

The life, death, and rebirth of BlackBerry’s hometown - pallian
http://fusion.net/story/45438/the-life-death-and-rebirth-of-blackberrys-hometown/

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theluketaylor
"Waterloo was never the most obvious tech hub... That changed in 1984, when
Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregan, two engineering students at the University
of Waterloo, started a company to develop a wireless data transmission
device."

The author didn't do enough research about waterloo. It was an obvious tech
hub way back in the 50s, from the moment UW added an engineering faculty. It
was cemented as the place for Canadian computer science when math was made
it's own faculty and the fledgling school had one of the only computers in the
whole country.

While RIM is the best known, it was hardly the first successful startup
fostered straight out of UW. It has always churned out startups and spin off
companies, long before startup culture was a thing. Engineering professors and
students had long been encouraged to take leave to develop commercial products
well before the founding of RIM.

The article also skims over a huge reason Waterloo region didn't slide into
depression when RIM faltered: it was the icing on the economic cake, not the
main batter. The universities remained strong, as did the true economic base,
the insurance giants. Lots of companies, some new players and other
established tech giants, have scrambled to add new icing but the basic makeup
of the region has hardly changed.

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jszymborski
"Compared to Silicon Valley, Canada’s technology industry has always been low-
key and workmanlike. There aren’t any Ubers here, companies that transform
entire industries in highly obvious ways. Instead, the start-up landscape is
dotted with companies that have dull but necessary functions."

It's not quite Silicon Valley, but Montreal's (and Toronto's) start-up scene
is anything but dull.

