If you're looking for tourist information, there should be some things on this page you'll find useful, but you'll want to try KW Tourism for more comprehensive listings. They also have a toll-free number you can call for additional information -- 1-800-265-6959.

Welcome to Waterloo | Municipal Government | Media | Hospitals | Business | Miscellaneous Notes | Things to Do | St. Jacobs | Kitchener | Nearby Cities & Towns | Bookstores | Restaurants | More Shopping | The Arts & Entertainment

Welcome to Waterloo, Ontario
Waterloo is a great place to live and work. We have two universities, the offices of two of Canada's largest financial services companies, and are at the heart of a thriving high-tech centre promoted internationally as "Canada's Technology Triangle" (CTT).

I moved to Waterloo from downtown Toronto when I was 28, and that may be about the age where a city like this begins to have a strong appeal to many people. Waterloo is geographically close to Toronto -- about a 75-minute drive along Highway 401 -- but Waterloo isn't much like Toronto, and most people here are very happy about that. We don't have the stores and restaurants, the concentration of big businesses, the big museums and other attractions, and it took me a while to make the adjustment. Now that I have a family, it would be hard to go back.

I didn't even have a driver's license when I came here since the subway was right nearby in Toronto. Somehow, I survived a couple years here with no car, but I wouldn't recommend that anyone else try this. We do have public transit througout the Kitchener-Waterloo area, and service up and down King Street is good. Once you get away from King Street, though, travel times can be lengthy -- especially if transfers are required. Unlike Toronto, here you can actually drive to places and park out front or nearby. Nearly all the fast-food places -- and several banks -- are "drive-thru."

And there are no long commutes (assuming you work in the area) and rarely anything that deserves the label "rush-hour traffic" (by Toronto standards, anyway). You can drive from one end of the city to the other in about 15 minutes.

Required comment about driving: Yes, the street directions are confusing.

Don't bother talking about this with long-time residents, they've heard it all a hundred times. King Street actually does run due north-south in most of Waterloo, so the directions make some kind of sense here. As for what happens in Kitchener ... forget about it. The north-south changeover is at Erb Street. King Street is the east-west dividing line. King and Erb is the heart of "UpTown" Waterloo (explained below).

By the way, there is no truth to the rumour that Waterloo residents are known as "Water-loonies." So get that out of your head now.

A small bit about municipal government
Our municipal taxes are collected by the City of Waterloo, who take great pains to tell us regularly that we pay a lower rate than Kitchener residents (2004 update: maybe not anymore, after the RIM Park fiasco). For now, we have a two-tier system with the Regional Municipality of Waterloo ("the Region" or "Waterloo Region"). Along with the City of Waterloo, the Region includes the cities of Kitchener and Cambridge and the townships of Woolwich, Wilmot, Wellesley, and North Dumfries (the most southern part of the region, naturally). Yes, I admit that I still had to look this up to make sure I got it right (too many Ws!). About once a month, the council meeting is shown on Rogers Cable 20 on a Monday night.

The population of Waterloo is about 100,000, although it's hard to get a number everyone will agree on since we have so many university students living here for part of the year. Kitchener is about twice our size at around 200,000. Going through the region, Cambridge is over 110,000, followed by the townships of Woolwich (18,000), Wilmot (14,000), Wellesley (9,000), and North Dumfries (9,000). Total population of the region is about 430,000.

Media
Waterloo's community newspaper is the weekly Waterloo Chronicle. Don't worry if you find it on your doorstep even though you didn't ask for it -- that's just their chosen method of distribution. The paper was purchased by CanWest Global (owners of Global TV and Hamilton's CHCH-TV) in 2000 and then acquired by Torstar (the Toronto Star group) in June 2003. Not a lot of meat to the paper -- there are only a couple of staff writers -- but it's been a bathroom staple in our household. Or it least it has been during the rare periods when it's been distributed in my part of town.

The daily newspaper (i.e. the REAL newspaper) that serves the city is The Record. It's based in Kitchener, and was known as the "Kitchener-Waterloo Record" until a few years ago. The paper is also owned by Torstar and has changed hands a few times in recent years. Southam bought the paper in 1989 for $90 million from the local Motz family. In the summer of 1998, the Sun newspaper group (Toronto Sun, etc.) acquired it from Southam. The Sun Group was then acquired by Quebecor who sold The Record to Torstar. The quality of the paper had varied with different owners and editors.

