SOME COUNCILLORS thought delaying a decision on the Official Plan would make them look weak, and indecisive. Or that council would appear to be rebuffing the efforts and expertise of City staff, a “back-handed slap” as Councillor Gary Oosterhof put it.

There was frustration and skepticism, too, about how much public consultation is enough. Citizens should get involve earlier in the decision-making process, said Councillor Jimmy Hassan, rather than “just run behind us and throw rocks on us.”

Also of utmost concern was whether a delay in approving an Official Plan with proposed expanded boundaries would risk losing local control to the province.

In the end, council voted 11 to 1 in support of a motion to put the brakes on Official Plan decision-making until June 30, 2027 at the latest, well beyond the coming municipal election.

Councillor Brandon Tozzo, who put forward the deferral motion, gave the moment some historic flair. “I hate deferrals. Only Nixon could go to China; only Tozzo could ask for a deferral.”

‘Time to face reality’

He argued that the “best possible decision” about expanding the urban boundary depends on council and the community having access to critical relevant studies, some of which will not available until 2027. They include the Integrated Mobility Play, the Natural Heritage Study, and costing for water/wastewater infrastructure.

Even so, Tozzo said, it’s time to face reality. “It’s indisputable that Kingston is expanding and growing … and our Official Plan must meet the needs of the community past, present and future.”

While the community and council are mostly in agreement that densification is preferable to “urban sprawl,” council would be remiss in not planning for urban boundary extension, Tozzo said.

“Our challenge remains that if council does not provide land for an urban expansion, we risk losing control of how it happens. If we submit an Official Plan to the province of Ontario with our projected population growth but without providing for enough housing and employment land, the province has the power to choose for us.”

There have been cases, noted City Commissioner of Growth and Development Paige Agnew, when the province has intervened if an Official Plan fails to account for housing growth and land needs.

“It’s not a matter of if we expand boundaries but who makes the decision,” said Tozzo.

Timing is also important given the province’s plan to introduce major reforms to Official Plan guidelines in January 2028 aiming to streamline housing development. If Kingston’s planning document isn’t completed by then, the City would be forced to start again from scratch, Agnew said.

Final vote next year

The deferral motion passed after being amended to include holding an information session in the first quarter of 2027 and to set a target date of no later than June 30, 2027 for a final vote on the new Official Plan. Who knows how many of the current councillors will be around the horseshoe when the Official Plan finally comes to a vote.

The decision to defer comes at a critical time in the life of this council and is highly consequential for the October 26 election. At a time when civic activism is strong in Kingston, the current council has been inundated with demands for greater transparency and meaningful consultation. This includes calls and petitions from community groups to delay any decision on expanding urban boundaries before all pertinent information is available.

At the same time, councillors and city staff have been working towards the ambitious goal of completing the new Official Plan during the current term of council.

The deferral means many contentious issues related to the Official Plan will be left on the table for the October election, most notably the outstanding Natural Heritage plan which determines how much land will be protected from development. The community is well primed for a vigorous debate during and post election.

The X factor

Those running for council or mayor have until Aug. 21 at 2 p.m. to file a nomination. An updated candidates list is posted on the City’s website. Mayor Bryan Paterson has yet to say whether he will seek a fourth term as mayor. This X factor figures strongly into how the local election race will take shape. Several councillors have indicated they will not run for mayor if Paterson runs again.

The one dissenting councillor on the deferral vote, Gary Oosterhof, saw the issue as one of leadership. “If this motion passes, we have not done our job.” He sees waiting until a new council is elected as caving to a few of the loudest voices in the community. “What about the other 130,000,” he said.

“We’re saying that we are out of control. We are not. We have done our jobs over this four years and have a good vision for moving forward. We’re comfortable with it. And here we are delaying again and failing to show leadership.”

Councillor Conny Glenn of Sydenham District, who withdrew her own motion to defer after council approved Tozzo’s, spoke to the merits of a special meeting that allowed council and the community to come together, to hear delegations, and to access an updated staff report.

Time for a reset

“This is an opportunity to do a reset,” she said. “We need to get back onto the same page. There’s been a lot of confusion. I think it has created distrust, which I don’t want to see.

“This will enable us to move into the next phase of this plan with a renewed sense of community. When it comes to building a community, we have to build it together. It can’t just be some of us. It has to be all of us, and we need to ensure everyone has an opportunity to be heard.”

At the same time, Glenn sought assurance from staff that the City would have enough time to meet any provincial deadlines. “I don’t want to play chicken with this provincial government on any of this,” she said.

While voting reluctantly for the deferral, Trillium District Councillor Hassan said he was “embarrassed that we are disrespecting the staff’s hard work.”

“We asked you to bring the report,” he said to staff in the room. “We rushed it, you brought it, and now we’re not satisfied with that.”

Like Councillor Hassan, Councillor Wendy Stephen said she would be voting in support of the motion but not happily. She said “misinformation” on Facebook and in email chains has caused some to wrongly characterize the expanding boundaries proposal as “urban sprawl.”

The “car-centric” development in the west end of Kingston 15 years ago is “not how we want the City to move forward,” she said. Speaking with frustration, she said those “who had actually read” the proposed plan would see that it reflects the idea of ‘complete communities’ and carefully planned transportation.

She suggested it was unproductive to debate growth projections as they “are not set in stone.” “We could decrease the projections and under plan,” Stephen said, “but I’d rather go with the medium-growth scenario and adjust as needed as we go.”

The population growth debate

The population projections, which are the justification for expanded boundaries to accommodate housing development and further land use, continue to be hotly debated despite Commissioner Agnew’s assurances that the statistics have been updated and account for “local contextual” issues such as the decline in international students and those on military contracts.

As a delegate at Tuesday’s council meeting, local retired biologist and environment advocate Dr. Kerry Hill argued that the City’s population projections are exaggerated and don’t take into account the latest Ministry of Finance data, or the 2026 census and other recent local population trends.

“I hope to convince you that the population projection must be reassessed in light of the COVID blip, the recent downgrade in immigration and international student visa allocation, in addition to the challenging geopolitical instability starting over the past year,” she said.

The current case for urban boundary expansion is based on a medium-growth scenario that forecasts a population of 220,000 residents by 2051, about 70,000 more than in 2026.

The data the City is relying on has not been revised through to 2051, says Hill. “The City and the revised Watson report (Watson and Associates report of 2023) do not calculate in the downgrade of international students due to decreased immigration and international student visas, along with loss of 40 per cent of St. Lawrence College programs and some Queen’s programs,” she says.

‘Example of best practice’

The Lakeside District councillor offered her own reality check. “It’s not a matter of if we expand the urban boundary, but where,” she said. “Deferring the decision does not mean we are not expanding. We have to do it. If we put our heads in the sand and don’t do it, the province will do it for us. And I’m pretty sure they don’t care about our natural heritage system they way we do,” she said.

Stephen agreed with giving council and the community more time to become better informed as outstanding reports become available, but she made a point of also praising staff “who are the professionals we have hired to do the job and who are doing it well.”

Despite all the conflict and public scrutiny, or perhaps because of it, Kingston’s Official Plan could be held up as a model for other municipalities, Stephen said.

“This is a plan we can really be proud of because we are going to be leaders in this space,” said Stephen. “We are going to be looked at by other municipalities and by the provincial government as an example of what a best practice plan looks like.”

WHEN THE families, friend and supporters of the Walk to End ALS lace up their walking shoes at Lake Ontario Park this June 20, they’ll be cheering one another on while raising funds and awareness about a devastating disease. “It’s a day of celebration versus sadness,” says Sarah Reedman, who started working for the ALS Society 14 years ago after losing her brother to the disease. “It’s a positive, uplifting experience that brings the community together. It’s quite wonderful to see.”

Since its inaugural walk in 2003, Kingston’s ALS Walk (one of 22 being held in Ontario this year) has raised more than $1 million. That’s a significant sum for a disease that is considered relatively rare.

Realtor Grace Whiteside is just one of the hundreds who will take part in the three-kilometre walk around Lake Ontario Park next month. She’s there to support her mother, Marjorie “Cookie” Clarke, a well-known realtor who was diagnosed with ALS last year. Her team, “Cruising with Cookie,” raised more than $75,000 last year. “We were so grateful to everyone who donated, showed up and shared the links to the event. It was really overwhelming,” Whiteside says. They’ll be back again this year, with her mom, who will cut the ribbon to mark the start of the event, which aims to raise $2.1 M.

The Walk to ALS falls about midway in the charity walk calendar in Kingston (a full list, with links, appears below), starting with walks for Alzheimer’s and Multiple Sclerosis on the weekend of May 30 and ending with two walks, the Kidney Walk and the Canadian Walk for Veterans, on Sept. 27.

Cultural phenomenon

While supporting disparate purposes, these “walks for a cause” all follow in the footsteps of a curious cultural movement begun more than a century ago. Called walkathons, or sometimes dance marathons, the phenomenon is said to have started in 1908 in the U.S. and reached a fever pitch by the 1930s. Often gruelling to the point of cruelty, these endurance events combined entertainment and fund-raising, often with big cash prizes. Walkathons, in which paired contestants simply walked almost non-stop save for brief, timed breaks, could go on for days or months. It was a cheap form of entertainment, held in theatres, fairgrounds and dance halls, where audiences paid 25 or 50 cents for unlimited viewing. To keep viewers interested, promoters would provide music, comedians or other entertainment.

