How great it is to live in Kitchener Waterloo

Recently, I was reading a post about how great it is to live in Kitchener Waterloo on Cord magazine – Wilfrid Laurier’s fine magazine. Frankly, I agree with the blogger’s opinion that we should be ranked higher. I wonder what criteria Moneysense used to rank Waterloo 46th best place in Canada to live. Kitchener got 68th and Cambridge 82nd (That’s actually being generous – sorry Cambridge let’s try a bit of urban planning).
I relocated here directly from Taipei Taiwan way back in June 2000. I’d never been here before but Manulife (who paid for my wife’s transfer) basically gave us the choice of here or Toronto. Since we were leaving a big city, we thought raising a family would be best in a smaller centre. That’s how we decided.
I’d never been here before and knew nothing of the place. I’m like that. If I’ve been there I know a lot about a place, if I haven’t been there I know nothing.

We stayed with friends in Toronto overnight and then rented a car and drove to Kitchener Waterloo and started looking for a place to live. Like most people who arrive for the first time, we drove straight up King Street. We laughed and laughed as we crawled through this sleepy little backwater. Taipei with it’s suburbs is a city of about 5 million people. Waterloo Region is a city of 10% of that, spread over about the same area. We are going to live here?
Fish out of water is what we were.

In 2000 Kitchener and Waterloo were very different than they are today. The universities, the burgeoning tech sector and good government (and maybe some luck) have helped us develop.
A lot has changed. A lot has changed since we moved here. It’s a great place to live and should rank higher.