CAMBRIDGE DEBATES LRT EXPANSION

On Nov. 19, 2025, the Waterloo Regional Council officially approved the 17-kilometre extension of the Light Rail Transit (LRT) route to Cambridge, directly connecting the tri-cities.   

The extension will involve new LRT stations in Sportsworld, Preston, Pinebush, Cambridge Centre Mall, Can-Amera Parkway, Delta Centre and Galt. Once  complete, trains are expected to run every seven minutes, with a roughly  29-minute trip from Fairway Station to downtown Galt.   

On Nov. 4, members of the Sustainability, Infrastructure and Development committee voted 15 to 1 in favour of full Stage 2 LRT extension, with Cambridge Mayor Jan Liggett the only member voting against.  

“The council’s decision represents a major step in delivering the original vision for rapid transit, which was a continuous connection from Waterloo to Kitchener to Cambridge,” Karen Redman, Chair of the Region of Waterloo regional council, said.  

“This will shape the future of Waterloo Region as a great place to live, work and play, and extend the benefits of Light Rail Transit to residents of Cambridge,” she said.  

Some Cambridge councillors, however, raised concerns about the project. Helen Schwery, the ward one Cambridge city councillor, argued the project should have been put to a referendum.   

“I am opposed to any large project that moves forward without proper and broad input from residents. […] The feedback I have heard, along with what other councillors and the mayor have heard, shows that many residents do not support this project,” Schwery said.  

While a major survey of Waterloo Region residents found that 78 per cent of the 2,500 respondents were in favour of extending the LRT to downtown Cambridge, Schwery also questioned the survey’s veracity.  

“The recent survey of 2,500 people carries limited weight, especially when only about half of the respondents were from Cambridge. A sample that small cannot reflect the views of a city our size,” Schwery said.  

She argued the project funds would be better spent improving transit connections to nearby cities, such as Guelph, Mississauga and Toronto.   

Other Cambridge councillors have a more favourable opinion of the expansion.  

“The LRT is an unparalleled social and economic development creation machine. It’s an unparalleled tool to revitalize a city and take it into the future,” Scott Hamilton, ward seven Cambridge city councillor, said.  

The impact of the LRT in Waterloo and Kitchener has been broadly positive. According to the Waterloo Region Council, Stage 1 LRT led to $5.25 billion in development along the Central Transit Corridor, with more than 22,000 new homes built near the corridor between 2011 and 2024.   

Former councilor Rob Deutschmann previously noted that the LRT expansion could draw between $5 to 10 billion in private investment along the area, according to the  Cambridge Chamber of Commerce estimates.  

Plans for LRT extension to Cambridge goes back several years. LRT Stage 2 was officially announced in June 2019 but has since been subject to significant delays.   

In 2024, Manager of Rapid Transit Coordination Matthew O’Neil said in an interview with Mike Farwell that he expects construction to begin in 2032 at the earliest. Regional staff must first secure full project funding from both the provincial and federal governments.  

More details on the project can be found at the Engage Waterloo Region website.  

#cambridgeCentreMall #cambridgeChamberOfCommerce #canAmeraParkway #deltaCentre #DowntownGalt #engageWaterlooRegion #Galt #JoshMiltonBell #LRT #managerOfRapidTransit

TURNING IT UP UNDER THE BRIDGE WITH JESS NUNES

The most recent Under the Bridge (UtB) event took place on Aug. 5, from 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. The community-driven event series is free, with suggested donations of $10 per person, and is open to attendees of all ages. Local DJ’s play energetic sets in a variety of genres, from house to trance to afrobeats.  

UtB is organised by Jess Nunes, a DJ and musician. Nunes began putting on the events in May 2023, inviting her Instagram followers to the free event.   

“There were only nine attendees that showed up,” Nunes said. “And then it just grew and grew. Even the following dance, we had twenty or so.”   

By August of that year, they had almost two hundred attendees.  

Nunes is an avid cyclist, first discovering the bridge while cycling a popular trail. The natural beauty of the surroundings—and a striking piece of graffiti, reading “Live Unlike Another”, inspired Nunes.  

“I just sort of felt that, you know, we are living unlike another. We’re going to do something outside of the mould of this Southern Ontario grind that we all feel stuck in,” she said.  

Nunes credits the space with giving UtB its unique energy and spirit.   

“If it’s raining, we’re still protected by the bridge. The bridge itself is symbolic, it’s protection of the community,” she said.  

The renegade, inclusive component of putting on donation-based dance events under a public bridge undoubtedly informs UtB’s communal atmosphere.   

