In November 1914, Waterloo’s German community was outraged over a scandal in Haileybury in which a judge would not permit German and Austrian immigrants to get their Canadian citizenship, even though several Russians, Italians and Finns were naturalized. This caused shock, anger, and fear in the German community as they did not know what else to do in order to prove their loyalty. They talked about it with the Dominion representative for Waterloo North, W.G. Weichel. Of German origin himself, he understood the concerns and worries and tried his best to advocate for the German-Canadians and explain their ambivalent situation to the government. He then took care of the incident so the migrants were naturalized in the end.
(“Verweigert Naturalisation” Berliner Journal, 4 November 1914; “In diesen schweren Zeiten des Krieges” Berliner Journal, 18 November 1914)
