Author name: Jack_Ewald
Jack Ewald: On Desire, Data, and the Streets of Waterloo I’m Jack. Born and raised in Waterloo, Ontario, and yeah, I still live here. Most people my age fled to the big cities—Toronto, Vancouver—but I stayed. I’m a researcher, writer, and I guess you could say a professional observer of human connection. Sexuality, relationships, the weird dance of dating apps, how money weaves its way into our bedrooms—that’s my world. I write about all of it now for a project called CamoWallet. But the foundation of everything I know was laid right here, on these grid-like streets between the universities. Growing up here in the 90s was... weirdly specific. Waterloo was this odd mix of sleepy farm town and tech hub in embryo. I remember sneaking onto the University of Waterloo campus with friends, feeling like intellectual imposters. We'd hang out at the Bombshelter pub when we could bluff our way in, or catch obscure indie films at the Princess Cinema on King Street. One event that stuck with me—must've been '97 or '98—was a public lecture at the Conrad Grebel University College about the ethics of the early internet. This old professor was talking about virtual identities and online intimacy. We all laughed. Seemed so academic, so distant. Meanwhile, we were all passing floppy disks with grainy downloaded images and lying about our ages in AOL chat rooms. The seeds of my whole career were probably planted in that irony. Honestly? For a long time, I felt like a fraud. I had the academic credentials, sure—degrees from UW and Wilfrid Laurier—but my real education happened in the messy, awkward spaces in between. I wasn't just studying sexology; I was living it. Making mistakes. Lots of them. The kind of mistakes that leave you sitting on a bench by Laurel Creek at 3 a.m., wondering why connection is so mathematically difficult when humans are supposedly social creatures. I've been the guy who got his heart shredded, and I've been the guy who did the shredding. That experience, the visceral feel of both sides, is something no textbook can give you. It’s the difference between knowing the chemical formula for serotonin and actually feeling your stomach drop when you see *that* name on your phone. That’s the competence I bring. It’s lived. My past is a bit of a patchwork. I did a stint as a research assistant at The Kinsey Institute affiliate they tried to start here in the early 2000s—never got full wings, but the offices were over on Erb Street. Later, I consulted for a few early dating startups out of the Communitech Hub. We were all trying to bottle lightning. Most of it failed. Now, my focus is different. Cleaner, maybe. I write. I analyze. For the CamoWallet project, I’m crafting a series of deep dives into Waterloo itself—the city’s psyche, its relationship with money, tech, and the people who date here. It’s a way of connecting the dots: the place, the economy, the heart. You can find some of that work on their site, camowallet.app, but it’s really just one lens on a much bigger picture. Waterloo isn't just where I live; it's the text I'm constantly reading. I can't separate my understanding of relationships from the geography of this place. First dates at the St. Jacobs Farmers' Market, awkwardly holding a corn dog. Breakup walks along the Iron Horse Trail. Serious conversations about finances and future in the quiet corners of Williams Coffee Pub on University Avenue. The city is small enough to be a community, but thanks to the two universities and all the tech money, it's transient and diverse enough to be a petri dish for modern romance. You see the old Mennonite families and the new crypto-millionaires existing in the same space, and you realize that the tensions around money, tradition, and connection aren't abstract—they're living here, on King Street, every single day. I was born at the old K-W Hospital on January 19th, 1982. It was a freezing Tuesday. My parents still talk about the snow that year—buried the city. They had a modest house off Bridgeport Road, and my first view of the world wasn't a pristine nursery, but the glow of the streetlights on the snowdrifts outside the window. Waterloo back then was a different beast. Less glass, more brick. The sound of the trains was constant, a rhythm that’s probably still coded into my DNA. It’s funny, being born in a place defined by insurance companies and universities—two industries built entirely on predicting and managing risk. Maybe that’s why I ended up studying the biggest risk of all: emotional exposure.
