Meetings & Events

Please scroll down to see the 2025 programme. Members receive the Zoom link on the Friday before the Wednesday meeting. Non-members should please email before 6 p.m. on the day of the meeting for the Zoom link.

The Kingsbridge Retirement Community at 950 Centennial Drive is the tall building just south of Princess Street.  Enter on the east side (the other end from Centennial Drive). Staff will be at the door to give you directions. Park in any unmarked parking space; there is also parking around Shoppers Drug Mart. Express buses #501 and 502 serve Upper Princess Street with a stop very near Kingsbridge. Bus #4 offers slower service along Princess Street from downtown. Use the Centennial Drive bus stop.

Please scroll down for the links to our previous meetings available for viewing on YouTube, and to outside events of interest.

Next Meeting

Upcoming Meetings

June 6, 2025:  Annual graveside memorial for Sir John A. Macdonald

(Kingston, ON)  Well-known Canadian author Roy Macskimming will deliver remarks for the Kingston Historic Society’s annual ceremony at the grave of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister.

Friday June 6th, 2025 at 1:30pm, Cataraqui Cemetery Sydenham Road, Kingston

Macskimming’s historical novels – Macdonald and Laurier in Love – have been praised for their ability to explore the inner life of our early national leaders in the context of their times.

For more than five decades, members of the Kingston Historical Society have joined with the broader Kingston community in marking the death on 6 June 1891of Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, at his gravesite in Cataraqui Cemetery.

Each year’s gathering is highlighted by a piper and an address by a prominent Canadian politician or academic who attempts to set Macdonald’s historical legacy in the context of both his own times and our present-day sensibilities. Past speakers have included the Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney, the Hon. Murray Sinclair and Senator Hugh Segal.

Everyone welcome

 June 8, 2025 Dr. David More will be joining the Wolfe Island Historical Society on Sunday June 8th 2025 at 1:30 pm at the Wolfe Island United Church (52 Victoria St., Marysville) to discuss his latest historical fiction book ‘Dark Watershed’. We look forward to seeing you there! 

September 17, 2025: Susan Smith, the long-time editor of Thousand Islands Life on-line magazine and author of The First Summer People: The Thousand Islands 1650-1910, will reflect on the history and heritage of the Thousand Islands, the iconic stretch of the St. Lawrence just east of Kingston.

October 15, 2025: Paul Van Nest, a local historian, will relate the World War II experience of his cousin Glenn Brooks, an eastern Ontario farm boy who served as a tail gunner on an RCAF bomber until his death over Germany in 1944. Brooks’ letters home offer Van Nest a prism through which to probe the innermost experience of men at war and their ongoing impact of their loss on those left behind.

November 19: Warren Everett, military historian and collector of military medals, will reflect on the significance of military decorations not just for the immediate recipient, but also for the society he/she served. Warren will bring samples from his expansive collection. 

Past Presentations

Christine Lavallee, a St. Lawrence College librarian, writer and literary scholar, spoke about her research into nineteenth-century Canadian author Julia Beckwith Hart, whose pioneering novel – St. Ursula’s Convent –was partially set in Kingston and is said to be the first indigenous work of Canadian fiction. You can watch the presentation here.

Dr. Sandy Campbell, emerita professor of women’s studies at Carleton University spoke on “Kingston’s Kathleen Hammond, the Lusitania and the White Plague”, a story of World War I happiness and tragedy. You can watch the presentation here

Professor Ralph Boston  spoke on “A History of the Mississauga People North of Kingston”.  You can watch the presentation here. 

Dr. Duncan McDowall spoke on “HMCS Thiepval: Kingston’s Little Ship That Could.” A tale of a World War I warship built on Kingston shores that found fame and eventual misadventure on the high seas. You an watch the presentation here.

Annual General Meeting of KHS. The 2024 Financial Statement is here. The Agenda for the AGM is here. The video of the meeting is here.

Meetings held in 2020 to 2024 are indexed by topic and by speaker here. You can download a Word document with live links to YouTube. 

You might want to catch up on your reading about Kingston. We have produced a Reading List – click here to see it! Contact us here with suggestions for additions to the list. We also recommend you viewing a video describing the 22 National Historic Sites of Kingston. You can find it here . If you have comments on it, please contact Greg Anderson at gpanderson191@gmail.

You can follow presentations of the Ottawa Historical Society here

You have access to a video of the late George Muirhead reminiscing about his time in Kingston. View it here  He talks about his life and career as Kingston’s first City Planner. I believe this one-hour overview presented by the individual at the centre of the post-war Kingston historic building restoration movement, the Rideau Heights slum clean-up, the founding of the Frontenac Heritage Foundation, plus much more, is an important document of recent Kingston history.

Outside Events Of Interest

Item of interest to commemorate VE Day with a Kingston connection

The link below is from Clément Horvath, author with whom I have been corresponding for a few years. His first book, Till Victory, was comprised of letters written by various Allied soldiers during WW II. Among those featured was my wife Laurie’s father, JPC ‘Jim’ Macpherson. If you watched the ceremony last year marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day, Jim’s letter home to his parents was read to the assembly while his photo was displayed on the big screen. It was a very emotional moment for us.
 
The Macpherson family have a long association with Kingston beginning in 1808. Jim is buried in Cataraqui Cemetery as one of six generations. For several years he was manager of the main branch of the Bank of Montreal on Market Square. 
 
It occurred to me that members of KHS might enjoy this link as we commemorate VE Day as it relates to the behind-the-scene creation of this connection to Kingston. ——Barry Keefe
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxejY3qJqKY

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Wednesday May 28th, Frontenac Heritage Foundation AGM 2025 in the Lower Hall of The Spire (72 Sydenham Street) Doors open 6:30 p.m. Business portion of the meeting at 7 p.m.

      GM is May 28 at The Spire – Lower Hall. There will be a tour of the repurposed church by Elspeth Deir at 7 p.m. followed by the business portion of the evening with our AGM report and updates. We need a quorum of 20 persons plus four board members so put this in your calendar!

       If you are a current FHF member who cannot attend but wishes to vote, please print and fill in the proxy form and mail to Frontenac Heritage Foundation c/o PO Box 27, STN Main, Kingston ON K7L 4V6, or scan and forward to contact@frontenacheritage.ca. Your voice matters – there is still time to renew your membership to participate!

Dr. David More will be joining the Wolf Island Historical Society on Sunday June 8th 2025 at 1:30 pm at the Wolfe Island United Church (52 Victoria St., Marysville) to discuss his latest historical fiction book ‘Dark Watershed’. 

June 11, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m  A walking tour of Old Sydenham Heritage Conservation District, featuring Dr. Carl Bray, who was the main heritage consultant for the Old Sydenham Heritage Conservation District Plan. The plan celebrates its 10th year anniversary this year! The tour will be begin at the Newlands Pavilion and is limited to 15 people, so please register in advance at contact@frontenacheritage.ca.

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