Nunes draws comparison with the original notion of raves in the 80s and 90s, grassroots events held in abandoned factories and open fields that encouraged free expression. This exciting, alternative use of public space has been central for UtB’s appeal.  

Initially Nunes did not apply for a permit for UtB, believing that Kitchener council would not allow the events to go forward.   

“They don’t want us to express ourselves in these ways. This is me sticking it to the man and saying: look what I can do,” she said.  

Nunes has a deep appreciation of the transformative effect of music—she originally moved to Kitchener in 2014 to study Music Therapy at Wilfrid Laurier University. Coming from Thunder Bay, Nunes was initially surprised by the cultural conformity of the music scene in KW.  

Gradually however—especially since the pandemic—she has seen community-driven events, with alternative forms of music, become more active and popular.  

Nunes has been overwhelmed by the impact of the UtB and believes the positive energy the event series has brought to the community has been brought back.  

“I just want to inspire people, even though you feel down and out—our culture here is just so fast paced, and we’re not really taking time to break out of moods, think for ourselves. I use Under the Bridge as propulsion towards this, getting through the adversity—we’re reaching for the stars,” Nunes said.  

“Some amazing things have happened since I created Under the Bridge…I found my father after 35 years of not knowing who he was…He came to his first Under the Bridge last August,” she continued.   

The Aug. 5 event landed on Nune’s son birthday—attendees are invited to dress up in animal costumes for the event.   

“It’s just an opportunity to get silly,” Nunes said. “I usually like circus acts and stuff like that for the kids. And like, I would like to celebrate my son’s birthday, and he likes to be an astronaut every year…I love to see people get dressed up.”  

The Aug. 5 show began with a Magic Show and the DJ lineup included Nunes, Jonny Rocha, Robin Green, Jacobilly, Uncle Doobie and Arsh. A sound installation from local artist Important Hair, titled Used Classical Records, will be played in full, while vendors showcase and sell their artwork.   

For more information, visit @Underthebridge_dance on Instagram.  

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ION EXTENSION DELAYED

The future of ION extension to the city of Cambridge remains uncertain. 

The Region of Waterloo council originally approved the Light Rail Transit (LRT) ION system in 2009. It was to be a link across Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge, with a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) linking Kitchener and Cambridge. 

Plans for Stage 2 ION, bringing the LRT transport system from Fairway Station in Kitchener through the urban centres of Cambridge to downtown Galt, were officially announced in June 2019, but the project has since been subject to significant delays. 

A report to Cambridge City Council in 2023, estimated the expansion cost at $4.5 billion, a number that had nearly tripled since 2021. In June 2024, Matthew O’Neil, manager of Rapid Transit Coordination at the Region of Waterloo, said he expected construction to begin in 2032, seven years later than initial estimates. 

On Apr. 3, Grand River Transit (GRT) revealed their ten-year business plan, which made no reference to Stage 2 ION expansion. 

Councillors expressed frustration with the continued ambiguity surrounding the project. On The Mike Farwell Show on 570 NewsRadio Kitchener, former Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig was asked if Cambridge is being shortchanged on transit. 

“Of course we are,” he said. “We don’t have [an] LRT, we don’t have a GO train, and we’re paying for the LRT in KW […] and we’re wondering when is ours going to come to the city of Cambridge?” 

Stage 2 ION plans were thrown into further doubt on May 9, when Cambridge Mayor Jan Liggett endorsed the notion of rapid bus transit over LRT expansion. In a Cambridge council meeting, Liggett mentioned the option was raised by Waterloo Region council staff members that day. 

“I know that’s earth-shattering news, but that was an open session of regional council today,” she said. 

Liggett went on to say that the $4.5 billion cost of LRT expansion is not a realistic prospect. 

“That’s an impossibility. We don’t have that much money in our budget in any given five-year span to put towards something like this,” she said. 

The impact of the LRT in Waterloo and Kitchener has been positive. In 2023, $429 million in new building permits were issued in land along the LRT line. A growing percentage of the region’s population are reportedly moving to locations within a 10-minute walk of an LRT stop. 

Cambridge councillors in favour of the expansion believe that it would have a significant impact on city rejuvenation.  

“The ION expansion would have a positive impact on private investment and city rejuvenation. Every report has predicted this, and we have seen firsthand how this happened for Kitchener and Waterloo along the ION Stage one1,” Pam Wolf, Cambridge city councillor, said in a statement. 