I should also mention The Pennysaver which isn't a newspaper, but a collection of classified ads and chain letters to St. Jude that you'll probably find in your mailbox each week.

The area's only TV station is CTV's CKCO-TV, now part of the BellGlobemedia conglomerate and formerly owned by Electrohome. It's across King Street from the hospital on the Kitchener side of the K-W border.

There have been a lot of changes to commercial radio in this town while I've been here. In Waterloo, there's 105.3 Kool FM, and its sister AM station Oldies 1090, both owned by CHUM Ltd. Oldies became part of the ill-fated all-sports "Team" network in 2001-2002, but went back to oldies when that format bombed. Kool switched to a classic rock format in 1994 which was modified in 1999 to a classic/current "best music mix," which is still its tag line as of early 2004. CHUM bought these stations from Electrohome in 1993.

The main competition comes from Kitchener's 96.7 CHYM-FM and its sister AM station, 570 News (CKGL-AM). These stations are part of Rogers Broadcasting. In 1992, the stations swapped places on the dial, with CHYM moving to FM and CKGL jumping to AM. CKGL switched from country to an all-talk format in 1997 (NewsTalk 570) and changed in 2003 to 570 News to parallel Toronto's 680 News, which is also owned by Rogers. CHYM is now using the tag line "lite rock with less talk." For years it was "today's hits and yesterday's favourites."

Not-for-profit FM98.5 (CKWR-FM) was a "community" station until 1996, but has since developed a more commercial "soft hits" format. It presents multicultural programming on the weekends.

There's also non-commercial CKMS 100.3 FM at the University of Waterloo.

Launched in 2003 was 91.5 The Beat (CKBT-FM), owned by CanWest Global. Its format is called "rhythmic contemporary hit radio" but I see it's already trying to tone down the rhythmic/urban aspect that it was licensed for and is promoting itself as a hit music station.

DAVE-FM 107.5 (CJDV-FM) was launched in July 2003. Its tag line is "'80s, '90s, Anything We Feel Like" -- the "Jack" format that is Canada's biggest contribution to the radio industry in a long time -- and it is owned by Corus Entertainment. It evolved from Cambridge's 92.9 CIZN-FM, which was a small local radio station whose license was amended by the CRTC in 2003 to allow it to grow into DAVE-FM. It's the same format as Rogers' JACK-FM in Toronto and Vancouver and CHUM's BOB-FM in Ottawa and Winnipeg.

Coming in 2004 (so they may be running when you read this) are country station KICX 99.5 FM, Christian station Faith-FM 94.3 (which was represented by CKCO weatherman Dave MacDonald at CRTC hearings in 2003), and an Aboriginal Voices station at 102.5 FM.

Hospitals
Health care has been an area of concern locally, with stories of doctor shortages and threats of hospital closings. I've had generally positive experiences with the hospitals in town, but I know that others have different stories to tell.

We have two hospitals -- the Grand River Hospital, which consists of the K-W and Freeport health centres (which were independent hospitals until a few years ago), and St. Mary's Hospital. It was St. Mary's that was threatened with closure, but Ontario's Health Services Restructuring Commission decided in May 1998 that the hospital would remain open.

The K-W Health Centre (still known to almost everyone here as "K-W Hospital") is on King Street just below the Waterloo boundary in Kitchener. This is the place to rush to in an emergency. My only experience with the emergency room was waiting seven hours only to have the doctor who was allegedly "on call" refuse to answer his page. The staff there did a good job, but after waiting all that time I went home without ever being seen by the appropriate doctor and ended up having to drive to London to get proper care.

Business
The five biggest employers in Waterloo are SunLife, the University of Waterloo, Manulife, Economical, and Wilfrid Laurier University. RIM must be getting close to being on the list now. Waterloo was long known as the "Hartford of Canada" because of the insurance companies based here, and we became a university town with the establishement of UW and WLU in the late 1950s.

It was UW's emergence as a world-renowned centre for engineering, mathematics, and computer science and the companies spun off from research at the university that gave this area the legitimacy needed to adopt the Canada's Technology Triangle (CTT) label. CTT began as the name of a joint economic development initiative of the cities of Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge, and Guelph (Guelph's population is over 105,000, which brings the CTT well over the half-million mark). The Region of Waterloo subsequently joined the group. The initiative was spun off into its own corporation, Economic Development in Canada's Technology Triangle Inc. in the late 1990s and the City of Guelph stopped providing funding to the organization in 2000.

