There are definitely people who commute all over the GTA, but I still feel like Waterloo Region is culturally distinct from Toronto proper— Google and Facebook are in Waterloo; there's the devices heritage from Blackberry and then later companies like Thalmic and Pebble; there's the robotics presence in Waterloo with Clearpath, Voyis, Avidbots, and Aeryon/FLIR; and finally there's networking companies like Blue Coat, Sandvine, and Arctic Wolf.
I guess I don't know as much about the Toronto scene, but based on the recruitment emails, it seems to be a lot more fintech, game/mobile dev, and big data analytics stuff.
No, it's not a brag— but they were all pretty influential and continue to cast a long shadow over the tech culture of the region. Particularly Blackberry, since it made a lot of staff very wealthy, who then went on to found, advise, invest-in, and work-for other companies using those skills.
It's not hard to look around Communitech and clearly see a bunch of startups still running essentially on BlackBerry money.
I guess I don't know as much about the Toronto scene, but based on the recruitment emails, it seems to be a lot more fintech, game/mobile dev, and big data analytics stuff.