The popularity of these events peaked in the grim 1930s, when competing meant having a place to stay and food to eat, as well as hope for a big payoff. (One historian estimated that 20,000 people made their living in 1935 in walkathons.) Newspaper photos at the time often showed an exhausted, barely conscious participant being dragged around the floor by their partner in a desperate bid to outlast their competitors. Hallucinations, brought on by lack of sleep, were common. A combination of cheating ‘professionals’, unscrupulous promoters, public censure and the onset of the Second World War eventually spelled the end for these events.

Canada’s version of the walkathon has been more altruistic. Its earliest version was The Marching Mothers campaign, in the 1950s and 60s, part of a North American effort by the March of Dimes in which women went door to door, raising funds for polio. (Canada’s first female Cabinet Minister, MP Ellen Fairclough, whose son survived polio, was named “Chief Marching Mother” in 1957. She campaigned successfully for better conditions for polio patients, who were kept isolated in often dismal circumstances.)

‘Sole Power,’ Canadian-style

The next iteration was the Miles for Million walkathon. This was not a gentle midafternoon stroll: the route was 32 miles in total – an “astonishing” expectation, writes Tamara Myers, a historian at University of British Columbia, when jogging and other fitness crazes were still in the future.

The event was an offshoot of Britain’s Oxfam Walk, in which participants received pledges for the distance they walked. It was adopted and renamed by Canada’s Centennial International Development Program, “who turned it into Canada’s birthday gift to the developing world,” says Myers. In its first year, 22 communities participated and $1.2 million was raised.

Also unusual for the time was its target audience. “The organizers used language and symbols that spoke to the rising generation, calling on them to use their ‘sole power’ and declaring the walk a ‘rebellion against poverty around the world,’ notes Myers. High schools were heavily involved, and students’ overwhelming participation sent a positive message about youth at a time when loud music, long hair, and an unpopular war on the other side of the world were sending shivers through the “older generation.”

Miles for Millions eventually became a victim of its own success, writes Myers, overtaken in the early 1980s as other forms of fund-raising marathons grew. Today, Kingston residents continue to channel that Centennial Year spirit through charity walks. And organizers do the work of spreading community awareness

Says Reedman, Community Lead at the ALS Society, who supports about 20 Kingston and area residents with ALS, and their families, “It’s always been a challenge to have people understand and get the awareness out there without costing a fortune and eating into the money raised for research and resources needed by individuals and families affected.”

You can register for your event of choice via the links below.

May 30: Walk for Alzheimer’s

May 31: MS Walk

June 7: Gutsy Walk for Inflammatory Bowel Disease

June 20: Walk to End ALS

June 21: Brain Tumor Walk

Sept 13: Bladder Cancer Walk

Sept. 19: Walk for Awareness, Breast Cancer Kingston

Sept. 27: Kidney Walk

Sept. 27: Canadian Walk for Veterans

AT A TIME when Queen’s and other Canadian universities are actively recruiting disillusioned top American scholars, there are signs of a more unexpected development. At least two Queen’s professors will have departed Queen’s for a prestigious American university in just the last year. Given the anti-science, anti-intellectual bent of the current U.S. administration, what could they be thinking?

“Even given the political situation, yes that’s a concern, but I’d rather deal with that than have my day-to-day job being oppressive,” says Daryn Lehoux, head of Queen’s Department of Classics and Archaeology soon leaving for a three-year research professorship at Johns Hopkins University.

A few months ago the former Queen’s head of modern languages (Dept. of Languages, Literatures and Cultures) left for Princeton University to become a tenured associate professor of linguistics.

“A series of decisions made by the central (administrative) leaders is creating an environment of pitting faculty and departments against one another, and consistently eroding the morale of staff, graduate students, and faculty,” says Dr. Bronwyn Bjorkman.

‘Only about money’

“There was a persistent sense that the decisions they were making at the university were only about money rather than having a vision of a university as a place where lots of different kinds of research and learning can take place.

“It’s now leaning more into an industry and training version of what higher education can be,” she says.

Dr. Lehoux says Johns Hopkins can give him what Queen’s can’t right now.

“This university has made it so hard to work here,” he says. “They’ve made everything a battle. If you want to teach a new course, it’s really hard to do now. They don’t want anything innovative. They only want stuff that’s going to attract students in large numbers”.

The atmosphere and conditions at Johns Hopkins are much different, he says. “They trust you to know what your department needs to do. They trust you to know how to run your classroom.“

And then there’s the matter of class size. “My average class size is now 120 students. Next year, at Hopkins my biggest class is 16,” he says.

At the same time, Lehoux says Queen’s is “burdening faculty with more and more administrative work that used to be done by secretaries. They took those administrative supports away so that work is now being done by faculty at four times the salary.”

Considerable turmoil

Queen’s A&S faculty has seen considerable turmoil in recent years as universities in general veer more toward corporate values and serving private marketplace interests at the expense of critical thinking and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

“It’s hard to feel that we’re all together as a part of Queen’s University when there were some people who were the favoured parts and some who were not,” says Dr. Bjorkman.

Principal Patrick Deane just announced this week the return of a Queen’s alumnus to become its new Faculty of Arts of and Science dean.

Dr. Kevin Kee, described as an internationally recognized scholar in digital humanities, joins Queen’s from the University of Ottawa, where he served as A&S dean for ten years.

Kee is quoted in the Queen’s Gazette saying exactly what you would hope to hear from an A&S dean.

‘Powerful opportunity’

“What excites me most about the faculty is its breadth, bringing together the arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences. That creates a powerful opportunity to pursue fundamental knowledge and address some of the most important questions facing society.”

In today’s academic environment, the new dean faces significant challenges that include bringing some stability to a beleaguered area of scholarship and teaching at Queen’s that has seen four A&S deans in the past two years.

Replacing Gordon Smith, Barbara Crow was the interim dean of the faculty when suddenly replaced in the spring of 2024, with a year left on her term. Principal Patrick Deane announced new interim Dean Robert Lemieux as a replacement for the next two years. With three months left on his term, Lemieux was replaced in March 2026 with another interim dean, Bill Nelson. Now three months later, following a proper search, Queen’s has announced a new (this time non-acting, non-interim) dean to take charge July 1, 2026.

“The two back-to-back sudden and unexplained departures tells me that there is something very wrong in the upper echelons of Queen’s management,” says Lahoux.

Other universities are facing the same pressure as Queen’s, says Lehoux, who names several Ontario universities who have undergone budgetary soul-searching under the guidance of a popular consultancy firm named Nous Group.

Ten months ago, the National Post published a story under the headline “How to run a university in Canada? Outsource it to this management consulting firm.”

Slash and burn

The Post story points to a nickname given to the consulting firm that the newspaper says has caught on amongst universities:

“The nickname is Nousferatu, as in the vampire, because of what critics describe as a reputation for selling a slash-and-burn template for saving bankrupt universities by making them go ruthlessly corporate; by streamlining campus governance to concentrate power at the top; by guiding university administrations in cuts to staff and programs that arguably compromise their core mission; and by tracking dubious ‘benchmarks’ for performance evaluation in a single-minded pursuit of budget efficiency.”

Queen’s informed faculty and staff in early 2024 that it had hired the Australian-based Nous Group , a firm especially active in the higher education sector in Australia and Canada, to advise on budget cuts and create a case for change. Under the Queen’s Renew Program, the university “aims to improve processes and structures related to finance and budget work, improve the university’s HR processes and structures and strengthen the processes and structures that support the delivery of facilities services”.

The restructuring process hasn’t been easy on an institution grounded in collegial decision-making and feeling the effects of staff and budget cuts at a time when they are being asked to do more.

“We’re all getting the same strategies on how to slim things down as they would put it,” says Lehoux.

The pressures on language programs are especially intense at a time when the university has decided to eliminate classes that draw fewer than 10 students. At Queen’s, the biggest class in Classics and Archaeology was 576 students but they can’t teach second-year Greek because it doesn’t attract enough students.

Originally from Canada, Bjorkman went to school in the U.S. but “was very happy to return to Canada and never thought I would leave Canada.”

Knowing of the political interference being experienced by many American universities, she says she “looked very closely at the leadership of Princeton” before making her decision to leave Queen’s.

“There might have been a time when I didn’t think who was the Principal or Provost or President of a university mattered. I have learned over the last 15 years that it’s actually very important.”

AT THE END OF February 2026, the United States and Israel launched a series of attacks on Iran, sparking a conflict which has continued through March and April. Very quickly, the implications of this conflict for global oil markets became clear, as shipping through the Strait of Hormuz dropped precipitously. The markets responded to the conflict quickly, with oil prices rising dramatically over the first week of March. The price of Brent crude (the international benchmark) rose form about $71/barrel to close to $100/barrel in the first nine days of the conflict. Oil price peaks were reached in mid-March, early April, and late April; most recently, prices reached about $114/barrel on May 4 before falling back to about $103/barrel the following day.

It seems intuitive that the rapid rise in oil prices would be good news to oil companies and to the countries that rely heavily on oil revenues. Indeed, the Canadian government is expected to receive substantially increased tax revenue from the sector over 2026, which in turn will allow additional spending on key priorities including housing, health, and defense. Some provinces, like Alberta or Saskatchewan, are likely to receive significant benefits as well. In other parts of the country, however, where the energy sector is a smaller component of provincial economies, the inflationary pressures will be more significant.

