Almost immediately -- and with much controversy -- the native groups began to sell off some of this land. Between 1796 and 1798, 93,000 acres were sold through a Crown Grant to Richard Beasley, with the Six Nations Indians continuing to hold the mortgage on the lands.

The first wave of immigrants to the area were Mennonites from Pennsylvania. They bought deeds to land parcels from Beasley and began moving into the area around 1804. The following year, a group of 26 Mennonites pooled resourced to purchase all of the unsold land from Beasley and discharge the mortgage held by the Six Nations Indians.

The Mennonites divided the land into smaller lots, and two lots initially owned by Abraham Erb would become the central core of Waterloo. Erb is sometimes called the founder of Waterloo, as it was his sawmill (1808) and grist mill (1816) that became the focal point of the area. Erb sold his businesses to Jacob Snider in 1829 and died the following year at age 57. Erb's original mill was demolished in 1927.

In 1816 the new township was named Waterloo after the site of the battle in the previous year which had ended the Napoleonic Wars in Europe.

After that war, the area became a popular destination for German immigrants. By the 1840s, the German settlers had overtaken the Mennonites as the dominant segment of the population. Many Germans settled in the small hamlet to the southeast of Snider's mills on land initially owned by the Eby family. In their honour, the village was named Berlin in 1833 (now Kitchener). Berlin was chosen as the site of the seat for the County of Waterloo in 1852 and, with much fanfare, became a stop on the Grand Trunk Railway in 1856 (price of a round-trip ticket to Toronto: $2).

In 1850, Berlin had twice the population of Waterloo. Waterloo grew tremendously over the next few years, and was approaching the size of Berlin, but that was as close as the two would ever come. By 1861, Berlin had grown to 150% of the size of Waterloo, and today Kitchener maintains a population more than double that of its "twin city."

Waterloo was incorporated as a village in 1857 and became the Town of Waterloo in 1876 (and eventually the City of Waterloo in 1948).

Brewing & distilling
One consequence of the German immigration to Waterloo was that the town had three breweries by 1835. The manufacture of alcohol remained a significant industry in Waterloo until 1993.

The most significant early brewery was established by David Kuntz in 1844, and evolved into the Spring Brewery at King and William Streets (later renamed the Kuntz Spring Brewery). Kuntz Brewery was sold to E.P. Taylor's Canadian Breweries Ltd. in 1929 and about 10 years later the Kuntz name was dropped and the brewery was fully absorbed into Carling O'Keefe. In 1977 the site was taken over by Labatt's which operated a brewery there until 1993 when it was shut down and demolished.

In 1857, Granite Mills and Waterloo Distillery was constructed by William Hespeler and George Randall on Erb Street. Joseph E. Seagram beame a partner in 1869 and bought the business outright in 1883, renaming it the Joseph Seagram Flour Mill and Distillery Company.

Seagram served as a town councillor for Waterloo from 1879 to 1886, and was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Waterloo from 1896 to 1908. (The riding was then won by future Prime Minister Mackenzie King -- who was defeated in the next election and never again ran in Waterloo.) In 1893, Seagram donated the land for the site of the Berlin-Waterloo Hospital -- now part of the Grand River Hospital.

Seagram Stables were well-known among followers of Canadian horse racing. They won eight consecutive Queen's Plate races between 1891 and 1898 and another seven Queen's/King's Plates by 1917. Its site (at what is today Bridgeport and Weber) was sold to the J.M. Schneider company in 1937 and part of it later became Waterloo's first shopping plaza in 1958 (now Zellers Plaza on Bridgeport Road -- this was the site of the first Zehrs in Waterloo (1958) and, ironically, the site of the first Dutch Boy in Waterloo in 1983).

Seagram died in 1919. The distillery was bought by Samuel Bronfman's Distillers Corporation in 1928, and the head office was moved to Montreal. The Seagram plant in Waterloo continued in operation until 1992 and was demolished the following year. A 1993 fire destroyed the original flour mill and stillhouse.

One building that avoided serious damage was The Seagram Museum. It had opened in 1984, partly in a renovated late 19th century rack warehouse. The museum closed on March 27, 1997 -- ironically, in the middle of a tribute to the shutdown Waterloo plant -- cutting the final connection between the distillery and the town where it began.

The only significant manufacturer of alcoholic beverages remaining in Waterloo is the Brick Brewing Company -- a microbrewery founded in 1984.

"The Hartford of Canada"
Although Waterloo is now promoted as a high-technology centre, for many decades its most significant industry was insurance. To this day, Waterloo is shut out of the Financial Post 750 (largest companies in Canada by revenue), but shows up three times in the listings of top insurance companies.

Waterloo's connection to insurance goes back to the founding of the Waterloo County Mutual Fire Insurance Company by Cyrus Taylor in 1863. Its first president was Moses Springer who was also the first Reeve of the Village of Waterloo (1857) and the first Mayor of the Town of Waterloo (1876). Before the end of the century, it was followed by the North Waterloo Farmers Mutual Fire Insurance Company (1874), the Mercantile Fire Insurance Company (1875), and the Dominion Life Assurance Company (1889).

The area's first life insurance company was the Ontario Mutual Life Assurance Company -- Canada's first mutual life insurance company, established in 1868. At the turn of the century its name was changed to the Mutual Life Assurance Company of Canada, and in 1988 became a part of The Mutual Group. In 1912 Mutual Life moved from its offices at Erb and Albert (where the police station is now located) to its present site at King and Union. The 13-storey office tower was constructed in 1987 and was the tallest commercial building in either Kitchener or Waterloo. The company changed its name to Clarica in 1999.

Also on the Financial Post list is the Equitable Life Insurance Company of Canada, founded by an officer of Mutual Life and known as the Ontario Equitable Life and Accident Insurance Company when it was established in 1920. Its current office at Westmount and Erb was built in 1971.

