Do you ever look back at a particular teacher, class, or year of schooling, and identify that as where you learned the most in all your formative years?

For me, that had to be Grade 7, and the teacher had to be Mr. Montgomery.

Mrs. Withers is probably 1A here, since I had her for home-room in both Grade-5 and Grade-8, so let’s not sell her short!

But Mr. Montgomery was the first male teacher I ever had for home-room, and for an impressionable 12-year-old child, that was enough to make a difference on its own.

Mr. Montgomery was unorthodox, and truly an “outside the box” teacher, as his methods were different, but he also encouraged us to think in different ways.  In math class, he put us in different “teams” of five students, and every lesson for a month was essentially a quiz-show format, with points, winners – and trades.  Yes, we could trade players to different teams, and it kept us on our toes, got our competitive juices flowing, and made us want to learn, and thus absorb the material.

He also had students grade each other’s work.  For each project and presentation during a particular course, there would be a panel of three students, which he called, “adjudicators,” who would be responsible for voting on a grade, which would, along with his grade, combine to provide that student’s work with an overall mark.

The biggest project I worked on in 1992 was in history class, when I put together a project on Napoleon.  I had no idea what, or who, I would study for this project, and I was sitting in the corner of the room, sulking, as every other student had picked his or her subject, when Mr. Montgomery passed by and thew a National Geographic at me and said, “Fleming – check this guy out.  You might like him.  You have a few things in common; you both know how to move armies, and you’re the same height.”

On the cover of the glossy, yellow magazine was Napoleon Bonaparte.

I don’t know if I ever worked so hard on a project in public school.

I took a 4 x 6 sheet of plywood and with a lot of plasticine (do schools even have this anymore?) made a scaled reproduction of Napoleon’s Europe at the height of his power, using little flags for each battle (that I got at a Mexican food restaurant – it’s all coming back to me now…), and the colour red for the major movement of his armies.

After my presentation, Mr. Montgomery regaled me with praise, and told me his mark was a 98.  The three “adjudicators” came along and told me they had voted for an 81.  I’ll never forget Mr. Montgomery jump out of his chair and say, “No Bueno!  I’m going with my own on this one!”

Bueno.  That was his line.  One of them, anyways.

And what do I remember of Napoleon, from 26-years-ago?  As with many things you “learn” in school, I have essentially two take-aways:
1) The Napoleon complex
2) The phrase, “You’ve met your Waterloo.”

That’s about it.

But that’s not bad, considering I have no idea what a parabola is, or how to take a derivative, or even how to multiply a binomial  First, Outer, Inner, Last.  “FOIL,” as I recall.  So I know the acronym, but not how to do it…

Well, thanks for allowing me to take you down (my) memory lane.

Every time I’ve heard the word “Waterloo” since 1992, I’ve thought of Napoleon.

And yes, I thought my title of today’s blog post was witty, even if I do not think Toronto has met its Waterloo.

There was an article in Wednesday’s Financial Post that doesn’t look like it got much readership; as I write this at 11:58pm on Wednesday night, the article has exactly one comment.  That’s rather telling.  An article about a hair in a mole on Kyle Jenner’s ankle will get tens of thousands of comments, but perhaps I’m just boring and out of touch with reality.

The article: “Buyers of New Condos Get Twice The Space In Waterloo As In Toronto”

Now just to get the cynicism out of the way early, I should note here that the title could have read, “Buyers get twice the amount of granite counters for the same price as marble,” or just about anything else that compares two different products or services.  “You get twice as drunk drinking 28% alcohol peach schnapps as you do drinking the same amount of 14% red wine.”

No kidding.

But I guess what interests me here, aside from the basic mathematical equation, is the notion of condo buyers in Waterloo.

Even more interesting is the notion of pre-construction condo buyers in Waterloo, which tells me it’s not just residents of the city that are buying, but rather investors as well.  And on that note, and at the risk of sounding ignorant here, I can tell you that the names on the listings for most of the condo assignment sales on MLS…………sound like foreign investors.  So take me to task on that, if you want.  But there’s no other way of saying it.

So what do you get in Waterloo for your money?

It’s funny, because looking at these listings, I basically see Toronto ten years ago.

How about this one:

That’s a 527 square foot, 1-bed, 1-bath, for $272,000.

I haven’t sold a condo in Toronto for $272,000 or less since August of 2009.  And yes, I looked it up.

Also worth noting is that the maintenance fees are $0.26 per square foot, which is also half of what you’d expect to pay in Toronto.

But if you know the campus around Waterloo, and you know Spruce Street, then you know this area has turned into a student ghetto.

I chatted with a friend today who went to Laurier University, and who has been back to Waterloo many times over the years, who told me that condos like this are “basically like owning a single-occupant dorm room in student housing, albeit much larger, with a kitchen, and not as many people peeing in the hallways.”

I used to frequent this area circa 2002, and I personally witnessed (and wrote about on my blog years and years ago too) the massive development that was going on in the student ghettos.  The house in which I used to stay at 18 Ezra Avenue still stands today, but the other side of the street, which used to be small (and highly illegal) student residences are now long gone, and massive 5-storey, 20-unit (each 4-bedrooms) buildings stand in their place.

It seems as though the trend to build multiplexes in place of bungalows has fallen by the wayside, and replaced with a new trend toward building much larger condominiums.

If you’re not a fan of the “student dorm condo” idea, here’s something that will likely still be primarily inhabited by students, but isn’t actually referred to as student housing:

At 543 square feet, this is a cool $552 per square foot, again with very low fees.

No parking, no locker, but a 25th floor view, and steps to Laurier.

These rent for $1,200 – $1,300 per month, so the yield is higher than what you’d find in Toronto.

Now do you want to see something crazy?

Check this out:

That’s a five-bedroom, five-bathroom condo.

Who ever heard of such a thing?

Over 2,500 square feet, and currently rented for $3,850/month.  The maintenance fees are $0.25/sqft.

You know, I don’t want to sound like a hindsight-thinker, but I remember looking at houses up in the Waterloo student ghetto in 2005.  I looked at a 5-bedroom house on Ezra Avenue, up the street from where I used to stay, that was probably on something like a 50 x 200 foot lot, for $330,000.

Now we’re seeing 5-bedroom condos almost double the price of that house.

But the same could be said of just about anything we see in Toronto.

That’s the real estate market in the Golden Horseshoe, whether it’s Toronto, or Waterloo.

I would argue it’s a misconception that people could actually commute from Waterloo to Toronto every day for work, and thus I’d be inclined to argue that the Waterloo real estate market is not taking off because of new residents, who can’t afford to live in Toronto, but rather because of investors, not in full, but by and large.

Yes, there is a Go Train that leaves the University of Waterloo in the morning and runs to Union Station, but it takes over 2 1/2 hours.  That’s not commuting.

And yes, Metrolinx has a $43 Billion expansion planned, as the Financial Post article details above, but can that actually make Kitchener-Waterloo a viable place of residence for those working in Toronto?

Waterloo is a major hub in the Information Technology field, and from what I understand, the Artificial Intelligence companies aren’t coming to Toronto – they’re in Waterloo.  The city used to be known as the Blackberry capital of the world, but those days are gone.  Are IT and AI large enough players to have a significant impact on the number of jobs, number of residents, and thus number of new condominiums built?