How might Canada respond to the current run-up in oil and fuel prices? The first and second oil crises, in 1973 and 1979 respectively, spurred tremendous investment into renewable alternatives, particularly by the United States. This is because the U.S. – at the time – was highly dependent upon foreign oil and because much of the infrastructure that existed within that country was geared towards inefficient energy use, particularly in the automotive sector. Furthermore, the volatility brought about by unpredictable energy prices led to lasting economic damage. While the U.S. did not completely transform its energy sector in the late 20^th century, much of the research launched during this period has formed the basis for renewable success today. Indeed, technology used in present-day solar panels, in wind turbines, and in batteries can be traced back to investments made in the 1970s by nations facing tremendous economic uncertainty.

Slow progress

Renewable energy development in Canada has been slow. At certain times, provinces like Ontario and Alberta have built substantive amounts of renewables to add to the electrical grid, but these builds tend to be delivered over a relatively short term and sustained construction in this area has been elusive as governments have not maintained the required levels of support.

Canada certainly has the resources to be able to greatly expand our alternative energy sector; not only do we have abundant solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal resources, but we potentially can supply the critical minerals that will be necessary to truly take advantage of these energy sources. There are some operating programs supporting renewable energy expansion in Canada operating right now, but a strong focus in recent years has been placed on resource extraction to support green transitions. To this end, strategies for critical mineral extraction have been developed at national and provincial levels, but building this industry will take time. Moreover, these critical mineral strategies are not really related to our own domestic energy needs, but are focused on trade opportunities.

It is safe to say that Canada’s renewable energy sector has tremendous potential, but lacks direction and consistent support from federal or provincial players. This lack of direction is evident in the data; over the decade between 2015 and 2025, the proportion of renewable energy in Canada’s primary energy supply actually declined by 0.1%, to just under 16% of the total energy mix.

Desperately needed

What Canada lacks, and desperately needs at this critical juncture, is a comprehensive energy strategy that would help steer government investment. The lack of such a strategy contributes to the uncertainty in the market and helps foster an ‘us-vs.-them’ perspective across different regions of the country, fueling talk of separation in Alberta and pitting governments against each other. Such a strategy needs to consider all energy sources, and to address all of the inputs (such as critical minerals) required for the future energy mix. Critically, it needs to foster the research and development related to advanced renewable technologies that are designed to meet future needs.

At a time where both affordability and security of energy supply are critical issues to all Canadians, a national energy strategy could support a measured evolution of the energy sector that would make the best use of our natural resources to support our society. The third oil crisis is likely to cause significant problems for this nation, but with the right decisions, it could also propel Canada to develop a stronger, more diverse, and more dynamic energy sector that can help meet domestic and global needs.

Warren Mabee is Director of Queen’s Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy and Professor, Geography and Planning at Queen’s University.

I WANT TO MAKE sure I heard that right,” said Councillor Don Amos at this week’s city council meeting.

Amos had asked the city’s staff expert how much the rise in gas prices brought on by the war was affecting the City’s budget. Amos heard it right the first time, said Brent Fowler, director of corporate asset management and fleet. Given current gas prices of $1.70 a litre, the City is running about $150,000 a month over budget starting in April. It’s anticipated that fuel prices will eventually decline, he said. But if prices stay the same, the cost overrun by the end of the year could reach a million dollars by the end of this budget year.

Through-the-roof gas gases are just one of the more tangible realities confronting the City of Kingston as it stares down a challenging financial outlook brought about by rising costs, provincial government downloading of services, and growing capital investments.

A detailed financial briefing by the City’s Chief Financial Officer and City Treasurer Desiree Kennedy on Tuesday night drove home the precariousness of the city’s long-term financial prospects over the next ten to 15 years and the urgent need to find creative solutions.

The UK surplus option

Amos was quick to offer up one potential solution, setting his sights on the substantial $5.7 surplus million experienced by Utilities Kingston (UK) at a time when the City’s own surplus for 2025 is too slim for comfort and its Working Reserve Fund (WRF), which it turns to when experiencing cost overruns or unexpected expenses, is also being depleted faster than hoped.

The City’s WFR now sits at about $6 million when the preferred and more risk-averse range is $9 to $10 million. This is an uncomfortable reality given variability in winter weather conditions (Kingston’s winter control budget is currently 86 per cent depleted as opposed to the usual at 60 to 65 per cent at this point), market volatility, and the possibility of unforeseen operating expenses.

“If world economics stay the way they are for any sustained period of time, we are no doubt looking at dipping more into that fund,” said Amos.

But given increasing financial pressures and escalating costs, the City can’t continue to depend on its annual surplus to fuel its WRF, which covers unexpected expenses or revenue shortfalls.

“Our safety net is dwindling. And our safety net is our working reserve fund,” said the Portsmouth District councillor. “We’re cutting it very tight.”

“At the end of the day, when there is another entity showing a very large, multi-million-dollar surplus that can support us, it’s time to open that door and have that discussion.”

Chief Administrative Officer Lanie Hurdle informed council that she is already planning to meet with UK later this week “to discuss return on investments from certain utilities they operate . . . There are a number of areas we can talk to UK about and consider what kind of changes we want to consider.” The City of Kingston is UK’s primary and only shareholder.

The City’s operating budget surplus for 2025 is $1.5 million (or 0.3 per cent of the total municipal operating budget), one of the lowest reported surpluses in many years. And it includes $1.1 million in one-time funds that won’t be available in years to come, making this year’s surplus even more worrying.

The City is projecting capital expenditures will reach about $940 million over the next five years. The Capital Reserve Fund, generated mainly through taxes and user fees, is used to maintain existing infrastructure and new capital projects. It now sits at $100 million but is expected to decline to $55 million over the next five years due to planned infrastructure investments.

Serious talk needed

The projection doesn’t yet include asset management funds of about $30 million or growth costs related to the Integrated Mobility Plan that is part of the new Official plan. Kingston, along with many other Ontario municipalities facing similar budget woes, will need to have “serious discussions” about whether to increase its current one-per-cent capital levy, said Kennedy. Kingstonians will see their tax bills increase by 3.7 this year, a hike that is among the lowest of other large cities in Ontario.

Another developing budget pressure comes with the Ontario government’s recent introduction of exemptions and deferrals for developers, allowing them in some cases to defer development charges until the point of occupancy rather than as soon as building permits are issued.

As of the end of 2025, this deferral represents approximately $19 million in developer charges. While these deferrals, which are intended to spur housing development, do not reduce the amount of revenue received by the City and will eventually be received over three to four years, they create “significant timing-related cash flow pressures,” noted City Finance Director Lana Foulds.

The budget pressures are foreshadowing a need for increased reliance on debt financing to support capital programs and maintain service levels.

Self-imposed threshold

The City currently operates with a $500 million cap on debt financing, well below the provincial ceiling. This self-imposed threshold is based on a mix of assumptions related to financial risk management, long-term planning, and policy considerations including how much the City can afford to pay, fluctuating interest rates and credit rate considerations, said Kennedy.

The City’s borrowing capacity has been discussed in connection with a controversial proposal to establish a municipal services corporation (MSC) for its water and wastewater operations. In her accompanying report to council, Kennedy explains how a MSC “would provide the flexibility for more borrowing capacity” by shifting debt related to water-services off the City’s books and allowing for more focus on supporting other municipal priorities and assets.

On Tuesday night, council voted unanimously in directing City staff to explore a full range of options for addressing budget pressures and strengthening long-term financial resiliency. This includes everything from reviewing licensing fees on commercial properties to ensuring full cost recovery and expanding parking enforcement to seeking better investment returns and revisiting city properties assets to determine how some might be reimagined to increase revenue.

In response to a question from Councillor Brandon Tozzo, CAO Hurdle offered assurance that any cost recovery efforts would focus on city assets and properties where the city has commercial leases rather than community centres or arenas.

The MSC off-ramp

Staff will also continue to explore opportunities for MSCs for water and wastewater and non-core municipal services such as the airport, employment lands and construction of affordable housing.

Some tension surfaced in the room when Mayor Paterson took the floor to comment on a three-part amendment motion put forward by Councillor Conny Glenn, seconded by Councillor Lisa Osanic. The first two sections dealt with asset management (strategically maintaining, replacing, or repairing assets such as roads and buildings) and debt financing. The Sydenham District councillor wanted added to the original motion strategies that go beyond disposing properties or optimizing leases on city assets to exploring revenue generation.

Such temporary measure may bring in some short terms funding but are not the answer, she said.

“I don’t think we can contain or cut our way out of the situation especially when we’ve got a situation where the responsibilities are growing faster than the revenues that are coming in.

“We find ourselves in a really high pressure situation…We need a really proactive revenue-generating strategies that actually leverage the assets that we have.”

Reaching for revenue

She noted that the City of Kingston has “done a pretty good job compared to other municipalities but we can go further.”

Paterson said he would not be supporting the first two clauses in Glenn’s amendment, and noted that he felt she had overlooked the forward-thinking nature of the report. “It’s a misreading of the menu of strategies the staff have laid out,” he said, adding that it was not about “chop and cut costs.”

“There is a whole menu of different things. And when you’re developing a financial strategy, you need a mix.”

He described staff as “very measured” is how they evaluate assets and would only recommend disposing of a property if of no use to the community or ability to generate revenue.

“The suggestion that this is a slash and burn is not what is in front of us. It’s rationalization. It’s looking at what staff are already doing.”

