Waterloo, Ontario in the context of "Greater Toronto Area"

The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on 404 hectares (998 acres) of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates three satellite campuses and four affiliated university colleges. The university offers academic programs administered by six faculties and thirteen faculty-based schools. Waterloo operates the largest post-secondary co-operative education program in the world, with over 20,000 undergraduate students enrolled in the university's co-op program. Waterloo is a member of the U15, a group of research-intensive universities in Canada.

The institution originates from the Waterloo College Associate Faculties, established on 4 April 1956; a semi-autonomous entity of Waterloo College, which was an affiliate of the University of Western Ontario. This entity formally separated from Waterloo College and was incorporated as a university with the passage of the University of Waterloo Act by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1959. It was established to fill the need to train engineers and technicians for Canada's growing postwar economy. It grew substantially over the next decade, adding a faculty of arts in 1960, and the College of Optometry of Ontario (now the School of Optometry and Vision Science), which moved from Toronto in 1967.

Waterloo Park is an urban park situated in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada on land within Block 2 of the Haldimand Tract. Spanning 44.9 hectares (111 acres) within the Uptown area of Waterloo, it opened in 1893 and is the oldest park in the city. Managed by the City of Waterloo, the park contains numerous recreational amenities including athletic fields, baseball diamonds, playgrounds, a skateboard park, and the Laurel and Trans Canada trails.

Also situated in the park are a refreshment stand called the Park Inn, the oldest log school house in the Region of Waterloo, the Eby Farmstead and Jacob Eby's farmhouse, which has been occupied by the Waterloo Potters' Workshop since 1967. Silver Lake, an artificial body of water created in 1816 following the damming of the Laurel Creek by Abraham Erb to power a grist mill, sits at the south end of the park. Beyond recreational and educational amenities, Waterloo Park is home to the Waterloo Tennis Club and the Laurier–Waterloo Park station (part of the Ion rapid transit system); the Perimeter Institute and the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery sit at the south end of the park, along Silver Lake.

Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU or simply Laurier) is a public university in Ontario, Canada, with campuses in Waterloo, Brantford and Milton. It is named in honour of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the seventh Prime Minister of Canada. A "multi-campus multi-community university", Laurier offers undergraduate and graduate programs in a variety of fields with over 17,000 full-time undergraduate students, over 1000 full-time graduate students, and nearly 4,000 part-time students as of late 2019. Laurier's varsity teams, known as the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks, compete in the West Conference of the Ontario University Athletics, affiliated with U Sports.

The Grand River, formerly known as the River Ouse, is a large river in Ontario, Canada. It lies along the western fringe of the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario which overlaps the eastern portion of southwestern Ontario, sometimes referred to as Midwestern Ontario, along the length of this river. From its source near Wareham, Ontario, it flows south through Grand Valley, Fergus, Elora, Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge, Paris, Brantford, Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River, Caledonia, and Cayuga before emptying into the north shore of Lake Erie south of Dunnville at Port Maitland. One of the scenic and spectacular features of the river is the falls and Gorge at Elora.

The Grand River is the largest river that is entirely within southern Ontario's boundaries. The river owes its size to the unusual fact that its source is relatively close to the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, yet it flows southwards to Lake Erie, rather than westward to the closer Lake Huron or northward to Georgian Bay (most southern Ontario rivers flow into the nearest Great Lake, which is why most of them are small), thus giving it more distance to take in more water from tributaries.