Former councillor Rob Deutschmann noted the ION expansion could attract $5-10 billion in private investments along the area, according to Cambridge Chamber of Commerce estimates. 

The Region of Waterloo council have confirmed that nothing has been finalised yet, with the Initial Business Case for Stage 2 ION to be presented to Cambridge City council in November. 

#busRapidTransit #Cambridge #cambridgeCityCouncil #CityOfCambridge #DougCraig #extension #futureOfIon #initialBusinessCase #ION #IONExtension #JanLiggett #JoshMiltonBell #KatWex #kitchener #lightRailTransit #localTransit #LRT #MatthewONeil #mikeFarwellShow #november #pamWolf #publicTransit #publicTransport #RobDeutschmann #waterloo

GALT HOSTS FIRST CAMBRIDGE JAZZ FESTIVAL

The first Cambridge Jazz Festival was held on Sunday, Apr. 27 in Galt’s historic Tapestry Hall.  

Cambridge Jazz Festival, and its forerunner, Galt Jazz, are the brainchild of Cambridge residents Dave and Ruth Ottenbrite. The Ottenbrites began working on Galt Jazz during the COVID-19 pandemic in an effort to invigorate the cultural landscape of their new hometown. 

On the last Sunday of every month, Galt’s Main Street is shut down for a few hours (taking place indoors during the winter months), and local musicians perform crowd-pleasing jazz numbers for the Cambridge public. Beginning in May 2022, these events quickly grew in popularity—ultimately culminating in this day-length festival. 

The festival began at 1 p.m. with Tim Louis, jazz singer, pianist and the Member of Parliament for Kitchener-Conestoga. Louis had a bemused, self-deprecating stage-presence—his seven-piece band played a mixture of popular crowd-pleasers and wistful ballads. One song interpolated a Justin Bieber melody, a disclosure met with disgruntled murmurs from the audience.  

As Dave Ottenbrite acknowledged, Galt may not be the most traditional jazz market.  

“Some people think they hate jazz, but they don’t understand what jazz is,” he said. “People who think they hate jazz can tell you exactly what jazz is in ten words, whereas people who love jazz can’t tell you what it is, because there’s 50 kinds of jazz, one hundred.” 

This variety was on full display with the second act: Red Hot Ramble, a New Orleans-inspired blues group. Despite an initially cool reception, their lively trombone solos and stomp-clap hooks quickly revitalized the crowd’s energy. The performance culminated in the band parading across the auditorium Mardi Gras-style—a ramshackle conga line with parasols and beads flung through the air.   

The event is a labour of love. Galt Jazz & Cambridge Jazz festival are non-profit events, with a portion of the tickets sales going towards local food banks—in the three years of Galt Jazz they have raised over $10,000. 

The core ethos of the Ottenbrites’ project is revitalization. 

“We’re aiming to revitalise the downtown core [of Galt]. To bring people downtown to make them understand it is safe. [Galt Jazz is] a soapbox to do positive things, rather than sow anger and division.” Ottenbrite said. 

Amidst this challenging time for touring artists, the Ottenbrites are committed to giving musicians badly needed places to play. 

Heather Bambrick, Juno-nominated singer, Jazz FM.91 radio host and the festival’s MC, said creating business and art together is always a challenge, and one that has only gotten harder since the pandemic and subsequent cost-of-living crisis.  

“People got very comfortable with being home and just doing their own thing […] The hardest part is just getting people away from the thought of staying home, not doing anything [to] go out of pocket,” she said. 

The final act of the night was the biggest name of the lineup: Pretzel Logic, a raucous Steely Dan tribute band. This was the absolute inverse end of the jazz spectrum from the big-band show-tunes; a luscious fusion sound of jazz, funk and rock. The nine-piece group pulled no punches—their cosmic wall-of-sound sent the older members of the audience shuffling to the back or fleeing the hall altogether. 

Throughout the festival, Dave Ottenbrite could be spotted roaming the aisles, taking in the atmosphere. Beaming attendees constantly approached to express their thanks and appreciation for the event. 

While Dave was reluctant to discuss any definitive plans for future festivals, festivalgoers expressed an appetite for more. Cambridge resident Papa Ledge heard about the festival through a promotion on Jazz FM.91.   

“In thirty-five years, I haven’t seen anything like this before. […] I think this could be the start of something big,” he said. 

#Blues #Cambridge #DaceOttenbrite #Galt #GaltJazzFestival #HeatherBambrick #jazz #JoshMiltonBell #LocalArt #localMusic #LocalMusician #PapaLedge #PretzelLogic #RedHotRamble #RuthOttenbrite #SangjunHan #TimLouis

ALL CARS ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Coming from the UK to participate in the Year Abroad program at University of Waterloo, I was struck by this unmistakable otherness of Canadian culture to my own.  

