Living in downtown Kitchener is unique. We are a growing city still etching out an identity and yet we have a storied history, unknown to many who are not tuned in.
Bootlegging and rum running, street fights between leftists and Nazis to reclaim downtown, biker wars, a thriving blues scene touched by generational talents, generations of immigrants, and, of course, the tragedy that is the ongoing genocide of Indigenous community: for better or worse, all of this and much more is the foundation of the city which I live in, the city which I was born in, and the city in which I plan to die.
My family has a long link to Kitchener. On my mom’s side, records exist tracing us to Kitchener as far back as the 1870s and while we have spread our roots across the country and the world, somehow, we remain here, a century and a half later.
I do not know what my ancestors were like, or how they treated Indigenous and racialized folks, and it is something I think about often.
I hope they were good people. I hope they somehow resembled me, what our family stands for now, but there is no way of knowing. More recently, I know my family has been involved in many happenings across the region. My grandma joined a caravan of hippies to go to Woodstock, another family member was married to a Hells’ Angel during the period before the biker wars, and my great uncle was a beatnik and poet in the local scene.
When I walk down King Street, I feel the ghosts of the past walking with me, reflected as much in the windows of gentrified shops and high-rises as they are in the Southern Ontarian red brick buildings. I feel connected on an intrinsic level to everybody I pass, from my unhoused neighbours who I try to do my best with to the Oktoberfest tourists in lederhosen coming out of the Walper that I can’t help but roll my eyes at.
Kitchener is not just the place where I live, it is my home, and I have, somehow, never once felt the classic feeling of hating my hometown.
That is not to say it’s perfect here, far from it.
I love Kitchener, but it pains me, it hurts me. I and so many like me fight so hard for this city and yet time forgets us. Our stories are paved over, demolished, rebuilt and gentrified. All the times we’ve laughed in these streets, we’ve lived in these streets, we’ve cried in these streets, all the people who have bled and died in these streets. I seek to memorialize them in all I do, and so should you.
Record everything, take inventory of the graffiti you see, make connections and fall in love with strangers, swap stories, go to events. Make the most of your short time in this wonderful and weird city. What’s the worst that could happen? Even if you make history, you’ll be drowned out by the sound of a passing ION train soon enough.
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