Dare Foods Limited is a family-owned business based in Kitchener, Ontario. It manufactures cookies, crackers, candies and fine breads at its seven plants in Ontario, Quebec and South Carolina. Dare candies are made in Toronto and Milton, Ontario.

In 1889, Charles H. Doerr opened a grocery store on the corner of Breithaupt and Gzowski (now Weber) Streets in Berlin (now Kitchener, Ontario) that by 1892 had become a biscuit-manufacturing operation. In 1919 a larger bakery was built in Kitchener to replace the original plant and at the same time a line of candies was added. In 1942 the Kitchener plant was destroyed by a fire and in 1943 a smaller wartime replacement was constructed on a former flying field on the outskirts of Kitchener. A new office building was constructed in Kitchener in 1952. In 2003 a new Kitchener office building was constructed to preserve and highlight the original 1952 yellow-brick structure.

The company now known as Dare Foods Limited was originally known as the C.H. Doerr Co. When Charles H. Doerr died in 1941 his grandson, Carl M. Doerr, became President of the company and began an expansion program that introduced Dare products in more than 40 countries. In 1945 the company and family name was changed from “Doerr” to “Dare” creating The Dare Company, Limited, later renamed Dare Foods Limited. With the help of his sons Bryan and Graham, Carl Dare continued to guide Dare Foods Ltd. until 2002. In Nov. 2002 Fred Jacques was appointed as President, the first non-family member to head the company in 111 years. Bryan and Graham Dare remain co-chairmen of the company’s Board of Directors.

The business history of Dare Foods is complex: it has formed, acquired, merged and dissolved other companies and its own divisions over the years. One of Carl M. Doerr’s first expansion acquisitions was The Howe Candy Company in Hamilton, Ontario. Other acquisitions include Saratoga Products, St. Jacobs Canning Company, Mother Dell’s Bakeries, Dairy Maid Chocolates, Bremner Biscuit Co., Saputo/Culinar CFS.

In 1960 a sales office was opened in Montreal, establishing Les Aliments Dare Limitée, Dare’s selling and distributing organization in the Province of Quebec. The Western Division was established in 1962 with the opening of a bakery and sales office in North Surrey, Vancouver, B.C., serving British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

In 1954 The Dare Company, Limited was the first Canadian cookie company to use the new recloseable tin tie packages that had been used successfully in the coffee industry and which have become standard packaging in the cookie industry in Canada.

"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."

Alpha Delta Kappa is an honorary sorority for women educators, founded in 1947 by Agnes Shipman Robertson, Marie Neal, Marion Southall and Hattie Poppino. Their aim was to recognize and support the professional efforts of women educators. Now an international society with headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, Alpha Delta Kappa has more than 1800 chapters in the United States, Australia, Canada, Jamaica, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Ontario Alpha, Windsor, was the first chapter from outside the United States and received its charter in Sept. 30, 1957. Other Ontario chapters followed: Beta, 1958, based in Toronto and Gamma, in Windsor, in 1961. By 1964 Delta, Zeta and Epsilon Chapters had been formed. In October 1966 these six chapters met to form a provincial organization, and after becoming a "state" of Alpha Delta Kappa, continued to add chapters. By 1968 Eta, Theta, Iota and Kappa chapters had joined. In 1970-72 affiliation of Ontario chapters with American state chapters was dropped and Ontario was organized into three districts, with chapters reporting to the Provincial President. By 1980 twenty-two chapters had been organized, including two in Manitoba. Membership in Alpha Delta Kappa is by invitation only. To be eligible for membership a woman must be an educator actively engaged in teaching, administration or some other aspect of the teaching profession.

The Hespeler Furniture Company was started in 1901 in Hespeler, Ontario (now a part of Cambridge) by Mr. George A. Gruetzner, who was originally from Buffalo, N.Y. He worked for The Simpson Co. of Berlin (now Kitchener), Ont., first as a salesman and then as the manager of its factory in Berlin. When this company merged with the Canada Furniture Syndicate, Gruetzner established his own factory in Hespeler in 1901.
George Greutzner was active in the community, serving on the Parks Board, and then on Town Council. He was elected mayor of Hespeler in 1925 and served for five years. He died in 1949. (Source Waterloo Historical Society 37 (1949): 45.)