Waterloo's largest employers on the tech side were traditionally a couple of Canadian divisions of big U.S. companies -- NCR and Raytheon -- but our "home-grown" tech businesses have recently been growing very quickly (see the Waterloo Tech Digest for more details), with Research in Motion (RIM) particularly becoming established on the international scene.

Any references to "Silicon Valley North" should be taken as a mix of hyperbole, wishful thinking, and hope for the future -- but the foundation has been set. Now we just have to live up to our self-created hype.

You can read the Waterloo Historical Outline for more details on our evolution from a 19th century Mennonite farming community to the heart of a budding technopolis.

Miscellaneous Waterloo notes

• The proper written abbreviation for the University of Waterloo is UW, not U of W, although it's okay to call it "U of W."
• Along with the two universities, we also have a community college --Conestoga College, based in Kitchener, but with campuses in Waterloo and other towns. Their continuing education catalogue is the most comprehensive in the area.
  
  
• Get used to seeing horses and buggies on the roads -- sometimes even in the city. This area was founded by Mennonites, and there is still a large Mennonite population in the area, both traditional and contemporary. You'll notice that a small core of surnames come up again and again in this area. Most of them can be traced back to the original Mennonite settlers (e.g. Eby, Erb, Snider).
• After the Mennonites came German settlers (see Waterloo Historical Outline), and they have also left a lasting mark on the area.
  
  
• Weber is pronounced "wee-ber" and not "web-er" like the hamburger place on Highway 11.
• Zehrs is the grocery store that carries the President's Choice product line.
• If you're ever asked to look up "beemers" in the phone book, try B-O-E-H-M-E-R-S (okay, it's unlikely to come up, but one newcomer I knew spent ages trying to figure this out).
  
  
• The Waterloo Busker Carnival takes over King Street in the Uptown area during the 4th weekend in August. Street performers from across North America come to put on a show and ask for your wallet -- and not always in that order. A big draw.
• Waterloo Park is hard to miss -- below UW, covering a wide area between Albert and Westmount. Plenty of fields, a water splash in the summer, and a few animals in a mini-zoo. The park is also the site of concerts held in June each year as part of the Sounds of Summer series, and hosts an impressive display of lights during the Wonders of Winter in December.
• RIM Park is our new $200 million sports and recreation park that includes skating rinks, playing fields, and a golf course, among other things. It was the centre of a financing scandal in 2001 when it was discovered that the City of Waterloo was paying almost twice as much for the park as it thought.
  
  
• There is an airport serving this area -- the Region of Waterloo International Airport in Breslau. They changed the name from Waterloo Regional Airport when Northwest Airlines began offering daily flights to Detroit. If you come from a city that has a real international airport you should know that few people here call our airport by its formal name with a straight face. It can be a valuable resource for businesses that can afford to charter a plane to get to meetings in cities in Canada and the U.S. The closest major airport is Toronto Pearson International Airport, about a hour's drive away.

Things to do in Waterloo
The phrase "It's just a short drive to..." is sure to be prominent in any discussion of things to do in Waterloo. There's plenty to see within a comfortable driving radius. You can even be in downtown Toronto in less than 90 minutes. But there are interesting places a bit closer to home too.

Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest
519/570-HANS (519/570-4267)
Either a celebration of Bavarian cultural heritage or an excuse to drink a lot of beer for nine days in a row -- or both, it's up to you. K-W's big event since 1969. Begins the Friday before Thanksgiving in October and continues through the following weekend. The best-known event is the Thanksgiving Day Parade down King Street, and there are other activities at over a dozen sites (festhalls, or "festhallen") throughout K-W.

What you need to know: the pumpkin-head with the moustache and red hat is Onkel Hans -- the festival mascot since 1974; Gemütlichkeit is a spirit of hospitality and camaraderie; yes, there is still a Miss Oktoberfest pageant. You'll have to figure out zicke zacke, zicke zacke, hoi hoi hoi for yourself. Number of times a recent promotional brochure mentioned "family": 6. Number of times it mentioned "beer": 0.

Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery
25 Caroline St N
519/746-6396
"C²G²" opened in June 1993 and displays works in ceramic, glass, stained glass, and enamel. For people with aspirations to be patrons of the arts but who find themselves in Waterloo, this is the place to be associated with.

Notice the word "Canadian" in the name. They want to make sure you know this is a national museum. Despite the national mandate, and a grant of over $3 million from the federal and provincial governments, it was the City of Waterloo that bailed out the museum when it almost closed before it opened. The City contributed $1.5 million to complete the purchase and construction of the building in 1992.

Waterloo Town Square
75 King St S
For residents near the UpTown area, this will be a regular destination because of ValuMart and Shoppers Drug Mart. For others, the most useful part of Waterloo Town Square is the parking lot. You can park free of charge for two hours and walk around to the stores in the area. And you'll probably want to check out the stores on King Street, because the mall is pretty dead. The mall was scheduled to be torn down and replaced as part of a grandiose way-too-big-for-this-town redevelopment project that the City fantasized about for a couple of years, but those plans were cancelled in 2001.

"UpTown" Waterloo
In the area around King & Erb
These would be the "stores in the area" referred to above. If you drive up King Street between William Street and Bridgeport Road you'll go by a diverse group of stores and restaurants that may include something you'll find interesting. This is downtown Waterloo, but even most Waterloo residents associate "downtown" with downtown Kitchener, so someone came up with the clever idea of calling it "UpTown Waterloo."

This is the historic core of the city -- where Abraham Erb, the original settler in the area, built his home, sawmill, and grist mill in the early 19th century.

Some historic buildings at or near King & Erb:

• Hotel Waterloo: At the north-east corner. Originally a hotel built in 1840, the building was twice destroyed by fire in the 19th century. The current structure was built after the second fire in 1889, and was the site of the city's first Canadian Bank of Commerce. The building was declared a heritage landmark by the City in January 1990, and it was vacant and boarded up for much of the time since then. Acquired by new owners in January 1997 and reopened later that year as the Waterloo Hotel.
• Molson's Bank: Now the Bank of Montreal.
• Old Post Office: North of Erb, on the west side of King. Built in 1911, this has been a temporary home to the Perimeter Institute and was previously a restaurant. For several years, it was owned and occupied by software company MKS, who refurbished the clock tower.
• Carnegie Library: On Albert Street, across from the Waterloo Public Library. Built in 1903 after Waterloo received a $10,000 grant from American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Was occupied by the police department for most of the years since the library moved into its new building in 1966. Now the Canadian headquarters of Habitat for Humanity.

Waterloo Public Library
35 Albert St
I used to say a lot of nice things about the library. Then, around the end of 1996, library management announced that they would seek provincial approval to to charge all library users an annual fee. Fortunately, this didn't happen. If you're going to pay for a card, you'll be much better off going to Kitchener where the selection is far superior to what the Waterloo system can offer. In June 1997, the library began a program to request a voluntary annual donation when cards come up for renewal.

For people looking for work or to start up a business, check out The Workplace -- a featured collection of job hunting and small business books. This is also a good place to pick up brochures and other information on community events and resources. The library finally got on the Web in 2001. There was a lot of controversy in 2002 about the library board's plans to build a brand new library near the Waterloo Memorial Rec Complex, and the controversy continued through 2003 over whether a new library should be built (and where and for how much).

In January 2004, the library announced a reciprocal borrowing arrangement with the Cambridge Public Library. The arrangement may extend to the Hamilton Public Library, but that wasn't immediately clear. The Kitchener library is not part of the deal. As a Waterloo resident you'll have to pay $32 a year for a KPL card.

Waterloo Memorial Recreation Complex
101 Father David Bauer Drive
The city's premier arena and public swimming facility (the Swimplex). Opened in 1993. Has hosted the Scott Tournament of Hearts (Canadian women's curling championship) and several hockey tournaments and concerts.

Conestoga Mall
550 King St N
Waterloo's largest shopping mall. More interesting than Waterloo Town Square (what isn't?), but it's almost all chain and franchise stores you can find nearly everywhere. A recent addition is Waterloo's only Bay store. The Zellers (formerly Kmart) was expanded a couple of years ago and is now huge; as is the Zehrs after its recent expansion. A 10-screen movie theatre was added in 2001. The mall's worth a look. Plenty of parking.

