Wilhelmine "Minnie" Ahrens was born April 26, 1855 in Kitchener, Ontario to parents Charles Andrew Ahrens and Henrietta Charlotte Roth. She married Ferdinand Von Ende November 12, 1891 and the couple lived in Preston, Ontario. Minnie died May 17, 1933 and is buried in Preston with her husband. who died October 27, 1935.

Susanne von Harpe (nee Baroness von Stackelberg) was born in what is now Tartu, Estonia in 1914. After school she worked in farming and housekeeping and In 1935 she married Ulrich von Harpe. In 1940 the family fled to Germany after Russian troops had occupied Estonia, settling in Schroda. On January 20, 1945 Susanne, Ulrich and their children fled West ultimately to Dotzum. On December 7, 1951 the family sailed to Canada arriving on December 23, and taking the train to their farm in Linwood, Ontario. Susanne spent many years traveling with her husband who was a sailor, and enjoyed painting and writing. Susanne died July 29th, 2008.

The Wagners and Hailers were prominent early settler families in Waterloo County, Ontario, as were the Staebler, Biehn/Bean and Breithaupt families.

Gordon Wagner is the great grandson of Jacob Hailer and grandson of Louis Henry Wagner, who was a first cousin of Louis Jacob Breithaupt.

Born in German, Henry Wagner emigrated to Lyons, New York with his wife Anna Maria Eckhard (1796-1850) and son Jacob Wagner in 1840 where he established a farm.

Born in Siefersheim, German, Jacob emigrated to Lyons, New York, with his parents in 1840. He originally worked as a farmer and a cooper before beginning to preach at age 18 under the tutelage of Rev. Joseph Harlacher. Jacob married Margaret Hailer (1831-1918) and they had two living children, Rev. Louis Henry (1857-1945) and Catherine (b.1852).

Rev. Louis Henry Wagner was born April 11, 1857 in New York to Jacob Wagner and Margaret Hailer. After his father's death his mother re-married Daniel Biehn (Bean) and he was educated in primary school. At the age of 13 he was invited to move to Kitchener by his grandfather Jacob Hailer and his uncle Louis Breithaupt. Here he attended Berlin Central School, high school, and then apprenticed as a tanner under his uncle Louis. He later attended Northwestern College in Naperville, Illinois. In 1878 he returned to Kitchener and worked again for his uncle as a bookkeeper and salesman. In 1882 he began working as an itinerant preacher for the Evangelical Association. He married Mary Staebler (1859-1887) on May 20, 1884 and she died two weeks after giving birth to their only child, Louis. He re-married in 1889 to Sarah Lodema Moyer (1861-1941). Louis Henry would continue to preach in Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan until his death. He died in Kitchener on January 8, 1945 at the age of 87 and was buried in Mount Hope Cemetery.

James (Jim) William Saint George Walker was born on August 5, 1940, in Toronto, and grew up in Agincourt, Ontario. Walker received his Bachelor's degree in History from Trinity College at the University of Toronto (1962), his Master’s degree in History from the University of Waterloo (1967), and his Ph.D. in History from Dalhousie University (1973). In 1976, Walker published his Ph.D. dissertation under the title The Black Loyalists: the search for a promised land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783-1870 with Longman International Education, which he later republished with the University of Toronto Press in 1992 and 2017.

During his time as a student in the 1960s, Walker worked in a Gandhian ashram in India under the auspices of Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO) and he participated in the local support group for the US civil rights movement (“Friends of SNCC”) in Toronto. During Canada’s Centennial, he was Youth and Education Director for the Centennial International Development Programme. While at Dalhousie, Walker co-founded and taught the "Transition Year Program" designed to prepare African-Canadian and First Nations students for university entrance.

James Walker joined the University of Waterloo as a History professor in 1971. At the University of Waterloo, he created the first university-level course in African-Canadian History offered in Canada and Canada's first Public History graduate program; served as Chair of the Department of History (1981-1986); and taught courses in general History and Race relations, courses focused on Black Canadian and African History, and courses on Social History and Public History. During his research, teaching, and public speaker career his talks, publications, and courses focused on the history of African-Canadians, Canadian and international human rights, Racism in Canada, Race relations in Canada, Immigration, the Holocaust, and civil society and public history.

While in Waterloo, Walker co-founded and was a long-time board member of the Global Community Centre of Kitchener-Waterloo and has served on the boards of several NGOs with an international focus (including CUSO, the WUSC local committee, and the board of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute). Between 2003 and 2004, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council appointed Walker the Bora Laskin National Fellow in Human Rights Research. In 2013, Walker was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. And in 2016, he was invested as a Member of the Order of Canada.

In 2020, Walker retired from his professor role and remained as Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of Waterloo.

