About Your Heritage Waterloo Region

What is Waterloo Region's "heritage"? Is it the German Mennonites? The British pioneers? The aboriginal people of the Six Nations? Does our heritage include newer cultural influences from Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, South America, the Middle East, or Eastern Europe? Or is it our industrial and corporate story: milling, Schneider's, insurance, or the Blackberry?

Yes.

Your Heritage Waterloo Region (YHWR) is about all of these things, and many more. It's about you, your neighbourhood, your community and organizations. Your Heritage Waterloo Region is a doorway to all the elements that give this Region a rich and complex flavour. Here, individuals and groups can explore every aspect of the unique spectrum of Waterloo Region, sharing their stories, ideas and reflections. Waterloo Region has many stories, from its founding by mainly Pennsylvania German and Scottish settlers, its rapid growth through multiple migrations, and its current status a powerhouse in leading edge Information Technology, Waterloo Region has become a complex, multicultural community with more than 65 languages spoken.

YHWR opens the doors to the cultural and architectural heritage through historic photo collections, oral histories, family stories and corporate histories, using features such as GPS and environmental applications, and blogs.

Your Heritage Waterloo Region is created with a life of its own -- it will grow continually, as new collections and archives are added to the fully searchable data base, and as individuals contribute stories, digital artifacts, and photographs. Students using YHWR can contribute their research; tourists visiting Waterloo are invited to provide their digital photos; cultural groups can use the site to enhance the life of their population and share their experiences and stories with the broader community.

Through this kind of ultimate interactivity, YHWR will live and breathe; at the same time, the distinguished academic experts and technological experts that are part of this project will ensure that data available on the site will be identified as to academic trustworthiness, from anecdotal to authoritative - an invaluable asset for historical researchers.

Explore Your Heritage Waterloo Region. Learn from it. Contribute to it. Help build this accessible, authoritative, flexible heritage model.