dbd33

Guelph, northeast of the river, between Eramosa, Metcalfe and Elizabeth.

I don't know where Beechwood is or what's it's like. I've lived in Guelph, worked in Kitchener and Guelph, visited the others often,

The defining characteristics of the others are (imo):

St Jacobs, nice houses, relatively little in the way of new development, one house has a racing MGA in the driveway so there are some Brits. Religious place, centre for Mennonite religion.

Guelph, bit like Oxford. University town but with industry so not dependent on the school. Bit of a lefty organic vibe, lots of electric car charging points.

Elora, up itself. Disproportionately expensive. Nice gorge though.

Fergus, historically Scottish, has a highland games, nice core but increasingly hard to find as the sea of griege plastic houses seeps across the land. Lots of overflow residents from Guelph.

Be aware that highway 6 is nightmarishly slow and prone to white outs.


Guelph, perhaps K-W, I suspect the others are too small.


I should think they would make as much impact on your daily life in Guelph or K-W as the Rastafarians do in London. Handy to have around if you need building work done and can turn a blind eye to the child labour/lack of H&S aspects of their style.


Bohemianism in Kitchener is something I struggle to picture. There are some homeless people, drugs are available, the population is from all over the world. Edgy like Finchley rather than Camden, I'd say.


Well, yes, and a 1968 E-Type OTS in the garage, children en route to being doctors and lawyers and such and to be forever young. Me too.

dbd33

OP, please have a butcher's at the places listed on streetview and in Wikipedia, come back with your impressions, "too many bungalows", "hate all those swings in the park, they'll attract children", "I want more traffic", whatever, then we can refine our comments a bit.

Winterdiva

Join me on the adventure then !!

Winterdiva

Streetview trip to the places is being planned for tonite (Exciting stuff to do once the kids sleep). We love bungalows, parks, swings, less traffic/more traffic is fine too.

I'm worried paranoid about drugs, street violence, hate crimes (I'm from Indian descent, I look really Indian) and racism in schools.

dbd33

Hmmm, adventures with ladies from the internet have yielded mixed results for me.

HGerchikov

Siouxie

You might enjoy this on your recce trip - lots of Mennonite vendors, look for the horses and buggies parked outside!

https://stjacobs.com/Farmers-Market-...nformation.htm
There's some info on Mennonite culture in a link of the St. Jacobs website: https://stjacobs.com/Culture-Heritag...nite-Story.htm

HGerchikov

Winterdiva

Partially discharged

I went there a few times when I was in university. I recall one time having the hangover from hell and my girlfriend at the time coming by my apartment with her car and her wanting to go to the farmers market etc. The smell of all of the frying bacon in the place caused me to head outside for some fresh air before the waves of nausea subsided. Otherwise it was great

Partially discharged

Living in Waterloo or Guelph and being from Indian descent and looking Indian (is your ancestry from T & T or Guyana or actually India) won't cause any issues in either of those places. Most of Kitchener is the same although of the 3 Kitchener strikes me as the bit less progressive/international. Once you head out of town into the rural hinterlands you're heading to the land of 'Chinese and Canadian' food where chicken balls in red sauce is found

Waterloo itself due to the large university is quite international (especially Chinese and to a lesser extent Indian)

Winterdiva

My ancestry is from India. My sisters look mixed race - but my brother and I look Indian.

Atlantic Xpat

I miss the days of your blog...

dbd33

Well yes, I put meeting HGerchikov up there with meeting RussMeyerGirl.

dbd33

IMO,

drugs are a legitimate concern. Guelph station has an underpass that used to be open all day and used by many pedestrians. It's not now as too many people were using it as a place out of the weather to do drugs. There are "harm reduction" facilities all over town. One of my children was a drugs prosecutor for a while (elsewhere in Canada) and said that the department only pursued fentanyl cases; there are enough of those that meth, crack, heroin cases don't get considered. What I'd ask is where in the world are drugs not a legitimate concern?

Street violence is not a reasonable concern in Ontario. You can get shot in Toronto, as you can get stabbed in London, but that's easily avoidable by adults and avoidable by savvy youths. Only some clubs attract violence outside, only a subset of people get involved with serious violence.

I'm not Indian so I can't directly address being Indian in Guelph, or anywhere else. But someone asked on here a few years ago if it would be problematic for her family in Guelph due to her being white English and her partner being Indian, they were concerned about their children being bullied. They moved, I saw her a couple of years later, they'd just moved from a rented house to one they bought. She still has an acupuncture clinic near the Woolly. If you were visiting you could hunt her down for some first hand vaguely comparable experience.

Today I was at a project kick off meeting for a computer system. I suppose 20% of the people in the room looked Indian. I know some of them and they're from India, Pakistan (straggly beard and not eating a free lunch were a bit of a give away), Bangladesh and Kent (parents from the Punjab). Next to me was a woman dressed in salwar kaweez and a lot of gold jewellery, she could not have looked more stereotypically "affluent Indian" if she'd driven her Acura into the room. I didn't hear her speak, so I wouldn't like to guess where she was from, one tends to find out that people were born and raised here only when they're asked to curl or play ice hockey and they can do it. The thing is, almost everyone here accepts that the neighbour, the person at the next desk, the other kid in school, is from somewhere else; most places have a diverse population and everyone just gets on with it. The only exceptions I know are families with elderly parents who aren't going to learn English, they want to stay in Brampton or Markham or wherever it is that has a significant population of speakers of their language.

All of the above assuming you mean you look as if you could be from India, If you look like an American Indian that's a whole other game, in that case I'd say to look elsewhere.