During his professional years, James Walker published numerous articles, book chapters, and books, including, among others:

• The Black Loyalists : The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, Longman and Dalhousie University Press, 1976 (1992, 2017).
• Racial discrimination in Canada: the Black experience, Canadian Historical Association, 1985.
• "Race," Rights and the Law in the Supreme Court of Canada: Historical Case Studies, The Osgoode Society and Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1997.
• Critical Mass: The Emergence of Global Civil Society, Centre for International Governance Innovation and Wilfrid Laurier University Press, co-authored with Andrew Thompson, 2008.
• “A Black Day in Court: ‘Race’ and Judging in R v RDS” in The African-Canadian Legal Odyssey, edited by Barrington Walker, Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History and University of Toronto Press, 2012.
• Burnley "Rocky" Jones : revolutionary : an autobiography, Fernwood Publishing, 2016.

Philip Walker spent 32 years at The Record, documenting the region of Waterloo. He was a photojournalist who created great photos of the region, capturing moments readers will remember. He took his last photos for the Record in 2014, when the physical demands of the job became too much.

Claire Wallace was a Canadian radio broadcaster and journalist, and one of the first women to broadcast nationally over the CBC. Born in Orangeville, Ont., she attended Branksome Hall and initially worked for The Toronto Star writing a column titled "Over the Teacups" which parlayed into, as radio show on station CFRB Toronto in 1935, called "Teatime topics." She joined CBC in 1936 and by 1942 she was hosting the thrice weekly show "They Tell Me." She married James C. Stutt in the same year. In 1946 she won the Beaver Award from Broadcaster Magazine as Canada's top woman commentator. Beginning in the 1940's she also became an advocate for women's rights, and could lay to claim to many "first woman to..." titles. In 1952 Claire returned to broadcasting on CFRB where should would continue for many years while writing books such as "Mind Your Manners", an etiquette guide, which was published in 1953. For several years, beginning in 1955, she ran the Claire Wallace Travel Bureau in Toronto taking tourists to such locations as China and Russia. Claire was also a member of many organizations including the Canadian Women's Press Club and the Heliconian Club for artists and worked actively to raise money for several charities. Claire died in 1968 in Toronto.

"The Walter Bean Grand River Community Trails Foundation is a non-profit organization led by a volunteer board of area citizens dedicated to the success of the project. The catalyst for the development of the Trail was the Kitchener-Waterloo Community Foundation whose directors voted in 1996 to provide $25,000.00 in seed money to initiate the project. Walter Bean was a business and community leader who believed in contributing to the welfare of area residents. He championed the vision of a public hiking trail along the Grand River. As Honourary Chair of The Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation, Walter challenged the Foundation to increase public accessibility to the river by building a trail along its length in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo.

Following Walter's death, his many friends took up his challenge and in 1998 formed The Walter Bean Grand River Community Trails Foundation. To make his vision a reality, this non-profit fundraising corporation has partnered with the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener, Waterloo and the Township of Woolwich to build and maintain a recreational trail. It would please Walter to see the co-operative spirit of community in building this legacy. When complete, the Walter Bean Grand River Trail will extend along 78 km of the 290-km Grand River. It will reach from the north end of Woolwich Township to the southern trailhead in Cambridge. Along its way, it will connect with many local municipal trails and the Trans Canada Trail."

John Walter, Jr. was a Canadian politician and businessman. The eldest of four children, he was born April 10, 1892 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to John and Caroline (nee Drier). He attended elementary school in Milwaukee and Detroit, Michigan before attending high school at the Crane Technical High School in Chicago, Illinois. He immigrated to Canada with his family in 1912 and worked alongside his father and brother as a manufacturer with the family company, John Walter & Sons. He married Olga Klehn, of Kitchener, on August 9, 1922. They lived for a time at 32 Fairview Avenue in Kitchener, Ontario.

In the 1930s Walter served first as Vice-President and later President of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F) party's Kitchener branch. He ran against and lost in the 1935 federal election to William Daum Euler. In addition to his affiliation with the C.C.F., Walter served as a Kitchener public school board trustee for nine years during the 1920s and 30s.

Walter died on April 17, 1978.

Alice Wanless was born Alice Philp in 1861. She married George A. Wanless on January 5, 1887 and resided in Kitchener, Ontario for a short time. She died November 27, 1955 in Edmonton, Alberta.

Adam Warnock was married to Stephanie Hespeler, who was the aunt of Stephanie Urbs. He was a merchant in Galt. He was born in Scotland on July 20, 1828. He died on August 29, 1902.

Margaret Cameron Washburn (nee Gillespie) was born ca. 1867. She married Clark Grant Washburn on October 27, 1890 and resided afterwards in Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario. She died in 1963.

Watfor is a character and cartoon strip created for The Chevron by Don Kerr in 1966. The character appeared in The Chevron until approximately April 1968.

