Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo (formerly Waterloo County). Waterloo is situated about west-southwest of Toronto. Due to the close proximity of the city of Kitchener to Waterloo, the two together are often referred to as "Kitchener–Waterloo", "K-W" or "The Twin Cities". While several unsuccessful attempts to combine the municipalities of Kitchener and Waterloo have been made, following the 1973 establishment of the Region of Waterloo, less motivation to do so existed, and as a result, Waterloo remains an independent city. At the time of the 2021 census, the population of Waterloo was 121,436. History Indigenous peoples and settlement Indigenous peoples such as the Iroquois, Anishinaabe and Neutral Nation lived in the area. After the end of the American Revolution, Joseph Brant, a Mohawk war chief, wanted Frederick Haldimand to give the Mohawk and Six Nations a tract of land surrounding the Grand River, in return for their loyalty to the British in the war. Haldimand's 1784 Haldimand Proclamation granted the land "six miles deep from either side of the [Grand River] beginning at Lake Erie and extending in that proportion to the very head of the said river." Haldimand, who had previously ordered for potential mill sites to be identified in the region, decreed in 1788 that mill sites would be included in the grant (which would not have been included otherwise). In 1796, Richard Beasley purchased Block Number 2 of the grant from Joseph Brant (on behalf of the Six Nations) with a mortgage held by the Six Nations. Block 2, 94,012 acres in size, was situated in the District of Gore. To meet his mortgage obligations, Beasley had to sell portions of the land to settlers. This was counter to the original mortgage agreement, but subsequent changes to the agreement were made to permit land sales. Mennonites from Pennsylvania counties Lancaster and Montgomery were the first wave of immigrants to the area. In the year 1800 alone, Beasley sold over 14,000 acres to Mennonite settlers. A group of 26 Mennonites from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, pooled their resources into the German Company of Pennsylvania, which was then represented by Daniel Erb and Samuel Bricker. The company purchased all the unsold land from Beasley in 1803, resulting in a discharge of the mortgage held by the Six Nations. This discharge allowed Beasley to