University of Waterloo
Wilfrid Laurier University
For university buffs, we've got two of 'em -- nearly side-by-side off University Avenue. In popular perception, UW is associated with sciences and engineering, while Laurier is connected to arts and business (in reality, they both offer a more diverse range of courses than this suggests). Both universities have stores where you can get sweatshirts, t-shirts, and all the other standard paraphernalia.

UW is the home of the Museum & Archive of Games, the Biology & Earth Sciences Museum, the Museum of Visual Science and Optometry, and two art galleries. Historic Brubacher House is also operated by the university.

Until 1998, all Waterloo residents could get a library card at UW at no charge. There is now an annual $20 fee. The main library is the tallest building on campus -- you can't miss it. You can also use Laurier's library, and a card there also costs $20, although you can use UW library cards at Laurier and vice versa. I think Laurier's library is the tallest building on their campus too.

St. Jacobs
The town that packs the tourists in -- "St. Jacobs Country," according to the signs on the 401. First-time visitors to St. Jacobs are in for a real treat. Stroll up and down King Street and you'll find dozens of unique, independent stores. Lots of artsy stuff and antiques, and there's a wide enough range of shops that there should be something to interest everyone.

Be sure to go through the Silos, the Mill, and the Riverworks buildings. "The Old Factory" on Spring Street is also worth a peek. Most other stores are right on King Street. The Stone Crock Bakery has always been a favourite of people I know. There's been a lot of turnover through the years, so if you find a store you like you better enjoy it while you can.

The novelty does wear off after a few visits, but St. Jacobs is one of the highlights of the area. It makes me sad to stop by now because I can remember how much fun I used to have there, and those feelings just aren't there for me anymore.

There had been a tourist train running between St. Jacobs and Uptown Waterloo between 1997 and 1999, with daily runs in the spring and summer, and weekend service in the fall. It didn't operate in 2000 and as recently as January 2001, it's status was up in the air. The City now owns the station, and I believe Waterloo Region has bought the track from CN.

Before it became a tourist trap, St. Jacobs was best known as the hometown of NHL Hall of Famer Darryl Sittler and Home Hardware. In fact, the most impressive sight in town is one that the tourists rarely see -- Home Hardware's huge central warehouse.

Picard's Peanuts
I loved this place for the first couple years I lived in the area, although I've rarely stopped by in recent years. This is off the main strip, at Highway 86, so you may have to make a special trip to get there, but it's worth it. Peanuts in more flavours than you can imagine -- chilli, cajun, ranch, plain, chocolate-covered, brittle, and many more. Plenty of free samples are out to help you make your choice. There are non-peanut snack foods too.

St. Jacobs Farmers' Market & Flea Market
If you visit St. Jacobs when the market is open, you won't need directions to get there ... just follow the tour buses and the long line of cars. Located off Weber Street at the border between St. Jacobs and Waterloo. There are actually two farmers' markets here -- the smaller Waterloo County Farmers Market on the west side of Weber (open Saturdays year-round, and on Wednesdays in the summer), and the St. Jacobs Farmers' Market on the east side (open Saturdays and Thursdays year-round, and on Tuesdays in the summer). I believe they're now owned by the same company. Plenty of parking, but plenty of cars too.

Along with meats, vegetables, and other foods, there's lots of other products sold in the flea market building -- including clothes and various household items. Definitely something to experience.

St. Jacobs Factory Outlet Mall
Right next to the Farmers Market. Over 20 stores with clothes, jewelry, and other items allegedly at big savings.

Kitchener
The "K" in K-W. Our "twin" city. Fortunately for us, the relationship is obviously fraternal. The biggest city in the area, with twice the population of Waterloo.

Every couple years someone floats the idea of an amalgamation of Kitchener and Waterloo. It never gets much popular support. Now we're waiting to see if the province will force amalgamation upon us.

Waterloo residents tend to take a great deal of pride in ... well, not living in Kitchener ("if you can call that living" -- Groucho Marx). Even so, Waterloo residents will inevitably find themselves drawn to Kitchener for many stores and services that aren't available here.

The Kitchener Public Library has the best selection of books in the area, and was very responsive the times I suggested books to add to the collection. It even bought copies of my books with no prompting. Waterloo residents have to pay a $32 fee to get a card.

