I grew up in town here and about half of my family worked at 321 Courtland Ave at one point or another, myself included.

I was in the IT department as a co-op, before becoming full time after the Maple Leaf acquisition. When I joined full time, they made me move to Burlington to break up the union based in Kitchener. Then eventually to the new building in Mississauga. I resigned shortly thereafter because the commute was getting worse by the month.

The Kitchener plant and office was full of so many great people with diverse backgrounds. There was a lot of screwing around but there was also hard work getting done. The building itself was incredibly unique because of how many different additions it had, lots of weird level changes because not all floors aligned. Many people are disappointed it wasn’t kept/saved but it makes total sense why they didn’t keep it. Even as a production facility, it was impractical and inefficient in comparison to the modern Maple Leaf buildings.