It’s strange to think that the rust bucket on the horizon of the photo above will no longer loom over Kitchener’s downtown. The Cedar Hill Water Tower is in the last stages of being torn down, and I can’t help but feel like this was a missed opportunity. It was one of the most distinctive parts of Kitchener’s skyline, seen from various points in the downtown. Approaching the core from the East on Charles Street, it gave a sense that Kitchener’s downtown might actually be historic. From the foot of Cedar Hill, near the new Farmers’ Market, it crowned the peak of Eby Street like a monument in Paris or Washington at the end of a long boulevard. And now it’s gone, the lot being turned into a community garden.

Couldn’t this 85 year old piece of infrastructure been revived as something else? Reclaimed as a monument, or even converted into the most incredible multi-level community garden you’ve ever seen? Not in Kitchener. Not in a city where the most historical parts of the downtown are the back alleys.

Anyways, a post about the final version of my thesis is coming soon! I’m a little late on that one, but I had to write about the water tower as soon as I saw this time-lapse video of the beautiful beast being dismantled over the past few months.