hockey player Wayne Gretzky, comedian Phil Hartman, as well as Group of Seven member Lawren Harris.