"It reminded me just how much opportunity and promise there is within RIM, and how much of what makes BlackBerry special stems from our status as a small-town Canadian company," Heins said. "We do not believe RIM is a company at the end."

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed Kitchener's population as 500,000. Kitchener has a population of 220,000, and the entire Kitchener-Waterloo metro area has a population of 450,000.