William Weichel was born in Elmira, Ontario, on 20 July 1870. As a young man, he worked for his father at the family hardware store. In 1896, he opened his own store in Waterloo. In 1911, he was appointed Mayor of Waterloo, and was elected to the House of Commons as a Conservative Member of Parliament for Waterloo North, defeating Liberal candidate William Lyon Mackenzie King. Weichel represented the people of Waterloo North during the First World War as a Conservative MP; this changed in 1917 when he became a “Unionist” (Pro-War Conservative) candidate and lost his seat to William Daum Euler, the former Mayor of Berlin.
(Celebration of Cityhood 1912. Berlin: The German Printing and Publishing Co of Berlin, 1912; PARLINFO. “Weichel, William George.” Accessed April 20, 2014. http://www.parl.gc.ca/)
