Twenty Years
I do not have an exact date, but late August/early September of 2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of me moving to Kitchener-Waterloo. I moved here for grad school, and like so many others I never left.
Twenty years both feels like a long time and not long at all. (The word of the day is "zenosyne".) I have lived in Kitchener-Waterloo longer than I have lived anywhere else. I never made an explicit decision to settle down here, but I guess that is how it turned out.
Having said that, I am not committed to staying here. As Kitchener-Waterloo increasingly becomes a suburb of Toronto (hello Toronto-Waterloo Region Corridor housing prices have gone up, and I do not know that I will continue being able to afford rent here. But it is not clear where I would go; most other places in Ontario have expensive housing costs too. And Waterloo Region is a rich municipality, thanks in part to the tech sector (and thanks in part to insurance). I often feel resentful because I have not cashed into the economy with a high-tech salary, but the reality is that I have been able to scrounge a living on the margins of society because the area is so wealthy. There is no lack of intellectual stimulation: one can attend talks and seminars and user groups almost every weeknight free of charge. (And yes, as my waistline demonstrates, all too often there is food at these events, because tech companies and universities are rich.) Because the region is rich the streets are in good condition, so I can cycle where I need to go. Because the region is rich it can support a nonprofit sector including the cult, which has provided me with income, cheap bicycles, cheap clothes, cheap food, and cheap computers. The hand-me-downs are often donated by rich people, and are of better quality than I might expect elsewhere. Although I often feel deprived, materially speaking I do not have much to complain about.
How about socially? Part of the reason I moved to KW for grad school was because of WPIRG. By first getting involved with them and then subsequently with the cult, I tapped into a community of people who appeared to share my beliefs. A few years later I was struck hard by cognitive dissonance and lost many of those beliefs (thanks (?), John McCarthy), but I still associate with some of that crowd. A couple of years after moving here I got involved with KWLUG, which introduced me to a community of tech zealots. In retrospect these ties have been weaker than I wish, and I feel like an imposter to all of these communities, but they have provided me with stronger networks than I had been able to find in the GTA. Would I have developed these networks had I stayed at home or moved to a different city? It is tough to say. Could I redevelop similar networks if/when I pull up roots and move away? I doubt it.
Looking around my room I see that I still own some possessions from twenty years ago. There is a bar fridge from my first apartment (that probably has not been turned on in ten years). I still have a couple of shirts that I wore back then, and I still wear them occasionally even though they have mysteriously shrunk over the years. I still have a heavy cast-iron saucepan that I use to this day. I also have a lot of books and papers from that time that are still weighing me down.
I suppose a lot has changed since 1999. Here are some of the things that come to mind:
- The Kaufman Lofts was still an operating shoe factory when I moved here.
- The local paper was still going strong, and was a definitive source of news. It still publishes some local news, but it is a shadow of its old self.
- There used to be an "alternative weekly" here called Echo Weekly. I would read it every Thursday as I walked to and from campus.
- There were obviously fewer condos and no light rail train.
- Furthermore there was no Grand River Transit. Kitchner-Waterloo had its own bus system (called "Kitchener Transit", I think) and Cambridge had a separate system which was significantly worse.
- Rent was $300 a month, which was reasonable but not dirt-cheap. Furthermore I got this apartment because the city asked homeowners to make rooms available for students (!). Now the cities (especially Waterloo) only want students renting licenced, expensive apartments clustered in student ghettos.
- There were actual apartments on the second floors of the buildings along King Street, and not just trendy office spaces for startups.
- The Kitchener Farmer's Market was still at Market Square.
- Kitchener had a reputation for being dangerous and sketchy, but in those early years I was oblivious to that. Since crystal meth became big a few years ago Kitchener does feel sketchier to me these days.
- Waterloo Park has gotten a lot uglier since the black chainlink fencing went in. The boulevard aside, walking through Waterloo Park feels like walking through a prison courtyard. The animals in the mini-zoo at the park have also diminished. There used to be deer and rabbits and Crush the tortoise. There were also piglets and birds. Now there are barely any animals there, which is probably for the best but makes me feel sad sometimes.
- The walk down King Street to the university feels different, and worse.
- The spurline trail used to be an unpaved unofficial trail. I guess it has improved overall, but it is worse for me as a pedestrian now.
- Market Square used to be an actual mall. So did the Manulife buildings on Water Street. If I remember correctly that mall extended all the way to King Street, where the Coffee Time Donuts is now. I distinctly remember the Water Street mall having a video arcade.
- There were some movie theatres on King Street.
- Kitchener felt a lot whiter than it does today. Coming from Mississauga the lack of racial diversity came as a real shock. That has changed a lot, however. (The university area was always diverse, if you count South and East Asians as diverse.)
- There used to be pig roasts in public, especially around Oktoberfest. Furthermore there was a place near Victoria and King that advertised wet T-shirt contests, with "Huge Prizes".
- On that note, for a while (but maybe not in 1999?) there was a strip club on King Street in Kitchener. I believe the Heuther Hotel also had a strip club, and of course there was the far away one at Bridge and Lancaster. I think only Roxxanne's on Victoria Street is left, although I do not know for certain.
- Club Renaissance was a gay nightclub across from the Charles Street Transit terminal, where North is currently housed. Now I believe there is no gay bar or nightclub in all of Waterloo Region. On the other hand there is now Spectrum, an LGBTQ+ community centre (but I guess there had been GLOW at UW before, and an informal network of supports characterized by the Rainbow listserve).
