Kitchener

The City of Kitchener is a city in Southern Ontario, located approximately 100 km west of Toronto. The metropolitan area, including the neighbouring cities of Waterloo and Cambridge, has a population of just over 500,000, making it the tenth-largest in Canada and the fourth largest in Ontario itself. and Waterloo are often referred to jointly as "Kitchener-Waterloo" (K-W), although they both have separate municipal governments. When including Cambridge, the three cities are known as "the tri-cities".

Kitchener-Waterloo's annual Oktoberfest celebration is a nine-day event, based on the original German festival. It is labelled as the country’s Greatest Bavarian Festival and the largest in the world outside of Germany. It is held in October, starting on the Friday before Canadian Thanksgiving and running until the Saturday after.

Waterloo

Waterloo is the smallest of the three cities in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo. There have been several attempts to amalgamate the two cities (sometimes including Cambridge as well), but none have ever been successful.

Apart from the Oktoberfest, the city also boasts several annual festivals and events, including, the Ice Dogs Festival in February, the GO! Music Festival in March, the Waterloo Jazz Festival in July, the Waterloo Busker Carnival in August, the Royal Medieval Faire in September, and the Santa Claus Parade in November.

Accommodation in university residences in Kitchener-Waterloo

Various institutions offer affordable visitor accommodation in the summer months, including the University of Waterloo. It should be understood that these residences are designed primarily for students and not children or adults expecting a high level of luxury. However, with this in mind, the halls do meet a level of comfort that we expect most visitors to be happy with, and we will welcome any feedback where this is not the case.

Getting around Kitchener-Waterloo

Public transport in the Region of Waterloo is provided by Grand River Transit, which operates a number of bus routes in Kitchener, with many running into Waterloo and two connecting to Cambridge. There is also an express bus route called iXpress from downtown Cambridge through Kitchener to north Waterloo. Passenger rail service is a point of frustration for Kitchener: two main lines come westward out of Toronto and join up again in London. The northern line passes through Guelph, Kitchener and Stratford, while the southern goes along the lakeshore via Oakville and is the primary rail corridor for CN, so trains operate more frequently and faster, so Kitchener, with a population equal to London and located much closer to Toronto, gets less than one third the frequency of passenger rail service: three trains in each direction travelling between Sarnia and Toronto stop at the Kitchener railway station daily. Waterloo is not served by any regular passenger rail service. Air travellers tend to use Toronto Pearson International Airport. WestJet runs scheduled daily services from Waterloo International to Calgary and Vancouver.

In 1784, the land on which Kitchener was built was an area given to the Six Nations by the British as a gift for their allegiance during the American Revolution. Between 1796 and 1798, the Six Nations sold 38,000 hectares of this land to a Loyalist called Colonel Richard Beasley. The land that he purchased was remote, but was of great interest to German Mennonite farming families from Pennsylvania, since they needed an area where they could practice their beliefs without persecution. Eventually, the Mennonites purchased all of Beasley's land, creating 160 farm tracts. By the year 1800, the first buildings were erected, and over the next decade many families made the difficult voyage north to what was then known as the Sand Hills.

In 1816, it was designated the Township of Waterloo, after Waterloo, Belgium, the site of the Battle of Waterloo, which had ended the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. Immigration to the town grew considerably from 1816 until the 1870s, with many of the new-comers being of German heritage. In 1833, the town was renamed Berlin due to the recent German influx. The extension of the Grand Trunk Railway from Sarnia to Toronto (and through Berlin) in 1856 was a major boost for the community, improving industrialization in the area. During the First World War, the reaction of English-speakers against all things German led to this heritage being abandoned. In 1916, following much controversy, the name of the city was changed to Kitchener, after the late British Field Marshal The 1st Earl Kitchener. After the war, many local historians and civic groups promoted a new heritage that emphasized the county's Pennsylvania Dutch roots.