There is a wide range of online information about Waterloo Region – things to do, interesting places to visit, restaurants of all kinds. You name it, our area has it. And there is an online publication – usually a bunch of them – to tell you about it.
Today we’re highlighting two excellent sources of Waterloo Region information:
Explore Waterloo Region, and WLU Student Publications
Explore Waterloo Region
This extensive website – explorewaterloo.ca – is produced by the Waterloo Regional Tourism Marketing Corporation whose job it is to promote tourism in the region. Sections of the website include Things to Do, Places to Eat and Drink, Places to Stay, Things to Explore, and more. You can even use the website to create an itinerary for your visit or book a hotel room.
For example, one “itinerary” suggestion is a visit to “5 Filming Locations in Waterloo Region”: Cambridge locations for “The Handmaid’s Tail” and “The Queen’s Gambit”, Castle Kilbride in Baden for “Anne with an E”, the Kissing Bridge in West Montrose for the Stephen King movie called “It”, the Walper Hotel in Kitchener for “Murdoch Mysteries”, and locations in Ayr for other productions. (Unfortunately they missed the use of the Conestogo Iron Bridge in an episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale”.)
Another very interesting feature of Explore Waterloo Region is the “Blog” section buried under “Explore”. Here you’ll find many articles from a wide variety of writers. Articles such as “Keep the Kids Busy During the Winter Holiday Break”, “How to spend 36 hours in Waterloo Region with your Dog” , “Explore Seven New Rides in Waterloo Region” (for cyclists), or “Feast On® Comfort Food Favourites”
WLU Student Publications
For something completely different check out what’s happening at WLU – from the student point of view.
Being an alumnus of WLU (I went there about a century ago), it is really interesting to see how the Waterloo university scene has changed over the years. For those of you living in a bubble, there are now somewhere in the neighbourhood of 17,000 to 18,000 students at WLU and another 40,000+ down the street at UofW.
The little wartime houses along Albert, Hazel and Lester streets – just to name a few – have been replaced with towering apartment buildings. Forewell’s Variety was gone years ago and the streets are lined with interesting ethnic restaurants.
Meanwhile the publishing empire builders at WLU (and presumably UofW) have multiplied and diversified their offerings. As they say on their website, “Wilfrid Laurier University Student Publications, or WLUSP, has nine independent organizations under its umbrella, including three local and community newspapers, an online radio station, an international quarterly arts magazine, two university yearbooks, a student planner, and a market-research and polling group.”
Wow. Cool.
Actually, I just came here looking for “The Cord” which I remember working on late into the night for a couple years. Today “The Cord” people (about 80 of them) publish a physical newspaper every Wednesday distributed throughout the campus and surrounding community (where most students and faculty live). You can even see an archive of all the published issues going back to September 23, 1926
They also publish an online version consisting of the week’s news and features of interest to the university community. The current issue features an interesting range of articles such as “Students React to Universities’ Stance on the Israel-Hamas War”, “Laurier Milton Prepares for its Inaugural Class”, “Profit Increases and Education Cuts hurt us all”, and many more.
In fact, the online version is really an ongoing blog format in which all the online articles published over the years can be accessed – all the way back to May 20, 2009. That’s more than 1200 articles.
There is also a “Community Edition” which as they say, “is Waterloo Region’s independent monthly…focused on exchanging ideas on building community and culture in Waterloo region.” It is published on the issuu.com platform and contains a very wide range of interesting articles. Frankly, though, I find its presentation fairly confusing. Maybe I’ll have time in the future to have a closer look.