In her final comments on the proposed amendment, Glenn responded to the mayor’s remarks, saying her suggested changes “were not a criticism of what’s already been laid out. But I’m asking us to stretch a bit further because we have to, and we have to keep it top of mind.”

Senior staff members at the meeting were asked directly by councillors whether they thought the modified motion related to adding strategies would change how they did their jobs or, as Councillor Jeff McLaren put it, be “an added tool in their tool box.”

When told not really, he conceded, “We’ve heard that they are already doing all this. But why not make it explicit.”

While the first two clauses of Glenn’s amendment were voted down, Council voted in favor of a third clause calling for a formal accounting of how much the City spends providing services that have been downloaded by the provincial and federal governments. The so-called Annual Municipal Burden Report is seen as a means of enhancing intergovernmental advocacy efforts and transparency.

“In the last couple of years, one of the most significant challenges is funding those things that are a provincial responsibility and have fallen to the municipal level,” said Treasurer Kennedy.

AN EMERGING technology that harkens back to the Blackberry, radio and even landline telephones is showing promise as a simple, low-power solution to critical communications gaps in our internet-dependent world.

In Kingston, it could also become an accessible, affordable way for people without homes to stay connected.

Meshcore is a decentralized, inexpensive communications system that enables users to send and receive text messages without the need for cellular networks or the internet. Created in 2024 after a cyclone devastated parts of New Zealand, these off-grid “meshes”, or networks, are now being developed worldwide, including in Canada, says Andrew Gagnon, a local enthusiast and paramedic.

He’s part of a group of 20 or so users who are exploring the potential of Meshcore to connect the Kingston area with companion networks in the region. He and some paramedic co-workers have been following the progress of other meshes in Eastern Ontario and wanted to try it here, he says. “Quinte and Ottawa have had some decent successes, and we wanted to develop our own network.”

The group has already created a system between Sydenham and Harrowsmith and is working towards connecting to Smiths Falls, which would mean users can communicate with people in Ottawa. Continued expansion to the west would connect users to users in Toronto, which has a robust mesh network.

No power? No problem

The system is simple, using “repeaters” — solar-panel-like boxes with antennas mounted on existing towers or trees — that send and receive text messages to hand-held devices. (The solar repeaters have battery backups that can last for several weeks.) Messages move between repeaters and devices (“nodes”), independent of satellites, cell towers and the internet. If one of those nodes fails, the system automatically finds another route. The beauty of the system is that it works when the rest of the communications grid is down, Gagnon says.

“It’s a cross between how a cell network sends texts, and the capabilities of the old copper-line telephones. Messages hop the same way as in any other network, but it’s also resilient, like that old phone.”

The system has other advantages as well. It’s simple to set up, and it’s accessible, because it uses a radio spectrum that’s unregulated, so anyone can use it. Repeaters can be bought for $200 or less, or built for as little as $60. Companion devices can be bought for a one-time fee of $40.. No data plan is required to use them. It makes wireless messaging vastly more affordable.

Gagnon and his group are continuing to seek out repeater locations and expand their mesh. “We’re looking to build resilience in the network, then broaden our horizons.”

A crucial connector

While the main uses for this kind of wireless platform are military, search and rescue and emergency services, one group in Kingston is excited about it potential for another group of users: those without homes. Our Livable Solutions has been working with Gagnon’s group on a pilot project that would provide Meshcore services to the homeless community.

“I’ve been looking for a way for our street outreach team to communicate reliably with people without homes,” says Chrystal Wilson, Acting Executive Director of OLS. “I think Meshcore might be the solution.”

An entrepreneur with a background in software design and development for the telecom sector, Wilson understands the technology. “The system would enable individuals to communicate directly with OLS’s street outreach team and with each other, without needing wi-fi or cell service.”

She has been helping the mesh team identify locations where repeaters could be sited, such as church spires. “This group already has a couple of repeaters in Kingston and estimate that we need 10 to cover the whole city.”

Everyone benefits

As someone deeply embedded in the homeless community, Wilson sees Meshcore as a broad-spectrum solution. Faster communication with vulnerable individuals means faster emergency response times. Being able to send reminders and follow-ups means appointments can be kept. More efficient outreach means support workers can locate individuals, and being able to stay in touch with their supports and services creates a sense of connection and belonging.

But this is also about benefits to everyone, she says. “The key is that no one person controls the communication system and it will work even when power is out and cell towers are down. This network builds community resilience. In times of emergency, having a decentralized, accessible communication system can make a critical difference for everyone in our community.”

OLS has reached out to potential sponsors and private donors to support development of this project, she says, and will be contributing its own funds to help establish a robust system in Kingston, to support people without homes.

To that end, she invites interested community members to a community information session about Meshcore. The Zoom meeting takes place Monday, May 11 at 7 pm. You can email info@ourlivable.solutions for the Meeting Link.

WE’VE ALL SEEN the charred remains of a burned house or fire-ravaged landscape. But what we don’t see are the toxic residues of the foams and aerial sprays used to fight those fires, which contaminate both land and the vehicles and gear used by firefighters.

A made-in-Canada green technology has the potential to change that.

FireRein is a Napanee-based company that has spent nearly a decade perfecting and selling the world’s first non-toxic fire suppressant.

Formulated from food products, its Eco-Gel is added to water to smother both flames and fumes more quickly.

The product is based on a prosaic but brilliant solution: basically, gums and starch in a vegetable oil carrier. When it’s mixed with water, it forms a gel that sticks to surfaces, giving it unique properties: it doesn’t just quench flames; it acts like a wet sponge, smothering vapours from fuel fires, preventing them from re-kindling. It’s also shown effectiveness in containing electric battery fires, and as a pre-treatment for fire-proofing land and structures. It’s even showing promise in controlling dust, an air-quality hazard that can also lead to fires.

The product reduces overall water use by up to 60 percent and is completely biodegradable.

Which, in these eco-conscious times, should make FireRein’s product the preferred market choice. But like any startup company with a game-changing technology, it faces a number of hurdles that prevent it from being widely adopted, from byzantine regulatory requirements and scale-up challenges to commercial monopolies and even international conflicts.

Not for the faint of heart

Not all startups are equipped to face the challenges. Around 90 per cent fail, 51 per cent of those in the manufacturing sector, says Statistics Canada. FireRein has already demonstrated an impressive track record of overcoming hurdles and identifying creative market opportunities.

Eco-Gel was developed by firefighters themselves as an alternative to traditional fire-fighting foams, which contain chemical compounds called PFAS.

PFAS made firefighting foams remarkably effective at fire-suppression, especially fuel-based fires, but they left chemical residues behind. Research shows that PFAS can cause a range of health issues, from cancer to immune deficiencies in babies.

Cancer is now the number one cause of death in firefighters,” says David Hyndman, a biochemist and Chief Science Officer of FireRein. “It’s one of only two occupations classified as carcinogenic. One of the reasons for our product was to get away from PFAS in foams.”

Governments are now slowly phasing out PFAS containing Aqueous Film-Forming Foams (AFFFs) but the replacement Fluorine-Free Foams (F3) aren’t much greener, Hyndman says. “Many contain known aquatic toxins, basically dish soap on steroids.” The foams run off and leach into the ground and water sources, where they can’t be recycled.

Regulatory roadblocks

Ironically, this toxic runoff has created one of FireRein’s biggest regulatory roadblocks. In order for their product to be approved for widespread use, it needs to be tested in a government lab. But Canada’s only national fire-testing facility, near Ottawa, has been closed because of PFAS contamination.

And there’s another regulatory wrinkle: In order for Eco-Gel to qualify for Canadian wildfire work, it has to be certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for inclusion on its Qualified Products List (QPL). “There’s no Canadian equivalent,” says Hyndman. “It’s a Catch-22. Canadian ability to test fire suppression technology and retardant products is severely diminished.”

The company is currently looking into alternatives to develop equivalent certifications that would qualify Eco-Gel for general use in Canada. (Senator Colin Deacon has been an outspoken opponent of the U.S. certification and procurement barriers, and a “staunch supporter” of FireRein, Hyndman says.)

The scaleup challenge

Even with the regulatory boxes ticked, startups must still survive the marathon journey known as “scaleup”: FireRein knows its product works, but in order to be viable, the company needs to sell to bigger markets. It is being used by municipal fire departments, and they also have a commercial spray-can product, HotWorx, on store shelves. But those are small fish, says Hyndman. “To get a critical mass of users, municipal fire departments alone aren’t enough. If every local fire department across North America used it, the volume would be there.”

A big potential market for Eco-Gel is military applications, and a big break came in 2022 when the company was invited to submit an application to a federal funding program, Innovation Solutions Canada. Their pitch was to the Canadian military, addressing grass fires caused by hot ordnance on firing ranges.

The Royal Canadian Navy, which is looking to get rid of PFAS on its ships, saw the proposal and was intrigued, he says. That interest led to a series of tests to assess Eco-Gel as a fire suppressant aboard navy ships. It was also tested on field, fuel and lithium ion battery fires, with positive results. They’re also continuing to pursue the ground ordnance application, with (literal) field-testing at CFB Borden expected this summer.

And in a separate collaboration, FireRein is working with researchers at The Royal Military College. “They’re interested in proving our product is a viable replacement for AFFFs at all military sites DND operates,” Hyndman says. Dust control is another application and Eco-Gel is showing potential as a replacement for calcium chloride. “We did very, very rudimentary tests at CFB Gagetown, which has hundreds of kilometres of dry, dusty roads.” Trials on a local construction site also showed some success.

