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

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

Saturday, July 5th: Bedford Historical Society Presents: An Authors’ Afternoon Glendower Hall, 1381 Westport Road 12:30 pm – Doors open; 1pm – 2pm – Author presentations; 2pm – 4pm – Chatting with the authors and book signing.

Six local Bedford Township area authors whose book topics range from Bradshaw’s one-room schoolhouse and its community, to Bedford’s Mast Road; from the summer Solitude of an island, to the commercial lumbering bustle of the early Bedford Mills; from the experiences of a British Home child of the 1870’s, to in-depth details of the pioneering families of 1860 Bedford Township as it was being settled. The books range in price from $15 to $55 (cash). For more information, please contact: bedfordhistoricalsociety2019@gmail.com.

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Item of interest to commemorate VE Day with a Kingston connection

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