Watfor was inspired by the Fortran computer program called WATFOR which was developed by a group of University of Waterloo undergraduates in 1965. Watfor lived in the campus pond in front of the Health Services Building. It is unclear exactly what type of character Watfor is. The character refers to itself as a tad, fish, troll, and pond denizen. It may be part computer, part fish. In the comic strips, Watfor commented on campus happenings. The character was also printed on some ephemeral items such as ribbons distributed to the Orientation Committee on campus in the late 1960s.

Don Kerr was a graduate student at the University of Waterloo in the department of design when he created Watfor. He had recently graduated from the University of Manitoba as an architect and came to Waterloo to further his studies, specifically around experimental colours and architectural illumination.

Cartooning was a hobby for Don Kerr. He created the FDU cartoon strip which ran in the University of Manitoba's newspaper, the Manitoban, as well as the Winnipeg Tribune. He also created Lapinette, a cartoon ad for the Bank of Montreal that ran in the majority of campus newspapers across Canada.

Don Kerr married Mary Robinson, a fellow graduate student in design, in the Conrad Grebel chapel on May 20, 1967. The wedding was featured in an article in The Chevron titled, "This doesn't very often happen: Watfor sees his father married." The article includes a photograph of Don Kerr and Mary Robinson at the wedding ceremony.

Homer Watson was born at Doon, Ontario in 1855 where he lived for 81 years. Early in his teens he was exhibiting his drawings at the annual fall fairs, held in surrounding communities. One of his earliest efforts, "The Pioneer Mill", appeared at the first exhibition of the Royal Canadian Academy and was purchased by the Marquis of Lorne for Queen Victoria. He took a prize in Montreal for his painting; was awarded a gold medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904; was elected as associate of the Royal Canadian Academy on the organization of that body in 1880; became full academician in 1882; elected president of the Canadian Art Club in 1907 and 1911; was president of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1918. He died in May 1936.

Mary Margaret Watson was born in Exeter, Devonshire, in England. Homer Ransford Watson and Roxanna "Roxa" Betchtel adopted her in December of 1907. She was their only living child. Mary Watson died on July 14, 1982, in Cambridge, Ontario.

Henrietta Josephine Cook was born on May 7, 1854 near Preston, Ontario to James Cook and Elizabeth Williams Cook. She married Jacob B. Weaver (1852-1932), lived in Kitchener, Ontario and died January 22, 1931.

Henry B. Weaver was born August 4, 1830 in Lancaster County, PA. He married twice and had 14 children by his first wife Hetty Rohrer Mosser (1833-1889). His second wife was Anna Martin Witmer (1826-1921). He died August 30, 1923.

Mayor of Kitchener from 1954 to 1955.

Marion Webster nee Murchie (1863-1952) was born to Charles and Marian Murchie (nee Hamilton) in Walton, Grey County, Ontario in 1863. By 1880 she was living in Grafton, North Dakota and working as a servant. She married Ardell Webster (September 21, 1858-June 1889). The two traveled to Angola in 1887 as missionaries with The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and settled in Bailundo. Ardell died in June of 1889, and Marion stayed on in Angola until her retirement in May 1933. She later worked at the Dondi mission in Catchiungo, and the Webster Memorial school there was named for her. In 1933 she returned to the United States and settled in Los Angeles with her sister Margaret. She died in Los Angeles on May 31, 1952.

Florence Weicker was a nurse and the first Lutheran Deaconess in Canada. She was born in Edmonton, Alberta on October 2, 1907 and moved to Kitchener with her family at the age of 13, where she became a member of St. Matthew's Church. She studied nursing at the Stratford General Hospital, graduating in 1932, after which time she worked as a nurse at the Freeport Sanitorium for a year and a half and as an industrial nurse Merchants Rubber for eight years. She studied at Waterloo College for a year, before going to Philadelphia where she worked with children at the Lutheran Settlement House, followed by two years of training at the Lutheran Deaconess House and School in Baltimore, graduating in May of 1947. The same year she returned to St. Matthew's Church in Kitchener, where she worked with refugees, youth groups and made regular hospital and nursing home visits. In addition to her work with the Lutheran Church, Weicker was a member of the K-W Quota Club, a board member of St. Monica's House, and a charter member of both the Sunnyside Auxiliary and the St. Leonard's Society.

Weicker died of cancer on June 16, 1977 and was buried at Saint Peter's Lutheran Cemetery in Kitchener.

Bernard Weil graduated from Sheridan College in 1981 in the program of Photography. He worked as a volunteer for The Mississauga News covering the local elections. He later took on full-time work as a darkroom technician with the publication after his graduation. He moved to the Kitchener-Waterloo Record (The Record), where he was working for a daily newspaper. In 1986, he won the photographer of the year award from the Ontario News Photographer's Association and went on to join The Toronto Star as a staff photographer.