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.
February 19, 2025: Annual General Meeting of KHS. The 2024 Financial Statement is here. The Agenda for the AGM is here.
February 23rd at 2 p.m. in the Great Hall of the Fort Henry Interpretation Centre. The Kingston Historical Society and the Frontenac Heritage Foundation will jointly sponsor Dr. Simge Erdogan-O’Connor talking on 100 Years of the Murney Tower Museum, tracing the Legacy of Kingston’s iconic landmark This will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Society’s curatorship of Kingston historic Murney Tower Lecture to be followed by a high tea. Doors open at 1.30. Lots of parking!
Upcoming Meetings
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.
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.
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.
Thursday February 6th, the Great Lakes Museum presents Ralph Boston talking on Life on the Cayuga. See here for details.
Saturday, February 8, 2-5pm, Doors open at 1:30pm, in Macaulay Heritage Park (in the old church), 23 Church St., Picton, the Architectural Conservancy Ontario presents Lighthouses, a Fishery, and a Canal: Adventures in County Marine History. CLICK HERE for more information
Thursday February 13, the Canadian Club of Kingston, at the Cataraqui Golf & Country Club, presents Professor Paul Robinson, an expert on Russia, University of Ottawa, will speak on Russia/Ukraine. Lecture is preceded by lunch served at 12 p.m. Lunch price is $37 for members, $45 for non-members. Check for details and register one week in advance through www.canadianclubkingston.org. Payment by e-transfer, credit card or by cash or cheque at the door.
Saturday February 15 10:00 a.m. Ontario Ancestors presents Laurie Fyffe talking on Exciting Cause: An Investigation into Women Confined in the 1890s to the Kingston Asylum for the Insane (Rockwood), Kingston, Ontario. To register for the January 18h Zoom meeting, click here
Wednesday, February 19, 7 to 8 pm, A Heritage Ottawa Zoom Lecture Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Ontario Heritage Act. Pre-registration is required here Heritage Ottawa is pleased to mark the 50th anniversary of the Ontario Heritage Act with a panel presentation on the history, implementation and challenges associated with this seminal piece of legislation. Join the panel, including one of our past presidents Dr. Marcus Letourneau, to learn about the emergence of a conservation movement in Ottawa, the challenges of implementing the Act, and the examples that show its successes, and its weaknesses.
Thursday February 20 the Great Lakes Museum presents Walter Lewis talking on Kingston dockyards through the decades.. See here for details.
Thursday March 6, the Great Lakes Museum presents Rowena McGowan talking on Sea Sickness. See here for details.
Thursday March 13 the Canadian Club of Kingston, at the Cataraqui Golf & Country Club, presents Janice Dickson of The Globe and Mail talking on “Operation Abraham” Lecture is preceded by lunch served at 12 p.m. Lunch price is $37 for members, $45 for non-members. Check for details and register one week in advance through www.canadianclubkingston.org. Payment by e-transfer, credit card or by cash or cheque at the door.
Saturday March 29, 2 – 4pm. (Doors open 1:30pm) The Frontenac Heritage Foundation presents Out of Sight But Not Unseen a talk by Dr. Susan Bazely on what is under the Church Hall of St Paul’s Anglican Church – 137 Queen Street (enter church hall off Montreal St.)
Thursday April 10 the Canadian Club of Kingston, at the Cataraqui Golf & Country Club, presents Don Mann talking on “My Mother’s Story about the Sinking of the Titanic” Lecture is preceded by lunch served at 12 p.m. Lunch price is $37 for members, $45 for non-members. Check for details and register one week in advance through www.canadianclubkingston.org. Payment by e-transfer, credit card or by cash or cheque at the door.
Thursday May 8 the Canadian Club of Kingston, at the Cataraqui Golf & Country Club, presents Marisa Beck talking on “The Challenges of Climate Change” Lecture is preceded by lunch served at 12 p.m. Lunch price is $37 for members, $45 for non-members. Check for details and register one week in advance through www.canadianclubkingston.org. Payment by e-transfer, credit card or by cash or cheque at the door.