Kitchener attractions

• Doon Heritage Crossroads: an early 20th century village.
• Joseph Schneider Haus: the home of one of the area's founding Mennonite families as it might have looked in the 1850s.
• Woodside National Historic Site: boyhood home of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950), as it might have appeared around 1890. Operated by Parks Canada. King began his career as an elected politician as Waterloo's member of parliament in 1908.

Other cities & small towns in the area

• Guelph: "The Royal City." Beautiful downtown area, with many historic buildings. The university is renowned for its agricultural and veterinary programs.
  
  
• Cambridge: Until 1973 this was three separate towns, and you may still hear people refer to Hespeler, Galt, and Preston. Highway 24 (Hespeler Road) south of the 401 is a showcase of franchise businesses in Canada. The Galt area is a bit more scenic with the Grand River flowing through Cambridge's downtown core. Closer to Kitchener, Cambridge is also the home of one of the area's biggest employers -- Toyota.

• Elora: "Ontario's beautiful village," according to the brochures. Big tourist draw, so try to go on a weekday to avoid the crowds. Home of the limestone Elora Gorge and dozens of interesting shops and restaurants. The Elora Festival concert series is run each year in July.
• Fergus: Right near Elora. A town with Scottish roots in a mostly German and Mennonite area. Hosts a Scottish Festival and Highland Games in August.
• Elmira: "Where life is sweeter." Biggest event is the Maple Syrup Festival in April each year.
• West Montrose: Take the scenic route between Elmira and St. Jacobs and you can visit the home of the only remaining covered bridge in Ontario (and not much else).
• Stratford: Named after Shakespeare's birthplace more than a century before the Stratford Festival began in 1952. The Festival is the big draw each summer and fall, and there are far more stores than you might expect in a town with a population less than half of Waterloo's.
• New Hamburg: "Home of the largest operating waterwheel in North America." Big waterwheel, small town. On the way to Stratford.
• Baden: Site of Castle Kilbride, a beautifully restored 19th century mansion, now open for tours.

Area attractions

• African Lion Safari: It took me years to check it out, but this place was really fun. Drive through the park and have free-roaming large animals jump all over your car. The monkeys love to pick and pull bits off your car, but you can usually escape with nothing worse than paw prints. Lots to see after you've parked your car as well, including the elephants' bathtime. Open April through October each year.
• Wings Of Paradise: Known as "the butterfly place" in our house. Tons of butterflies flying all around you as you walk through an indoor tropical garden setting. Best to go on a sunny day -- that's when the butterflies come out in full force.

Bookstores
For a city with two universities, Waterloo has surprisingly few bookstores -- either new or second hand. There hadn't been much of a selection of books in town, but we now have a Chapters superstore at the corner of King & Weber, and there's a second Chapters in south Kitchener. An Indigo was supposed to be built in the UpTown area once the redevelopment of Waterloo Town Square gets underway, but those plans were abandoned when Chapters and Indigo merged.

The University of Waterloo Bookstore sells a lot of trade books along with course texts. The Wilfrid Laurier University Bookstore (Student Union Building, main floor) isn't as big, but also offers a good mix of general books and text books.

Outside the universities, there's Words Worth Books at 100 King Street South, across from Waterloo Town Square. The store has a literary-arts atmosphere, but also offers the biggest selection of business books in the city. Wide selection of magazines too. The co-owner is the former city councillor for the Uptown area.

Among specialty stores, there's Waterloo Computer Books on University Ave. I don't know if it's still there -- I haven't been in years.

The Carpenter Shop (religious -- 110 King Street South) and Holly Oak (self-help -- 24 Regina Street N) are two other specialized stores in the "Uptown" area.

For second hand books, there isn't much to choose from in Waterloo. The Bookworm in the plaza at 65 University Ave East. It's small, but it's had some well-priced finds the times I've been in.

In Kitchener, Casablanca Bookshop, K-W Book Store & Exchange, and A Second Look are the top three second-hand bookstores in K-W, all located downtown. Each has been significantly expanded and renovated since 1995. Casablanca tends to have the lowest prices, but all three are worth a look.

Restaurants
There are hundreds of restaurants in K-W, featuring most of the usual styles. There are Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Egyptian, Caribbean, Indian, English, Italian -- and lots of North American-style bar & grill and diner places. No one will ever confuse me for a restaurant critic, so I'll leave you to explore and find your own favourites. You can use The Record's dining guide for suggestions.