More potential markets

Wildfires are another, enormous challenge in fire-fighting, and FireRein sees air-drops of its Eco-Gel as one potential solution. In traditional water-bombing, 80 percent of the water evaporates before it hits the ground. FireRein is collaborating with a California company that has developed 1,000-litre cardboard box that can be dropped out of any military cargo plane, making them the equivalent of a water bomber. “There aren’t enough water-bombers out there. This ups the types of aircraft that can be used for fire suppression,” Hyndman says.

The boxes open as they leave the plane, broadcasting the contents. “We want to show that our product is compatible with their delivery method, and to see how much of our product gets to the ground.” FireRein is now working with the Department of National Defence to get the boxes dropped by C130 aircraft. There have also been discussions with users in international markets.

Goliath factor

As promising as this work is, wildfires expose another, significant barrier for disruptors like FireRein: commercial monopoly. Ammonium phosphate, the red fire retardant air-dropped to battle wildfires, is widely accepted as effective in slowing down fires. It’s also perceived as being environmentally benign, although recent research is showing troubling impacts on water and soil. The market for these fertilizer-like compounds is huge, and a New York Times investigation found that in the U.S. the entire supply is controlled by one company. (When a startup company attempted to compete, the megalith was so successful in convincing regulators of safety concerns, the startup shut down.)

Aligned visions

Wildfire mitigation, however, offers another avenue for FireRein. “We’re having major discussions with large Indigenous organizations, to have them use our product for Indigenous burn practices,” Hyndman says. When laid down as a fire-break, their product acts like a wet sponge, and small-scale tests have shown it to have six to eight hours of water retention. He sees it as a perfect partnership. “Our visions align, we’re trying not to add anything more toxic to the environment.”

A more recent addition to their market share could be the EV battery sector, where they’ve done some testing with a company in the EU. Lithium batteries fires, which Hyndman calls ‘the holy grail of badness,’ burn extremely hot, spew extremely toxic gases and can be diabolically difficult to extinguish. Some types of batteries can generate their own heat and oxygen, creating a condition called thermal runaway, in which the battery burns until all its fuel is used up and it burns itself out. “But we’ve shown with our testing that we could encapsulate off-gassing and some of the heat that’s released.”

Critical connections

Amidst the challenges, FireRein has made some significant gains. Last year it qualified for a federal procurement program that allows it to sell their product directly to federal departments. It was also one of 26 companies selected from more than 700 contenders to present at Envision, a high-profile climate investors’ conference in San Francisco. That’s valuable exposure because it connects the company with potential partners with deep pockets. Internationally, FireRein is in discussions with South America and the Caribbean. There’s also interest in the EU. “Primarily we’re focused on finding a venture capitalist or other significant investor,” Hyndman says.

For emerging companies, making those connections is crucial, especially when you never know what’s coming at you around the corner — such as a Middle East shipping blockade. “Wildfire season is coming on us again and one of our major raw materials comes from the Middle East,” he says. “It’s like facing the unpredictability of Covid. But we’re a textbook case of dogged perseverance. It’s the trials and tribulations of being an entrepreneurial company.”

EVERY WEEK, in every city and town across Canada, thousands of below-the-radar but often highly influential government public meetings are underway.

This is the ‘committee system’ of municipal governments at work, under which city councils delegate responsibilities and workload to smaller groups of council member who research issues, review policy options, and make recommendations to the full council.

Most often these meetings are unattended by a reporter or any other public observers. Their deliberations tend to be out of public view and yet their work directly impacts the quality of our everyday lives.

It has not always been this way. For many years, our own daily newspaper had multiple reporters focused specifically on the doings of city and township governments. Today, in Kingston and across Canada, that kind of intense public scrutiny is long gone, a victim of digital advertising, shrinking budgets and near-empty newsrooms.

A movement now gathering steam may help change that. Under a national program being spearheaded by two Canadian journalism schools, citizens are being given an opportunity to play an active and meaningful role in the democratic process.

Meaningful accounts

Documenters Canada trains citizens to create an accurate and meaningful account of a public meeting that can reliably be used by others, including journalists.

Participants undergo a six-hour crash course on everything from how to read a city council agenda and how you quote someone to how to get access to relevant documents. Before setting off on their own to cover meetings, these new Documenters attend a meeting together and later compare and compile their notes to create an official version that can be posted as open source material.

“Citizens learn about how government works and how the process of decision-making moves through local governments,” says Dr. Nicole Blanchett, a journalism professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and co-director of the SSHRC-funded Documenters Canada expansion team.

The Documenters Canada approach is grounded in community-centred journalism that focuses on producing information “for” and “with” community members, instead of “about” them, she says. It’s also about creating opportunities for newspapers and other news outlets to leverage the information. “We see us as working in partnership with journalist organizations that have the ability to amplify that information,” says Blanchett.

Most often, documenters seek out meetings that local journalists are too stretched to get to.

“This is a way to encourage citizen participation but to also help surface information and the important decisions that are being made every day,” Blanchett says.

Rethinking journalist roles

The rise of various forms of citizen journalism has coincided with the hollowing out of local newsrooms under corporate mergers. In her course Reimagining the News, Blanchett addresses the rethinking of journalist roles currently underway as newsrooms are diminished, social media has become the main source of news for young people, and AI is altering our relationship to reality.

“This is happening in a journalism landscape where cuts just keep coming and newsrooms – particularly local – keep closing,” she says.

There is no Documenters program per se in Kingston, but local residents here and in many other cities and communities have found creative ways to fight a decline in transparency and accountability.

In Kingston, numerous community groups come together annually to produce a detailed report card for the City that includes a grade for transparency and accountability.

The latest 2025 report card assigned the City an “F”, noting growing frustration with the level of public engagement and lack of consultation on major projects, most notably the proposed soccer stadium at the Memorial Centre site.

Perspective gap

As evidence of the gap in perspective between The City of Kingston and citizens, the City this week just proudly announced receipt of a national award for its public consultation process on the stadium. Granicus, the award sponsor and a U.S.-based government technology firm commissioned by the City to build its “Get Involved Kingston” portal, praised the City’s performance in the trust and transparency category.

Blanchett’s colleague at Concordia University Magda Konieczna was first to help launch a pilot Documenters project in Toronto in the fall of 2024, working with The Green Line. A year later Documentalistes Canada centred in Montreal was created.

There are 35 municipalities on the island and 82 in Greater Montreal. “Many of these used to be covered by journalists, but we have little local media left,” Konieczna says. This has left a vacuum that some of her Documenters are attempting to fill, “working on the ground in several boroughs that don’t have local news outlets.”

Last fall, some Documenters were attending a council meeting of the Ville-Marie borough (of Montreal when it veered into a sensitive discussion about police use of bodycams. The Documenters were able to flag the debate for a local news startup known for its interest in covering police violence. It was an act of collaboration that produced timely media coverage. “We’re hoping to do more of this going forward,” says Konieczna.

Documenters Canada, founded in 2024, is now also being adopted in partnership with the Crowsnest Pass Herald in Alberta. Close to 40 Canadians have gone through Documenters training to date.

Blanchett is part of an international study, the principal investigator in Canada, of how journalists perform their roles in a new, vastly transformed media landscape.

Now moving into its third stage, The Journalistic Role Performance Project (JRP), funded in part by the Creative School at TMU and SSHRC, is focusing on how current affairs journalists across television, radio, print, and online platforms are operating in today’s shifting media industry. One of six journalistic roles the researchers are analyzing is the watchdog role (i.e. protecting public interest by monitoring and sometimes challenging those in positions of power).

At a time when journalistic norms are being challenged by technology and the changing demographics of newsrooms, this area of inquiry has become fresh ground for debate and research, Blanchett says.

Analysing avoidance

Though still early into this wave of the projects, which involves an analysis of thousands of news stories and interviews with journalists, Blanchett says she’s already detecting patterns in how journalists are dealing with avoidance and unresponsiveness from public institutions.

She’s noted that more journalists are explicitly stating as part of a story that requests for an interview or response were declined or not answered. “That is something that seems to me to be increasing. It’s important to acknowledge when we are not getting answers,”

Blanchett notes as well that the notion of accountability has grown increasingly fuzzy in today’s fragmented media world, and those who wish to dodge a reporter can easily do so.

“I hear this from my friends and colleagues who are still working in newsrooms and also from my students. That because of how drastically communications have changed, it’s much easier to duck any real accountability.

“A politician, for example, can post a video on social media as a safe way to respond to an issue. Or they can just respond by email or choose a softball kind of interview or podcast rather than sitting down to an interview that might be a little more uncomfortable for them.“

Unfortunately, she says, “this is how some people view accountability, particularly the ones who need to be accountable,” she says.

The Documenters’ movement is partly about pushing us to think about democracy as more than just casting a vote. “We want to raise awareness that citizens have a right to go to these meetings, to ask questions about how things are being done, and to voice an opinion.”

THE PEWS ARE emptying. What’s next?

Big change is happening to Kingston’s faith-based landscape. We see it throughout the city as congregations shrink, the ranks of clergy diminish, and churches are vacated and/or repurposed for other uses.

It is a complex issue. Many of those buildings still occupy prominent places in our neighbourhood landscapes. But now congregations are aging, ideas about spirituality are changing, and weather and time are taking their toll on bricks, stone, slate and mortar.