A Toronto-based insurer with a significant presence in Waterloo is Manulife Financial (formerly Manufacturers Life Insurance Company). In 1985, Manulife bought Waterloo's Dominion Life Assurance Company and three years later opened a 350,000 sq. ft. complex at King Street and the Conestoga Parkway for its Canadian operations.

One of the largest property insurers in Canada is the Economical Insurance Group. It was initially based in Kitchener but moved into the old Dominion Life building in 1989.

Two new universities
Waterloo had a large Lutheran community since the days of German settlement in the 19th century. The Waterloo Lutheran Seminary was established in 1911 with Waterloo College added three years later. After 1925 it offered a full university arts program, affiliated with University of Western Ontario in London. A business and economics program was introduced in 1940.

As a church-affiliated organization, Waterloo College was ineligible for the government funding they would need to expand its faculty and course offerings into the sciences. To get around these restrictions, they established an independent, non-denominational college in 1955 called the Waterloo College Associate Faculties. The first classes were held in July 1957. Under the leadership of president Gerald Hagey (former PR and advertising manager for B.F. Goodrich), the college specialized in engineering and science education, and included an innovative co-op program -- the first in the country -- which would allow students to get work experience before graduation.

In 1958, the Associate Faculties bought more than 235 acres of land for its own campus just west of Waterloo College. The following year, an act of provincial parliament transformed the college into the University of Waterloo (UW). It was initially to include Waterloo College as a federated institution, but the Lutheran Synod overruled the College's Board of Directors and rejected their recommendation for federation.

The Lutheran college continued to operate independently as Waterloo Lutheran University (WLU) after 1960. Because of its affiliation with the church, WLU remained ineligible for most government grants. In November 1973 the Eastern Canada Synod of the Lutheran Church voted in favour of making the university an autonomous institution and Waterloo Lutheran University became Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU).

The two universities have changed Waterloo's reputation from the "Hartford of Canada" to a university town and now to the centre of "Canada's Technology Triangle" (an economic development initiative by the cities of Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge, and Guelph -- yes, a triangle with four points). Much of Waterloo's current status as a technological centre can be attributed to the University of Waterloo and its world-renowned computer science, engineering, and mathematics programs.

At least 20 businesses have been created to commercialize research performed at UW, including mathematical software developer Waterloo Maple and the intranet software business Open Text. The university has been influential in the creation of many other technology-related businesses and supporting organizations. UW's Technology Transfer and Licensing Office has profiled more than 100 business across Canada with ties to the university.

Old landmarks, new landmarks
In 1960, construction began on Waterloo Square (now Waterloo Town Square) -- a $5 million development right in the core of the city. In preparation for construction, several old factory buildings were torn down (including the Waterloo Manufacturing Co. & Snyder's Furniture) which may have included what remained of Abraham Erb's original grist mill from 1816.

At the time the mall opened in 1962, it was promoted as a bold leap into the future for the city. It's hard to muster that much enthusiasm for it today. Waterloo Town Square is bricked-up up on 3 sides and disconnected from everything around it by a moat of concrete. The addition of skylights a few years ago to introduce daylight to the building did little to improve its appearance.

In the 1960s, several landmark buildings in Waterloo were demolished. Most notable were three buildings at or near the corner of Erb and Albert streets. The Waterloo Farmer's Market was the first to be torn down after its final day on July 31, 1965. Apparently it wasn't considered to be much of a loss as business had declined so much in previous decades. On its site was built the Waterloo Public Library which opened in June 1966. It replaced the Carnegie Library across the street which later became a police station for several years and is now the head office of Habitat for Humanity Canada.

As the new library was opening, the century-old fire hall next door to the south was being demolished.

South of the fire hall was Waterloo's town hall on the northwest corner of Erb and Albert. It was built in 1874 and initially housed the farmer's market in the basement, the library and city offices on the main floor, and a community hall on the second floor. After the market got its own building, the police department moved into the basement, and then took over the ground floor after the city left in 1961.

The town hall was demolished in 1969 to make room for UpTown's most prominent office tower -- the Marsland Centre. An expansion of the parking garage in 1993 forced the removal of the Waterloo Cenotaph dedicated to the soldiers who died in the two World Wars to the area outside the City Centre.

City expansion
The City of Waterloo expanded through various annexations in the 1950s and 60s. It more than doubled in size in 1973 upon the creation of the Region of Waterloo -- the old Waterloo Township was abolished, and its lands were divided among other municipalities.

Since moving out of the old town hall, the offices of the City of Waterloo were located at Waterloo Square (1961 to 1971), and the Marsland Centre (1971 to 1988) before moving to its current site in the Waterloo City Centre at William and Regina. The City recently agreed to purchase the building from CN. They had been paying annual rent of $1 million.

Moses Springer was remembered with the construction of the Moses Springer Pool in 1967 and the Moses Springer Arena in 1968. The pool was the city's primary public swimming facility until the opening of the Waterloo Recreation Complex in 1993. It included the city's first public indoor pool (the Swimplex) and the Mutual Group Arena.

Bibliography / Recommended Reading:

• Waterloo: An Illustrated History by Kenneth McLaughlin with business profiles by Richard Pearce, Windsor Publications (1990)
  
  
• Welcome to Waterloo: An Illustrated History of Waterloo, Ontario in Celebration of its 125th Anniversary 1857-1982 by Marg Rowell, Ed Devitt, and Pat McKegney (1982)
  
  
• "The History of Waterloo," Waterloo Centennial Programme (1957)
  
  
• "A Historical Sketch of the Town of Waterloo, Ontario" by Clayton W. Wells from The Sixteenth Annual Report of the Waterloo Historical Society (1928)