Coming to my area of expertise, we also have all the national and international fast-food chains, including McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Subway, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, Arby's, Little Caesar's, Mr. Sub, Harvey's, Pizza Pizza, and Swiss Chalet.

We also have many of the restaurant chains, including East Side Mario's (the largest one in the chain), Casey's, The Keg, and Jack Astor's.

The restaurant that for years got the best reviews is Janet Lynn's Bistro in UpTown Waterloo. A fairly recent addition that has caught on quickly is Sole Restaurant and Wine Bar. That's Sole with an accent on the e -- "so-LAY."

Other shopping
Some other large stores in town that you should know about:

• Canadian Tire: A huge new store opened in 1997 off Weber near King by Chapters.
• Home Depot: At King and Northfield. Opened in 1998. There's another one in Kitchener.
• Staples: Just above Home Depot. Also opened in 1998.
• Future Shop: Just below Home Depot. Opened in 2000.
• Home Hardware: On Weber Street north of University.
• Office Depot: Next to Home Hardware.
• Michael's: The craft superstore in Westmount Mall.
• White Rose: More crafts, and everything for your garden, on Weber below University.

• Costco: Formerly the Price Club. The exhilaration of low prices combined with the charm of a penal institution. Prices on some items are less the wholesale rates smaller stores pay. On other items ... not so good. The sign-up experience is not particularly pleasant unless you have a paystub on you. I gave up my membership, so I'm not up to date, but I doubt much has changed.
• Fairview Mall: K-W's biggest mall. Pretty much like every other shopping mall, only here. Includes K-W's only Wal-Mart. Worth seeing once. Maybe even twice. Toys-R-Us is nearby on Fairway Road.

The arts & entertainment
This is a personal orientation, and if there's anything I'm even less qualified to discuss than restaurants, it's the arts. Here's what little I can say:

We actually have a symphony here -- the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. There was a lot of controversy surrounding the symphony in late 1998 -- questions about their management and conflicts with musicians. Things settled down but as of the beginning of 2004 the controversies are back after the Symphony board fired the conductor.

The Symphony plays most of their concerts at The Centre in the Square -- K-W's premier concert hall and performance stage. For those coming from Toronto, this would be as close as we get to a combination of the Hummingbird Centre, Roy Thompson Hall, and Pantages Theatre.

Located in the Centre in the Square is the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, five galleries spread over two levels. Founded in 1956, the gallery's permanent collection includes 2,000 works of art.

The City of Waterloo has been promoting the many galleries and art stores in the UpTown area. Along with the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery (discussed above), they include:

• Aaron Galleries: 25 Young St E
• Enook Galleries: 29 Young St E
• Graystone Gallery: 14 Princess St E
• Harbinger Gallery: 22 Dupont St E
• Eldon Gallery: 14 King St N
• The Cobblestone Gallery: 33 Erb St W (The Atrium)
• The Gallery Shop: at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery

In Kitchener, outside of the downtown area, you can also visit the Homer Watson House & Gallery -- the home of the landscape artist (1855-1936) who also has a major road named after him.

Moving on to films, Waterloo's only movie theatre (for now -- others are scheduled to be built) is The Princess Cinema (6 Princess St W), which offers a wide range of movies from foreign and small-budget films to big-budget major releases (usually after their initial run, by anywhere from weeks to years).

Theatres in Kitchener show all the first-run, mainstream movies as they are released, and we have plenty of video rental stores so you won't have to worry about missing any popular movies.

As for other forms of entertainment, while we're not remotely close to Toronto for the daily volume of concerts and theatre, there are more than 30 venues for live music in the area, and ongoing performances at the Waterloo Stage Theatre, as well as the K-W Little Theatre, Waterloo Community Arts Centre and more.

The Stratford Festival is just a short drive away, and you can always be in downtown Toronto in less than 90 minutes and have the choice of just about anything you could possibly want to see.

Lulu's Roadhouse shut down in April 2000. It had been an area fixture for many years, in Kitchener on the Cambridge border. Lulu's had what was billed as the world's longest bar until it was chopped up in 1994.

For a listing of what's on in the CTT region over the next week, take a look at The Record's entertainment calendar.