Date Published:
January 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Kitchener

Kitchener (formerly Berlin), a city in Waterloo county, Ontario, is on the Canadian National Railway, 60 miles west of Toronto, and has electric railway connection with Waterloo, Hespeler, and Preston. Settlers are said to have arrived at its site in 1799, but the first recorded settler was Joseph Schneider, from Pennsylvania, who reached the place where Kitchener now stands in either 1806 or 1807. The settlement was first known as Sand Hills and later as Mount Pleasant. A number of settlers came direct from Germany in 1830, and the name was changed to Berlin. Berlin was incorporated as a village in 1854, as a town in 1871, and as a city in 1912. During the World War the name was changed (1916) to Kitchener, after Field-Marshal Lord Kitchener, who was drowned at sea on June 5, 1916. Of recent years it has made rapid growth, largely due to the diversified manufacturing industries that have located in it - over 150 in all, some of them the largest of their kind in Canada. It has also developed into a distributing centre for a large area, and has over 40 wholesale or distributing houses. It has two high schools, a Roman Catholic college, a public library, and a daily evening newspaper (Record). See A. Stroh, Reminiscences (Waterloo Hist. Soc., 18th Report, 1930).

Source : W. Stewart WALLACE. Ed., The Encyclopedia of Canada, Vol. III, Toronto, University Associates of Canada, 1948, 396p., pp. 342-343.