And Kingston is not alone. Kendra Fry, who leads a non-profit consultancy transforming underutilized churches, estimates suggest that one-third of Canada’s faith buildings could be in danger of closing. The United Church of Canada reports one building closing a week while the Anglican denomination forecasts a trendline toward a complete loss of members around 2040.

As congregations disappear, the difficult questions begin, and they transcend the practicalities of what to do about that leaky roof/faulty heating system/crumbling masonry. Understanding and untangling the emotional, spiritual and financial connections between worshippers and their place of worship can be a wrenching process.

Rising to the challenge

There are solutions. They range from simply bolting the doors to creative repurposing, and Kingston’s faithful are rising to the challenge in interesting and inspiring ways.

Sometimes that relationship simply ends, full stop: Kingston’s Church of the Good Thief, for example, closed in 2013. It was a case of “lack of priests, lack of parishioners,” says Patrick Greenwood, Chair of the Archdiocese of Kingston Diocesan Building and Property Committee. “Some housing was built on surrounding property, and the former rectory now houses apartments, but property itself was declared surplus.” The historically designated church remains shuttered after plans to repurpose it for diocesan archives were shelved due to renovation costs, but the committee hopes to have the building on the market soon.

But there are many other instances in Kingston of churches and their congregations finding new ways to continue the mission of their place of worship – even if it means saying goodbye to their beloved bricks and mortar.

Strong attachments

“People are so attached to the building, sentimentally, and they realize how hard it is to get past that,” says Lynne Freeman, who has seen first-hand the impact of this kind of profound change on her fellow churchgoers. She was a Presbytery representative when two Kingston churches, St. Margaret’s United Church and Queen Street United Church, voted to amalgamate in 2010, under the name of Crossroads United Church.

On one level, the decision was simple. Queen Street United was going to be condemned unless it could come up with millions to restore it, Freeman recalls. “It was either that, or find a way for the two congregations to move together.” They decided on the latter.

Freeman, who was Associate Director at Queen’s University School of Policy Studies for many years, understands the challenges of organizational change. “Fewer than 50 percent of merging organizations fail,” she says. “The key is for the merger to be well planned and intentional, not forced.”

Church members on both sides wanted to maintain the legacy of their church community, Freeman says. “They were open to entering into a process of collaboration and eventual amalgamation.”

Change, or remain?

It’s not always that simple or easy. Sometimes the choice of “change or remain” can be just too daunting, she says. “For many congregants, there’s a deep spiritual connection to these particular places, and the memories of important times in their lives. When you look at demographics, at the number of churches closed across country, many of them continue on as long as they can, and then they hit a wall and realize they can’t.”

But for other congregations, change can be an opportunity to think more broadly about how to fit into and serve a wider community. For the Crossroads congregation, combining resources gives them more options, Freeman says. “It offers them new ways to support community.”

Crossroads, guided by a vision of “Outrageous Optimism,” has been working with Our Livable Solutions, a local non-profit, to provide space for sleeping cabins and associated services for residents without homes. Church volunteers also do justice and advocacy outreach. And its sanctuary, meeting rooms and community hall can be rented by community groups. At the other end of the sacred-secular spectrum, the former Queen Street church now functions as a hotel and a co-working space.

Two faiths, one roof

Kingston has other models of churches finding ways to sustain themselves. Princess Street United Church is being repurposed as a youth shelter, but its congregation didn’t have to go far to find a new home: Three blocks north, St. Luke’s Anglican Church now supports both faiths, with two part-time clergy, one affiliated with the United Church, the other with the Anglican Church.

A more recent example of transformational change is Sydenham Street United Church, also known as The Spire. It’s a unique arrangement – the church building is held in trust on behalf of the United Church of Canada, with The Spire being a business line for the church.

Freeman, who describes herself as “a member of the cheering section” and a congregational volunteer who worked to keep SSU going, describes the arrangement as symbiotic relationship. “It’s still an active church, but it can sustain itself by sharing its building with the broader community. It’s doing community-building seven days a week.”

Like so many churches, Sydenham Street was old, and maintenance was expensive. Says Freeman, the issue boiled down to, “we can sustain the ministry, but how can we find a way to share this building with others who will help carry its costs?”

‘‘Wise and respectful’

Led by visionary champion Bruce Hutchinson, the process of transformation was responsible, wise, and respectful, she says. “They made the decision to look for alternatives in a very intentional way, without the pressure of having to force a short-term decision.” It was helped along by a volunteer leadership with experience in public organizations. “People were willing to look to the longer-term future, not just expeditious responses.”

“It’s a fascinating institutional transformation project in this time of cataclysmic social change.”

The church and its alter-ego, The Spire, are now a poster child for The National Trust for Canada, which advocates for preserving faith spaces because they offer a relatively inexpensive redevelopment option for community use. The Spire is currently one of 12 finalists in the National Trust’s “Next Great Save” competition. If it gets the most votes, it wins $50,000, which will be put towards replacing the church’s heating and cooling system. (The winner will be announced today (April 24).

The Halo effect

The Spire’s successful transition also highlights a new rationale for preserving faith spaces: Economics. First implemented in the U.S., the so-called “Halo Index” was developed by preservationists who found a way to quantify the economic value that these sacred spaces and their congregations contribute to their surrounding communities. A 2017 study of the Halo effect in Canada showed Sydenham Street United to have a Halo Index of $1.7 million, stating, “This represents a per capita index for every worshipper of almost $21,000. Congregational members offer 20,706 hours of volunteer support directly to the community and for every dollar the church spends, the community receives $5.40 in economic benefit.”

The national study, targeting 26 congregations, shows a combined annual economic impact of $62.4 million.

Those numbers are important because they also quantify the impact that would be felt by communities if they lose access to the affordable infrastructure that is provided by these faith spaces.

In her two-year survey of four Ontario communities, “Community Spaces in Faith Places,” released in 2020, Kendra Fry notes that 84 percent of groups supported in affordable faith-based spaces have no realistic alternatives. “There is little to no recognition in communities of how vulnerable and important this ‘taken for granted’ resource is,” she says.

Rural, and vital

Rural communities are especially vulnerable, where small churches play an outsized role in creating fellowship and connections. They’re often the only gathering places outside of work and home. “In many rural areas they are the last standing local community spaces,” Fry notes in her report, No Space for Community: The Value of Faith Buildings and the Effect of Their Loss in Ontario. “Closure of faith buildings increases distance and mobility challenges which are already prevalent in rural society.”

Dawn Clark, a retired United Church minister, cites Perth Road Village United Church as an example of this community role. “The church is still going strong, with vibrant successful congregations.” Its affiliated buildings are community-owned and offer a variety of activities, including lunches, speakers, and religious events. “It offers immense benefits to the lonely, children, and people just looking to make connections.”

This kind of grass-roots community-building is made possible because of the affordable spaces that faith buildings provide. We ignore these important resources at our peril, says Fry. “If the significant range of support services provided by user groups in faith buildings were to decline, the cost to all orders of government would be significant.”

So what can governments do? Her report offers a number of recommendations. Municipalities should consider faith buildings in planning and recognize them community assets in zoning policies. Provincially, policy and funding support would help to preserve these local assets without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status. Federal recognition could include conversion support through local infrastructure funding and innovation initiatives.

The churches of Kingston are as distinctive a part of our identity as our magnificent City Hall or historic fortifications. Conspicuous by their elegant spires and graceful domes, which dominate our skyline to this day, their historic importance to the spiritual and social life of local citizens can be measured by their sheer numbers – an 1875 map shows no less than 14 churches and cathedrals in the relatively small area we now call downtown.

Today, those majestic landmarks endure. Thanks to the efforts of local citizens, they’re coming to represent a new, deeper kind of spiritual engagement with their community.

LOCAL CITIZEN groups are asking the City to wait until after the municipal election to make critical decisions about boundary expansion and the new Official Plan.

“Deferring the costly decision to expand the urban boundary is necessary to allow a newly elected Council, with a renewed mandate, to consider this issue fully and transparently, ensuring that the long-term implications for residents are clearly understood,” notes environmental lawyer David Donnelly who is representing Building Kingston’s Future, part of the Coalition of Kingston Communities that is calling for the delay.

The draft Official Plan currently under review does not yet include comprehensive natural heritage protection policies, which are now expected in mid-May, the Coalition points out. It is advocating for an extension of the review period beyond the current deadline of May 3 to allow ample time for the consideration of proposed policies.

‘A massive area’

“This is a massive area that is five times the size of Queen’s campus,” Donnelly says. “It’s fair to say that public hasn’t yet been sufficiently informed on the natural heritage study.”

Under Section 275 of The Municipal Act, restrictions are put on the actions of municipal councils leading up to election day. But Donnelly says the so-called lame duck provisions apply to only specific council decisions.

This is a governance issue, he says. “The public is very clear that they don’t want this rushed through, and this is a sufficiently large issue that who makes the decisions should have a mandate from the public.”

In a report commission by the Coalition, retired Ministry of Natural Resources ecologist Mark Heaton says Kingston should aim to increase its current target for forest cover from 30 to 40 percent.

Loss of forest cover

“Kingston has already lost thousands of hectares of forest since 2004 despite clear policy commitments to protect and enhance it,” says Annette Burfoot, of Building Kingston’s Future. “Continuing with the current approach will only accelerate that loss. We need stronger, nature-first policies in place before any urban expansion is considered.”

