Waterloo, Ontario - The Best Place to Find Jobs in Canada

I have been going to the city of Waterloo monthly for the past few years working with the immigrant community, assisting them with some of their concerns and helping them to settle and get adjusted to this new country.

As with any new immigrants, their immediate and number one concerns understandably is finding employment and securing a source of reliable income. I have always been hosted at people's houses and I simply come and go during my monthly visit to Waterloo, never really had the opportunity to get to know the city.  However, this time, I decided to decline staying as a house guest and stay on my own so that I could have more free time to roam and discover the city.

What I found is a very vibrant city with two universities and a community college - University of Waterloo, Laurier University and Conestoga College. This is uncommon for a medium size Canadian city to have two universities located within the same city.

University of Waterloo is one of the most famous universities in Canada and its admission criteria is one of the toughest because of its excellent co-op program, research, Math and Computer Science Program. I remember in the 1970's when I took my first computer program, my professor told me the first computer language - C language, was developed by the Computer Dept. at Waterloo University.  R.I.M. - Research in Motion, a Waterloo founded and based company,  invented the Blackberry and was the first one to create and market its technology of instant messaging and retrieval in the world!

Besides the high tech companies, there are also many big finance and insurance companies such as Manulife  that has chosen Waterloo as the location for its headquarter employing hundreds of professional and office workers there.

In my past experience of meeting people in Kitchener/Waterloo,  it appears that new immigrants with a reasonable command of English and some IT or professional skills such as accounting could easily land a technical/ or professional job in this southern Ontario city.  Amid all these talks of difficult economic times and high unemployment rate in the US,  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that one of my volunteer parents - a new immigrant who just landed here during my 2 weeks of VBS camp, with a little bit of English, immediately landed a job and started working! 

This was a bit of good economic news! I am delighted to know that there are jobs out there for job seekers and that it's not all gloom and doom in the job market!

Kitchener-Waterloo is a clean, safe, friendly community with a high standard of living and a tradition of tolerance among people of diverse backgrounds. Settled by German-speaking immigrants from Pennsylvania and Europe in the 19th century.  The heritage and influence of German culture are evident in Kitchener-Waterloo where  Oktoberfest has been celebrated throughout the Waterloo region in the fall. It is a great  multicultural city with residents from all parts of the world, and a great place to raise a young family!


R.T.
August 3, 2012