William V. Uttley's outline of Kitchener's growth from the 1840's into 20th century [is] shot through with a reassuring consistency and integration of purpose . ... The complex of life as we still know it—social freedom and social restraint, economy and ecology—has its genesis here in the account compiled by William Uttley. His work comes as close to a personal anecdotal history of the city as we can hope to retrieve, a spotted chronicle of a community that can never exist again, and one in which almost every reader will find a point where past confronts present as nostalgia tugs against progress.