- Uptown Waterloo has changed dramatically. It has gentrified a lot. The concrete public are in front of Waterloo Town Square (which is called Waterloo Town Square?) used to be a parking lot. There used to be an office tower (!) beside the mall, and a liquidation outlet that was liquidated. Many of the stores in Uptown are now gone: OW Sports, the photography shop, the Christian bookstore. A few stores have remained: the Heuther, that "Night School" that I have never visited and don't understand, and Wordsworth books, but it looks and feels very different now.
- There used to be a comics shop at 90 Queen called Now and Then Books. Dave Sims (the creator and main artist of Cerebrus) apparently worked there once, and the store had lots of Cerebrus reprints. The other two comics shops (Looking for Heroes in Kitchener and Carry-On Comics in Waterloo) have hung on, though.
- The University of Waterloo has never been very radical, but the death of WPIRG and the obsession over startup culture has really changed the feel of the place for me. Engineers Without Borders started at UW a little while after I came, and it looked like it was really going to make a difference, but it kind of fizzled out. Now even the social change movements are couched in the language of startups and disruption. (Remember, kids: social disruption is bad but capitalist disruption is awesome.)
- The cult has changed a lot over the years. It has grown a lot and gotten involved with much more real estate. It has a lot of credibility as an organization. But in many ways I feel it has lost its spirit over the years.
- I used to give blood at the Red Cross, which had a clinic in Waterlo near King and Union (?). Then they changed to Canadian Blood Services, and then they moved to Bridgeport Plaza.
- There used to be an arena where the Perimeter Institute is now.
But a lot still feels the same:
- The Kitchener Market might have moved, but it is still held on Saturdays and I still get groceries there most weeks. Many of the vendors from 20 years ago are still there, and I still purchase food from some of them.
- Victoria Park is much the same. I remember marvelling at the sculpted trees the first time I visited here, and those trees are much the same. Victoria Park went through a big renovation but does not feel that different overall.
- Central Fresh Market used to be called Central Meat Market, but other than this it seems much the same.
- City Hall feels much the same.
- Even though it has been renovated, the KPL feels much the same in the sense that it is still a library with books. The internal layout has changed significantly, though, and the surrounding parkland ("Diamond Jubilee Park") has changed too. But going to the library feels like much the same routine as before.
- If traffic has gotten a lot worse I have not noticed it, other than the hideous mess on King Street. (Thanks, ION.)
- Full Circle Foods has changed ownership a few times but is still going strong.
- A lot of the social movements have changed but many of the underlying communities have remained the same. Church influence is a big exception to this. I remember the social justice church movements of the time working hard on "Jubilee 2000". Now I do not see much from the churches at all, possibly because their congregations have aged and shrunk.
On a more narcissistic note, how about me? What do I have to show for twenty years of life in Kitchener-Waterloo?
- I have given the best working years of my life here and I have little to show for it. Since running away from home I have always felt somewhat precarious but that feeling is more acute now. I no longer think of myself as a middle-class person masquerading as a poor person; I now think I am a poor person with a poverty mindset.
- I have felt many of my morals and standards slip. Most recently, I am less committed to vegetarianism these days, but I have also become much more fiscally lax (which explains why my monthly spending has doubled over the past couple of decades). I see how I am contributing to suffering and misery in the world and I just don't care as much as I once did.
- My mental and emotional health has gotten worse in some ways and better in others. I can see the signs of anger/frustration/anxiety coming on a bit better, but I have become anxious about more things.
- I have become a little less oblivious to the ways I make others uncomfortable, but not much.
- I still look and act like a freak. When I first moved here it was because I wore sunglass frames taped onto "eyeglass frames" made of tubes of paper. Now it is my ridiculous noseguard and homeless-looking backpack.
- I have turned into one of those weird old men I used to feel contempt towards when I first moved here. I wear a big floppy hat, don't appear to have any real jobs, speak about weird abstractions that don't make sense to others, and show up to things where I am not invited or welcome. This is particularly true on campus.
- My intelligence has diminished fairly dramatically as I have aged here. That hurts a lot.
- I gave my heart to certain initiatives (the cult, Recycle Cycles, university education, even KWLUG) and one by one they let me down. Now I am much less likely to get involved with anything, and I am unwilling to give my heart to a cause again. (This, of course, means I will really never accomplish anything.)
- I continued to donate blood regularly, which is surprising.
- I suppose Kitchener-Waterloo is my home, and I treat it as my home, but it does not feel like my home. I do not feel like I belong here. I do not feel as if my housing is stable, even though I have lived at my current place for over three years. I have some social groups but do not feel as if I belong in them, and have few friends who share my values. I feel isolated and alone a lot. I frequently wish I could drop everything, leave this place and just start someplace else.
- I go to the library a lot less and overall I am reading books a lot less, although I stare at words on screens almost all day.
- I have kept up blogging, albeit sporadically.
- Finding the cult and an associated community that appeared to accept me for both my flaws and gifts was probably very important to me. There are some ways in which the cult helped me heal psychologically in ways I might not have otherwise.
- I am not that involved with municipal politics overall, but I have been drawn to municipal elections. (I remember there was a municipal election soon after I moved here, and fool that I was I asked Carl Zehr some question about homelessness.)
Overall, I feel I should be grateful for ending up here, if for no other reason that Kitchener-Waterloo is wealthy. I could have ended up in much worse places. My original plan had been to stay in Toronto and go to grad school there. Often I wonder whether my life would have been better or worse had I stayed. If I had stayed I might have done better in grad school and might be financially stable now; on the other hand my emotional and psychological instability might have torn me apart. If I had not gotten a real job and become financially stable then being poor in Toronto seems much harder than being poor here. I suppose I feel relieved that I did not end up somewhere worse (McMaster had also been a possibility), but I still feel too many "what-if"s to feel deep gratitude for how things turned out.