Market Memories

The Waterloo Market, something which has been dear to me and my family for the past 30 years. However, recent events have inspired me to launch this blog.

I will be blunt, the Waterloo Market (not to be confused with the St. Jacobs Market across the street) has been suffering a death of a thousand cuts. I, along with many thousands of patrons of the market, as well as the dozens of vendors who have used the market for more than three decades have watched with sadness as the Waterloo Market has declined in recent years.

I do not want to assign blame, but it is difficult to watch the death of an institution, something which is a unique part of the fabric of Waterloo Region, without raising a note of protest or comment. For those locals who are not interested in the daytripping temptations of the St. Jacobs Market, the Waterloo Market was a place where we could get our week's groceries and visit with old friends, whether they were vendors or fellow customers. Lately, however, the vendors have become fewer and fewer, and the customers more so as their shopping lists became shorter and shorter to the point where there was no point in showing up anymore. The latest wave of vendors to leave, if the notices that we received as we picked up our groceries this week, will be a large one. What went wrong?

The Waterloo Market is not merely another piece of real estate, it is a community.

The intent of this blog is to create an oral history archive of the vendors and customers who patronized the market. This blog will also serve as a record of a legacy of a market which was founded as a reaction to changes at the Kitchener Market, and which became the envy of later market projects throughout the province.

In the age where we are encouraged to eat locally, this project will demonstrate that the people of Waterloo Region have been doing just that for decades.