The Annual Report for 2020 is here. The Financial Statements for 2020 are here.
We usually meet at the Central Library, 130 Johnson Street. Refreshments will be available from 6.30 and the meeting starts at 7.00. The meetings include a brief business report and a guest speaker followed by a question period. Talks are usually illustrated and cover many aspects of regional history. Guests and visitors are always welcome.
Virtual talks.
For hundreds of years historians have glossed over how First Peoples and the earliest European explorers communicated with one another during their first meetings. How did they convey information back and forth? How effective was this process? This talk returns to seminal episodes of “first encounter” to closely examine how people in reality communicated and how our broadening understanding of this earliest interaction between the settler society and our First Nations can change traditional historical interpretations and why it matters so vitally today.
Dr. Tabitha Renaud completed her PhD in history at Queen’s University under the supervision of Dr. Jane Errington and specialized in studying early encounters between Indigenous peoples and European explorers in the Americas. Tabitha serves as the Managing Director and chair of the Murney Tower Museum Committee as well as a Councillor of the Kingston Historical Society. She has also volunteered with the Kingston Association of Museums, Galleries and Historic Sites (KAM), Kingston Regional Heritage Fair, Beyond Classrooms Kingston, Smiths Falls Heritage house Museum Advisory Board and the Lower Burial Ground Restoration Society.
Community archiving is a documentation strategy aimed at working with a community to create archives, the objective being to have stories of the past told by those intimately involved in the activities, and resulting outcomes, of that lived experience. It is not about establishing a history; it is about revealing a history. The presenters will look at this type of community work in the ground-breaking creation of the Kingston LGBTQ collection at the Queen’s University Archives.
Heather Home is an archivist at Queen’s University specializing in cultural and social records; Janice McAlpine is a Kingston community member.
During the pandemic, 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.