More financial analysis of infrastructure or service and services costs along with an understanding of the implications for transportation and mobility are needed, says the Coalition. Not to mention, “an assessment of the economic value of nature’s ecological services”.

How can Council vote on adding new areas for development and infrastructure without knowing the costs to taxpayers?” asks Christine Sypnowich, chair of the Coalition. “Growth does not pay for itself and taxpayers will bear yet again the cost of these decisions far into the future.”

Urban sprawl is costly

Donnelly believes The City’s seeming need for speed is misplaced. “Urban sprawl is the least efficient and costliest development option for Kingston, what’s the rush?” he asks.

Lawyer Roberto Aburto, who represents the Coalition, notes that “the process has become unclear” and requests in a letter to the City that it clarify the process it is now planning to follow during its Official Plan review.

In connection with a different city issue related to water and sewer management, The Crow recently asked the City: How important is timing when it comes to adoption of an MSC [municipal service corporation] model? Given the intense public interest in this matter, why not wait until after the November municipal election?

The City responded: Staff have a responsibility to continue to do work to support future financial sustainability, even when there are municipal elections. The current Council has been elected to make decisions and has the ability to exercise this power until November.”

This is the first in a two-part series about the challenges confronting faith spaces and the ways they are being addressed in Kingston.

IT SEEMS THE ultimate irony: Even as it celebrates more than 40 years of providing hot meals and other assistance to Kingston’s vulnerable, often homeless citizens -- Lunch by George is facing potential homelessness itself.

For now, the popular, free weekday hot breakfast and hot lunch program continues to operate out of its longtime base, the Wellington Street hall of St. George’s Cathedral. Tom Ivison, Chief Administrator of Outreach St. George’s Kingston (OSGK), which runs the program, is leading the search for new quarters and is “cautiously optimistic” that they’ll be announcing their new home soon.

But in the meantime, they’re one local example of an emerging national trend as places of worship face a plethora of challenges and even threats to their existence. In 2009, the National Trust for Canada estimated that of the nearly 28,000 buildings owned by religious organizations, nearly one-third of them are at risk of closing.

That’s a significant loss, according to Kendra Fry, who leads a non-profit consultancy transforming underutilized churches. In her two-year survey of four Ontario communities, “Community Spaces in Faith Places,” released in 2020, she notes that 84 percent of groups supported in affordable faith-based spaces have no realistic alternatives. “There is little to no recognition in communities of how vulnerable and important this ‘taken for granted’ resource is,” she says.

For Lunch by George, it was the growing complexity of needs by its guests and accompanying security concerns that resulted in an eviction notice from their landlord, St. George’s Cathedral, whose news release related to the closure states, “Weighing the fiduciary responsibility it holds for the safety of staff and visitors, the Executive of St George’s has sadly concluded that the church’s capacity for security can no longer meet the need presented by this program.”

For many years, Lunch by George also provided a warming centre during the day in cold months, and offered warm clothing. That also ended last November.

From dine-in to takeout

The first shoe dropped last June, when, at the request of the Cathedral, the meal program switched its service from dining-in to takeout meals only. OSGK wasn’t fazed. “Surprisingly it was a huge success,” Ivison says. “Some guests don’t want in-dining – although it is an advantage in winter. But our guests are comfortable with the change.”

A big part of the program’s continuing success is a new chef, Chaze. “She’s wonderful, a real gift for Lunch by George,” Ivison says. She makes everything from scratch, preparing more than 150 meals a day in cold weather to more than 200 a day in warmer seasons, or about 1,000 meals per week. They served a total of 31,778 meals in 2025.

The program relies on food donations and a roster of 20 to 30 volunteers (the uptick comes with the arrival of Queen’s students).

Recruiting isn’t an issue. “We haven’t had to advertise. We get a lot of walk-bys. It’s contagious,” Ivison says. “People hear it’s a great experience, and they love working with Chaze. It’s a real group effort.” (Ivison often chooses to do his own work in the dining room. “I love hearing the laughter and the banter from the kitchen.”)

The perennial popularity of the meal program was recognized last year by the City of Kingston when it created a display in its Market Wing Cultural Space honoring the 40^th anniversary of Lunch by George. “It’s a different world from 40 years ago,” Ivison, the former proprietor of Classic Video, says. “As a business owner, it was very rare to see unhoused people downtown.”

‘Perfect storm’

The housing boom, which decimated the affordable rental market, the fentanyl crisis, and then COVID, are part of what he calls a “perfect storm” that has led to increased needs. “Today our guests are a whole different mix from 10 years ago.”

Founded in 1985 as a lunch and summer drop-in, the program was expanded and from 1988 to 1996 was partially funded by the province.

When its original funding from the province dried up, the program became the independent, secular, not-for-profit Outreach St. George Kingston, and that’s when the Lunch by George name was coined. Today, United Way funding has enabled the organization to hire a full-time administrator (Ivison, who joined in February, 2025) and chef Chaze. Support from a range of local charitable organizations also helps.

OSGK expects to continue its various services in its new home, but it would also like to expand its reach. “There’s a real lack of services on weekends and holidays,” Ivison says. He often works the takeout window and says guests coming on Monday or after a long weekend say they haven’t eaten since the previous Friday or Saturday. Meals seven days a week and on holidays would be great, he says. “But that’s thinking big and long.”

As for what’s coming next, Ivison says he and their board “have backup plans to backup plans.” He’s optimistic that come what may, Lunch By George will endure. And he’s passionate about his role. “I love what I do. It’s a privilege.”

There are a variety of ways to support OSGK’s work, including a George’s Wish List of items to meet everyday needs, and there is a quartet of options for monetary donations. Once their move is finalized, a crowdfunding page will be launched.

Next week: How churches are reimagining their roles and their physical spaces to address current-day challenges.

THE CITY IS moving too fast on one of the most consequential decisions to be made by the current Mayor and City Council, says Chris Gusen, spokesperson for the Kingston Climate Justice Coalition.

The process around the official plan and potential expanding of urban boundaries is being rushed,” he says. That’s the theme of a petition signed by hundreds of local residents that is soon to be presented to Council.

City Council is being asked to vote on this critical aspect of the Official Plan “before the homework is even finished,” the petition notes. “[Councillors] are essentially being asked to sign a blank check.”

Expansion of the City’s urban growth boundary would allow for development in previously protected areas. The petition calls on the Mayor and Council to make sure that “data comes before decisions.”

The City has yet to publicly reveal the full results of several long-awaited studies undertaken to assess the natural heritage and environmental impacts of boundary expansion, allowing inadequate time for public consultation and feedback, the petition notes.

“Critical reports on the long-term costs of new sewer, water, and electrical infrastructure, the climate implications of urban sprawl, and the impact on our disappearing wetlands and forests haven’t been completed or made public yet. Proceeding without this data isn’t just bad planning — it’s a financial and environmental risk to every Kingston resident.” The City says information about future public consultations will be available next week.

Mapping still incomplete

The City released a draft of the Natural Heritage Study, part of the Official Plan, on March 9. Public comment is open until April 21. But, notes Gusen, the study is still in draft form and “the mapping” of key ecological features such as wetlands and woodlands is not yet completed.

Alignment between council votes on key issues related to the new Official Plan and public access to the relevant studies underway is still lacking, says Gusen.

He notes that the City appeared prepared to put a second draft of the Official Plan and the urban boundary issue before City Council as early as March 31. Responding to public pressure, the City abruptly cancelled the special council meeting and a few days later also cancelled an on-line open house for April 8, saying it wanted “to align with the public engagement process underway” and ensure that “community members feel they have been heard.”

But the KCJC says disclosure of information and adequate public consultation has not yet been achieved.

“Right now the schedule is still that council is planning to vote on the final draft of Official Plan with the new urban boundaries in June, which is ahead of the completion of some of these important studies on infrastructure costs, the integrated mobility plan, forest management, a roads plan.”

The City of Kingston’s proposed Official Plan is a 25-year strategy (through to the year 2051) based on a projected population of 220,000, a number some critics claim is at odds with current population growth trends. The second draft of the plan is currently open for public feedback until April 21, 2026.

“I’m not against growth,” says Gusen. “We should plan to grow as a community but we can do that in a smarter way through densification and respect for nature that doesn’t encourage costly urban sprawl and more pollution.”

The Kingston Climate Justice Coalition is a network of local organizations working together “to make sure that City Council acts on the climate crisis with urgency and compassion”.

Cart before the horse

The community members say the City is putting the cart before the horse in asking councillors to vote on expansion of City boundaries before they and the public have access to, and can digest, the essential information contained in reports.

“It just isn’t following a logical order,” says Mara Shaw, Kingston resident and environmental engineer. “We need to get a better understanding of the natural heritage plan and a full accounting of what this will cost the city and what we are losing.”

The petition shows “how much people in this city do care. There’s a very strong feeling that we need to protect what’s left.”

Shaw acknowledges the hard work done by City staff and the desire “to get a lot done” before the summer break and the fall launch of a municipal election. “With all due respect to how smart and dedicated the planning staff are, the process feels really rushed and not as well informed as it should be.”

Concerned residents and council need more time to get their heads around the issues, she says. “It’s been like drinking from a fire hose, an inundation of information.”

The petition urges City Council to consider the momentous consequences of impending decisions on the new Official Plan.