While I’d expected a certain weirdness from the culture shock, I assumed with all of us living in the globalised West. These differences would be trivial and quaint: perhaps a nationwide lust for maple syrup or flannel-clad lumberjacks on every street corner.   

But North America loves cars. It loves great four-lane, six-lane highways that stretch beyond the horizon and vast concrete jungles that own the cultural imagination. The 401 is a living, breathing animal, an all-consuming fixation for commuters and provincial officials alike. Living here now for over a year, I’ve begun to feel that this factors into how we occupy shared space. It alienates people from their community; from the inherent possibilities of good public transport, and ultimately, from themselves.

In the UK, cities are usually much older, and therefore more walkable than in North America.

Downtowns and main streets prioritize pedestrians over drivers the roads are often cordoned off with people free to walk unimpeded. From my experience, this makes cities feel denser, more texture not just transitionary places between different businesses.  

Room to loiter, to exist in a public space without hurrying on, opens broader connection possibilities. Coming to Waterloo for the first time, I was struck by how strictly functional King St. felt, just a rigid street of central businesses and pavement solely used to get between them, with loud, busy roads like Bridgeport and Erb interrupting the flow.  

While I’ve grown to appreciate the parks in the city for offering a sense of community and interconnection, it is not quite the same. Downtown Cambridge’s Galt is a more extreme example, with transport trucks ceaselessly roaring through the main street. This sensorial, overwhelming experience becomes commonplace, but if trucks were rerouted away from the centre of Galt, I feel that people would be much more comfortable breathing freely, lingering and connecting with each other.  

In much the same way as people-first cities, public transport between cities enhances the possibilities for human interconnection. It also connects economies, allowing wider distribution of wealth between spaces for us poor car-less souls.  

Coming over to Canada, I naively assumed that Greyhound buses of legend would proliferate. In the face of motor vehicles’ tyranny over the nation, there would always be easy access to coaches, the capacity to get between central cities and more obscure spots in the outer regions. I liked the iconography of Greyhound buses: they seemed to symbolise the raw opportunity for travel and new experience on offer in North America.  

Hitchhiking might be dead, but at least you can travel coast to coast on a dinky little bus if you are so inclined.  

This is no longer the case. Under the strain of pandemic lockdowns, on May 13, 2021, Greyhound Canada completely ceased operations, with the only remaining buses running cross-border to the US. I find this tragic—with their closing, the ability to affordably travel throughout Canada without relying solely on cars has vanished. While other companies like Flixbus offer travel between major cities, they do not offer the same opportunity to access more peripheral cities, the nooks and crannies of the nation. In my eyes, I see thousands of strands of connective tissue, the lines of travel possible through public transport extinguished. When travel becomes a private affair, only accessible through the confines of a private vehicle, the strands are wiped away and we all suffer.   

To some extent, communal ridesharing manages to fill this void, with there being large Facebook groups of drivers devoted to ridesharing. I have had my share of harrowing carshares, travelling from Waterloo to Quebec City with three German students, at once a vivid bonding experience and bleak endurance test. Nonetheless, to me, the widespread prevalence of car-sharing appears less as an independent phenomenon than as a strained response to the absence of affordable intercity public transport.  

The lack of consistent public transport between Southern Ontario cities is perplexing—I remain baffled that there are no direct trains between Kitchener and Toronto on the weekends. The infrastructure exists to make this happen given that they run regularly for commuters on weekdays, and the weekend buses are typically full of anxious students, so there is an evident demand. To me, the fact that this short route between two of Canada’s largest cities lacks a direct train route two days a week, suggesting a systematic prioritization of private travel and the interests of the auto industry over the shared value of public transport.   

Though this might read like a rant, I promise I did not construct this entire article just to voice my frustration with this one local issue. These are just some scattered reflections on the impact of car-centric cities and public spaces that don’t engage the potential capacity for connection. Canada may be an immensely large country, especially compared to England, but consistent and affordable public transport to travel between major cities seems like a very achievable, even basic expectation. As the nation’s population continues to swell, and vast sums are continually pumped into the highways, prioritizing pedestrian-friendly cities and stronger public transport might offer a  more connected vision of the future. 

#401 #community #greyhound #Immigration #JoshMiltonBell #KatWexPhoto #UK #universityOfWaterloo #urbanPlanning #walkableCities