Learning From Waterloo

"One essential ingredient lies beneath Waterloo Region's historic ability to shrug off economic shocks and advance to new and leading-edge activities: Culture. The building blocks were laid by hard-working Mennonites who flooded into this part of Southwestern Ontario in the 1800s and were followed by successive waves of immigrants from Germany and elsewhere who embraced change."

"The area has been at various times the furniture capital of Canada, the button capital, the shoe making capital and the rubber capital. It's an automotive capital with the expanding presence of Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc. on the northern edge of Cambridge. Food processing has been a mainstay for more than 100 years. There's diversification beyond manufacturing with a large financial services component through Manulife Financial Corp. and other insurance companies."