Cantawhos are the beautiful hardworking people of Cambridge. Not Cambridge, England, as a journalist famously mistook. No, not Cambridge, Massachusetts, either. Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.
Cambridge is a small town that celebrated its 50th birthday last year, in 2023. When I was a reporter for the Cambridge Times before Metroland unfortunately sank to financial peril, I wrote a little opinion piece to celebrate this wonderful city I am proud to call home.
But before I sat down to write, it struck me that I had no idea what I and other people of Cambridge called themselves. You can read more about it here.
Many of the people I interviewed didn't know what Cambridge residents would normally call themselves, but even more didn't care at all, and preferred to hang onto the names of the areas from which they came, or the names of the old towns prior to their amalgamation in the 1970s - Hespelerites, Blairites, Prestonians, and Galtonians.
Along with the article, I also conducted a survey via Google Forms that gathered over 100 responses from Cambridge folks.
The overwhelming majority decidedly preferred to say "from Cambridge." To me, this response was akin to a shrug, reflecting the nature of Cambridge, a young city discovering itself.
And so I wanted to know more. Who are the people from Cambridge? The very suggestion of choosing a name such as Cantabrigian, the etymological name for people from Cambridge, and how people from other sister cities such as Cambridge, UK, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, refer to themselves, was typically scoffed at, or met with a derivative, confused look when I interviewed folks for the 50th anniversary of the city.
"Canta...what? Canta...who?" Were typical replies to my identity question. Thus, the name of the project was born: "Cantawhos, People of Cambridge" will be a project through which I acquaint myself with the city of Cambridge, where I started my family, and became a writer.
I hope you join me as I curiously unravel its makeup, and reveal who Cambridge was, is, and would like to be.
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