The Canadian Coalition on Acid Rain began in 1981 and for most of the 1980's was Canada’s largest environmental group. It played a central role in raising awareness of the acid rain issue, through advocacy, educational programmes and by lobbying the governments of both Canada and the United States for the passage of legislation resticting acid rain-causing emissions. With the passage of amendments to the U.S. Clean Air Act in 1990 the Coalition’s mandate was completed and the group disbanded. During the decade of its existence the Coalition was headed by Michael Perley and Adele Hurley, its executive co-ordinators and chief lobbyists. Starting in 1981 with 12 member groups representing tourism, naturalist and sportsmen’s associations, the CCAR maintained offices in both Toronto and Washington. Registered as a charitable organization in Canada, the CCAR was registered as a lobby group in the United States, and was the first-ever Canadian lobby group to be so registered in Washington. By 1991 the Coalition had grown to 58 member groups, representing over 2 million Canadians.
CCAR worked closely with the Canadian Acid Precipitation Foundation, a registered charitable organization created to carry out a variety of educational projects on the acid rain issue, and to support the educational work of the Coalition. The Foundation’s activities included extensive direct mail campaigns asking for private donations, the sale of merchandise, charitable dinners featuring such prominent speakers as Senator Edward Kennedy and Alan Gotleib (former Canadian ambassador to the United States), and the AirWatch monitoring project.

Dominion Woollens and Worsteds Ltd. came into Hespeler in 1928 when the company purchased the R. Forbes Company Ltd. mill at what is now Queen St. West in Cambridge. The company would operate in Hespeler until 1959 when it went into receivership and was purchased by Silknit. As the largest woollens and worsteds mill in the British colonies at the time, the factory played a large role in the history of Hespeler, at one time employing almost one third of all citizens of the village.

During and immediately after WWII the mill employed a large number of women employees from both the Hespeler area as well as those who were brought in to work from Newfoundland and Northern Ontario. These women lived in boarding houses or dormitories provided by the mill and many of them stayed in Hespeler after the war, forever changing the village.

Production ceased permanently at the mill in 1984 and one third of it was destroyed shortly afterward in a fire. Today the portion of the mill that still stands is rented by retail stores. In 1986 Kenneth McLaughlin and three graduate students began to conduct oral history interviews with workers from the mill who were still living in the region, including those women who came from Newfoundland and Northern Ontario.

The Grand River Conservation Authority is a corporate body governing the cooperative management of the Grand River watershed and its natural resources by municipalities, landowners and other organizations within the watershed. Formed in 1966 following the merging of the Grand River Conservation Commission and the Grand Valley Conservation Authority, the GRCA's origins date back to the 1930s.

In the early 1800s, the Grand River was a source of transportation, power and water for local communities. Settlement led to deforestation, intensive farming and urbanization, which began to hinder the natural cycles of the river. By the 1930s river conditions had become so severe that annual floods, drought and pollution were affecting public health and the economic development of the communities up and down the Grand.

Sponsored by the Grand Valley Boards of Trade and modeled on the fledging Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States, the "Grand River Conservation Commission Act" was passed by the Province of Ontario in 1932. The Grand River Conservation Commission (GRCC) was the first watershed management agency in Canada when it received its formal Letters Patent in August, 1934. The formation of the GRCC marked the first time local municipalities had banded together to address water management issues on a watershed scale. The founding partner municipalities were Brantford, Galt, Kitchener, Fergus and Caledonia. William Philip of Galt was the first chairman, and the commission's head office was in Brantford. Other municipalities soon joined the partnership.

In 1942 the commission completed the Shand Dam near Fergus, the first dam in Canada built for flood control, water supply and water quality purposes. This was followed by the Luther Marsh Dam in 1954 and the Conestogo Dam in 1958. Funding was shared between the federal and provincial governments, (each paid 37.5 per cent) and the local municipalities paid 25 per cent. The GRCC also planted more than two million trees and undertook some of the province's first large scale reforestation projects. The success of the commission, its watershed scope and municipal partnership model led to the Guelph Conference on Conservation in 1941, and the Conservation Authorities Act of Ontario in 1946. This new act led to the creation of 36 conservation authorities across the province.

In 1948, the Grand River watershed municipalities formed their own Grand Valley Conservation Authority (GVCA) under this new act. This new agency had extended powers in the 1950s, which allowed it to acquire many wetlands, forests and natural areas in the watershed. The GVCA also acquired park land for camping, swimming, fishing and canoeing including what would become the Elora Gorge, Rockwood, Pinehurst Lake and Byng Island.

Over time the GVCA's objectives began to parallel those of the GRCC and the two agencies merged in 1966 to form the Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA), which operates under the Conservation Authorities Act of Ontario. As a corporate body, through which municipalities work cooperatively to manage the water and natural resources in the watershed for everyone's benefit.

Victoria University is a federated college with the University of Toronto that provides secular studies in the liberal arts and sciences. It was founded in 1836 and named after Queen Victoria.

Successor to William & Thomson.

Atlantic Pattern Works was based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. They produced works such as plaques.