Sunfish Lake

Sunfish Lake is a small lake community in the woods of northern Wilmot Township, about 4 km north of St. Agatha and a short drive west of Waterloo. Its homes and cottages sit among tall trees around the shore, reached from Berlett's Road to the south and Cedar Grove Road to the north. No motorboats are used on the lake, so the water stays calm and quiet. The lake is deep for its size, and its deepest water never mixes with the water above it, which makes it one of the rare lakes known as meromictic. Woods and wetlands surround the shore, and the lake is the source of Laurel Creek, which flows east through Waterloo.

The writer Edna Staebler, author of Food That Really Schmecks, had a cottage on Sunfish Lake, where she wrote and welcomed visiting writers. In 1961 she and Jack Hutchison founded the Sunfish Lake Association to care for the lake. The Association now owns about 50 acres of woods and wetland around the water.

Sunfish Lake has about 20 cottages and homes around the shore. Only a few are zoned for year-round living, and the rest are recreational properties for seasonal use. The 2021 census does not count Sunfish Lake on its own. It is part of the Wilmot countryside, which had about 1,540 homes outside the towns and villages. More than nine in ten of those homes are single detached houses, and about two in five were built in 1960 or earlier.

Sunfish Lake is about 11 km by road from Uptown Waterloo, a drive of about 15 minutes, by Erbsville Road, Columbia Street West and Westmount Road. St. Agatha is about 7 km south by Berlett's Road and Notre Dame Drive, and Highway 7/8 is about 10 km south by the same roads. Highway 7/8 leads east to Kitchener's Conestoga Parkway and on to Highway 401. Grand River Transit does not serve the lake. The Region has consulted on an on-demand service zone for north Wilmot.

The lake sits at the centre of the community, with calm water and wooded shores beside the homes. The Townline Regional Forest, a Region of Waterloo forest on Cedar Grove Road just north-east of the lake, has a short walking trail through the woods. The Laurel Creek Conservation Area, in north-west Waterloo, is about 7 km east. St. Agatha, a few minutes south, has the Lions Community Park with its lit softball diamond and picnic shelter, and the shops and services of west Waterloo are about 15 minutes east.

• Wellesley Public School — JK to Grade 8. The public elementary school for all of Sunfish Lake, in Wellesley Village.
• Waterloo-Oxford District Secondary School — Grades 9 to 12. The public secondary school for Sunfish Lake, in Baden.
• Holy Family Catholic Elementary School — JK to Grade 8. Wilmot's Catholic elementary school, in New Hamburg.
• Resurrection Catholic Secondary School — Grades 9 to 12. The Catholic secondary school that Holy Family students go on to, in Kitchener.