Our 2025 proposed year’s programme can be seen here.
Members receive the Zoom link on the Friday before the Wednesday meeting. Non-members: for the Zoom link, please email before 6 p.m. on the day of the meeting.
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.
Wednesday, November 20th: Well-known local architectural historian and archaeologist John Grenville will discuss the interesting career of architect Ernest R. Beckwith (1879-1963), who worked in Kingston as City Engineer and operated as an architect in the years before World War I, leaving a built legacy in both residential and commercial Kingston still evident today. Non members please email kingstonhs@gmail.com for the Zoom link before 6 pm on the 20th. Members will be emailed the link.
January 15, 2025: Dr. Duncan McDowall 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.
February 16, 2025: A celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Society’s curatorship of Kingston historic Murney Tower featuring a lecture by the Museum’s Director Dr. Simge Erdogan. Lecture to be followed by a high tea. Details and location to follow on the KHS website.
March 19, 2025: Professor Ralph Boston of Queen’s biology department will speak on “A History of the Mississauga People North of Kingston”. Professor Boston’s research seeks to set the Queen’s University Biological Station in the context of the Indigenous People who inhabited the area long before white settlement.
April 16, 2025: Dr. Sandy Campbell, emerita professor of women’s studies at Carleton University will speak on “Kingston’s Kathleen Hammond, the Lusitania and the White Plague”, a story of World War I happiness and tragedy.
May 21, 2025: Christine Lavallee, a St. Lawrence College librarian, writer and literary scholar, will talk 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.
June 6, 2025: The Kingston Historical Society will host its annual commemoration of the 1891 death of our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, at his grave site in Cataraqui Cemetery. Speaker and details to be announced in Limelight and on the KHS website.
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.
Meetings held in 2020 to 2023 are indexed by topic and by speaker here. You can download a Word document with live links to YouTube.
January: Professor Gordon Dueck : “Barbers in Blackface? African-Canadian Musicians in Fin-de-Siecle Kingston.”You can watch the presentation here The original recordings are lost but the sheet music survives and one can find renditions of the songs from “In Dahomey” on YouTube at
https://youtu.be/Mki_FLAMnXc?si=BKCBI0DNV71Uu7Q5
https://youtu.be/Gnf-tja58-g?si=AGNQQEn-d1cd7OaJ
https://youtu.be/KnM__IAMnl4?si=OXRc7Mj3PPa9RBTk
Annual General Meeting. The Agenda is here . The YouTube video is here. The Financial Statement for 2023 is here
March: Eric Gagnon: “Two Miles, Two Tracks, Two Railways, To Obscurity.” You can watch the presentation here
April: Margaret Ross ‘Your Town is Rotten’: Prostitution, Profit and the Governing of Vice in Kingston, Ontario, 1860-1920s, You can watch the presentation here..
May: Ian Macpherson McCulloch : John Bradstreet’s Raid 1758. You can watch the presentation here
June 6th: Dr. Stephen Smith Macdonald’s Four Lives at Bellevue House. You can watch the commemoration here
The 2024 OHS Annual General Meeting Keynote Address The Paradox of Slavery and Freedom in 19th Century Ontario by Dr. Natasha Henry-Dixon can be viewed here
September: Peter Gower: The ups and downs of the Kingston Historical Society’s first 131 years … and the future? You can watch the presentation here
The new By Law #2, approved at this meeting,is here
October: William Galbraith: John Buchan: Model Governor General You can watch the presentation here
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.
Monday, November 18, 7 pm, the Frontenac Heritage Foundation is holding its annual Heritage Conservation Awards on at the Renaissance Event Venue. It is time to honour those who take special care of their historic buildings! Thanks as always to Paul Fortier for his generous support of this event! Here is the LINK to the poster.
Thursday December 12, Kingston Canadian Club: 11.30 for lunch at 12 and speaker at the Cataraqui Golf and Country Club Dr. David Taylor, an internist and a member of the division of General Internal Medicine at Queen’s University “My journey towards Indigenous allyship in healthcare”.All are welcome. Register one week in advance of an event through www.canadianclubkingston.org. Payment by e-transfer, credit card or by cash or cheque at the door.