Why Should Upland Open in Waterloo?

Waterloo is, at first glance, little more than a quaint little college town in Ontario, Canada. With a population of only 113,000 and no skyline to speak of, some might even hesitate to call it a city at all.

Hidden underneath its unassuming veneer, however, lies an institution that’s quietly managed to position itself at the forefront of technological innovation not only in Canada, but the world.

That institution is the University of Waterloo (UW) — a school that’s ranked right up there alongside the likes of Stanford, MIT and Berkeley when it comes to producing Silicon Valley talent. 

image courtesy of the University of Waterloo

It also happens to be the school that Vitalik Buterin attended before dropping out to pursue Ethereum full-time. 

What better city to pay homage to than the one that made all of this possible?

UW is the heart and soul of the Waterloo experience

I’ve lived in Waterloo since I was 15, where my family relocated after my dad became a professor at the university. 

For me, life in this town has always been associated with the university. I spent my high school summers helping out in my dad’s lab, getting to know every inch of the campus before I ever enrolled there as a student. As bored teenagers, my friends and I would often default on UW as our go-to hangout spot.  

That I would eventually attend the school was an unspoken assumption, as it was for almost all of my friends. I lived in a dorm on campus freshman year, then practically continued to live on campus studying (read: socializing) in the Davis Centre library the years after. 

image courtesy of Arch Daily

I’ve since graduated and haven’t been on campus for quite a while now, but the school lives on — both for me and for many others — as the heart and soul of the Waterloo experience: there’s the restaurant plaza, where the iconic Mr. Panino’s’ endurance amongst constant restaurant turnover afforded it meme status on our reddit community (one of the most active college reddits in the world, by the way); the glistening new engineering buildings that stood in stark contrast next to the shabby, underfunded humanities buildings; the Engineering 5 glass tunnel that became the school’s designated LinkedIn photoshoot spot; the flocks of Canada geese that called campus home and hissed at you whenever you got too close. 

image courtesy of Twitter / @uwaterlooARTS

UW’s centrality to the city’s livelihood is such that it’s beginning to spur its development: once barren and flat, high-rise condos designed to accommodate ever-increasing hordes of students and tech professionals are now popping up all over town. Recently, a light rail transit (LRT) system was built so as to better connect the city and reduce congestion on buses. 

It's not just UW, though!

One stop on the LRT from UW will get you to Waterloo Park, where you can enjoy a picnic or check out the animals at the farm. One more stop and you’ll be in Uptown Waterloo. Here, you’ll find shops, restaurants and almost all of the city’s bars and clubs. When UW students aren’t too busy cramming for finals or stressing over co-op interviews, you’ll find them here — most likely at Phil’s, a bar known equally for its griminess and its super cheap drinks. 

image courtesy of DreamsofCanada

But not everything in Waterloo is university-related. If you want to get away from those vibes entirely, make sure to check out St Jacob’s Farmer’s Market on the outskirts of town, where you can browse fresh produce and say hello to the Mennonites — a cultural community that, for the most part, prefers to live beyond the reaches of modern society. 

Image courtesy of CaledonEnterprise

Conclusion

All in all, Waterloo is a city with a unique charm, and not just because it’s the birthplace of Ethereum. With its combination of small town vibes and cutting-edge tech status, living in Waterloo often feels like being both in the middle of nowhere and in the most important place in the world.

But the most exciting thing is that we’re not even close to seeing what Waterloo could eventually be. Indeed, a running joke amongst residents here is that “there are two seasons in Waterloo: winter and construction”. Stimulated by UW’s growing renown in the tech world, the city of Waterloo is developing rapidly in suit — and that’s why it's #MyUplandCity.