“Kingston is at a crossroads, says the KCJC. “The decisions made today about our Urban Boundary will lock us into how we grow, move, and spend tax dollars until 2051.”

AS CANADA ROLLS out its new $81.8 billion defence strategy, Kingston will see major change that will present both opportunities and challenges, says Kingston City Councillor Conny Glenn.

With Canada’s new bolstered defence budget, Kingston is to become one of four hubs of major military activity in Canada: Halifax will focus on naval and marine; Montreal on aerospace and manufacturing; and Edmonton on industry and logistics.

Already a major centre for Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) communications and training of military personnel, Kingston is being designated as a communications hub or the “brain centre of the military,” says Glenn.

Ground has already been broken on a massive $98 million facility on Highway 2 at CFB Kingston to house a new 21 Electronic Warfare Regiment. The new facility will enhance the Regiment’s ability to provide tactical electronic warfare support to Canadian armed forces deployed on international operations. Its role includes “intercepting and analyzing foreign communications” and “assisting with reconnaissance and surveillance.”

With Prime Minister Carney’s recent announcement of Canada’s first Defence Industrial Strategy, and the associated strengthened role for CFB Kingston, many benefits are expected to flow to the larger community. “We are going to see some really bright people coming here and some great technology and cybersecurity jobs,” says Glenn.

The Sydenham District councillor wants to make sure the City is equipped to take full advantage of the investments and expertise about to flow our way. She’s just as committed to ensuring we secure the federal support needed to accommodate the anticipated demand for more infrastructure and services.

“There is going to be a lot of expansion here. It’s going to hit us hard,” says Glenn.

Big projects, big needs

The federal government has already announced the construction of 900 new homes for military members. “With 900 homes come 900 families,” she says. “We already have growth pressure, so that’s going to add to that pressure in areas such as infrastructure, health care, and transportation.

Kingston has spent close to $4 million in recent years recruiting family doctors. “I don’t want to see us fall behind the eight ball there,” she says.

Recognizing the important role for city council in anticipating future municipal needs and bringing them to the attention of the federal government, Glenn successfully sought election to the board of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, a powerful national voice for the country’s cities. “With the Base here and the large number of federal connections we have here, I thought we needed to be represented,” she says. She now co-chairs a working committee to help identify the needs of municipalities with a significant military component.

“I see the purpose to be aligning the spending of the federal government with what they are asking us to do. If you are asking us to be this hub, then help us with the infrastructure costs, whether about water and waste or electricity.”

She notes as well the importance of the government helping Kingston with its connectivity issues, speaking as someone who has advocated for “fixing VIA” as opposed to relying on Alto’s high-speed train with its environmental implications and current lack of a stop in Kingston. “We need help making sure people can get in and out of the city.”

Leadership in supercomputing

At the same time that Kingston is seeing major defence-related developments, it is also setting the stage to become home to a major sovereign supercomputing infrastructure in Canada. A Queen’s-led initiative is underway to create a secure, Canadian-governed computing system that can guard sensitive data and intellectual property while also boosting defence innovation and capability and advancing research in areas like medicine, AI and climate science.

Queen’s is already home to the world renowned CAESAR lab, led by Dr. Ryan Grant and the largest group of experts in Canada on exascale systems - the latest iteration of unimaginably fast computing. Grant recently recruited as a collaborator Dr. Ian Karlin, a world leader in large systems with both research and industrial expertise. Karlin notes that every other G7 country “has or is planning the kind of larger scale computing power that has been a missing piece” in Canada.

Grant has publicly advocated that Canada spend at least $1 billion a year (one per cent of the defence budget) on supercomputing to strengthen competitiveness.

“This capacity is important for defence purposes for many reasons,” says Karlin, including how it would eliminate the need for time-consuming prototypes when designing weapon systems.

With momentum towards transformational change underway on a number of fronts in Kingston, it’s imperative that our local government is paying full attention, says Glenn. “It’s up to us to get out ahead of this.”

THERE WAS NO lump, no pain, or any of the other known warning symptoms.

But as a health enthusiast who believes in preventative care, and aware that she’d missed her routine biannual mammogram during COVID, Donna Chambers contacted Breast Imaging Kingston in the fall of 2024.

They told her she was now too old to qualify for a self-referred mammogram.

Like all women in Ontario over age 74, Chambers is now required to ask her family doctor for an official referral for a breast exam. Her doctor made the referral and she was diagnosed with Invasive Lobular Carcinoma, a fast-growing cancer that can spread through the breast rather than forming a lump.

It’s also a type of cancer that is most common in older women.

“It was the shock of a lifetime,” she says. “I’ve always been vigilant about exercise, nutrition and getting regular mammograms. I go to the gym and walk six kilometres a day.”

In Ontario, women with no new breast cancer symptoms or personal history of breast cancer qualify for regular OHIP-covered mammograms without a doctor’s referral if between the ages of 40 to 74. Cancer Care Ontario’s Ontario Breast Screening Program (OBSP) doesn’t send invitations or recall letters to people over 74 to remind them of their next screening, which is a key component of the organized program for the 40-74 age group.

Cancer Care Ontario notes that the age is not a full stop on screening but rather the point at which the OBSP transitions from automatic reminders to requiring a doctor’s referral.

In these days of overwhelmed health-care systems, a lack of family doctors, and backed-up emergency rooms, the issue of self referral is not so simple, says Dr. Christopher Nicol, Director of the Division of Cancer Biology and Genetics at Queen’s Sinclair Cancer Research Institute.

The referral challenge

“One of the real challenges that is concerning to a lot of women who may be at risk is the need to get a referral. In Ontario alone, there are many people who don’t have a primary health-care provider. That loss of the ability to self-refer means they would be walking into an emergency room and waiting their turn. Not everyone has the ability to do that.”

After her diagnosis, Chambers had further mammograms, ultrasound and a biopsy, which diagnosed her cancer as stage one. Surgery and radiation followed.

Had she not asked for a referral, Chamber’s surgeon told her, “We would be having an entirely different conversation.”

That terrifying realization moved her to get over her unease with sharing personal health issues. She’s now in a public fight against what she believes is a misguided government rule that is putting the lives of older women at risk while also raising the costs of health-care.

“I was told that, statistically, women over age 74 are not at high risk for developing breast cancer,” she says. “But isn’t any incidence of breast cancer at any age, too many?”

Why increase the risk of breast cancer going undetected until it reaches later stages in women over age 74 who cannot self-refer, she says.

“And isn’t it far more costly to treat breast cancer than it is to fund biannual mammograms?” she says. “If setting the cutoff age is to reduce healthcare costs, it does not make financial sense given costs for treating cancers.”

Chambers, known to some Kingstonians as the host of Cogeco’s Limestone Lens, isn’t alone in her concern. Last week, Kingston Liberal MPP Ted Hsu delivered her petition with more than 500 signatures to the Ontario government legislature calling for a change in mammogram eligibility.

The petition notes that there are 586,095 women in Ontario over the age of 75 and that nearly 20 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer are over the age of 75. It points as well to provincial and national cancer statistics showing that breast cancer treatment costs escalate exponentially as the disease progresses. The cost of treating stage four cancer is estimated to be about $137,000 compared to $15,600 for treatment at stage one.

Cancer Care Ontario estimates the average total cost of a screening mammogram (including the procedure, facility, and administrative overhead) to be $100 to $136 per woman.

Nicol agrees that there are cost implications for the health-care system, especially with an aging population and with people living longer.

Early detection is key

“One of the advantages to having self referrals, especially for someone who suspects something is wrong, is the follow up and early detection, which is always the key. The sooner cancer is found the more likely there will be a good outcome for the patient. In terms of cost to the health-care system, treatment becomes more expensive once cancer has metastasized.”

Ontario’s age ceiling is based on clinical trials evidence suggesting there are minimal benefits of routine mammograms in the over 74 age group. Also provided as rationale is concern over the gratuitous anxiety caused to women by false positives and overdiagnosis.

A 2022 study shows that after ten years of annual mammography screening, close to 50 per cent of patients experienced a false positive result. Each subsequent procedure to determine a final diagnosis adds to health-care costs.

Overdiagnosis means there is cancer but it is slow growing enough that it is not likely to be the patient’s cause of death.

Chambers says she’s heard from older women whose doctors downplayed the need for a breast-screening referral. “A doctor pats them on the head, and says don’t worry about it. We don’t do them on women your age.” Some paternalistic doctors think they are sparing women from the anxiety caused by false positives, which outweighs the benefits of the procedure at an older stage. “We don’t need a technician chirping that this is last time you have to get this done,” she says.

“It would be much more stressful and anxiety-provoking to get undetected, late-stage breast cancer than to get a false positive test,” she says.

FOR THREE YEARS he ate his meals alone. Now Jim has a new home and is teaching one of his fellow housemates to cook. They have breakfast together every morning. Each of them is also taking their first steps towards building small businesses.

They’re two of a half-dozen housemates who are exploring micro-business ideas in their “living incubator,” a shared home with built-in opportunities to learn life skills, earn income and contribute to the community.

Opened just a few months ago, their cozy residence in midtown Kingston is operated by Our Livable Solutions and supported by a roster of volunteers and OLS alumni. It even has a name: Spark of Life House, chosen by its residents. That decision is one small example of OLS’s philosophy of involving the people it supports in decision-making.

Residents can live in the house for up to four years. “It’s a supportive environment, based on collaboration and care,” says Chrystal Wilson, Acting Executive Director of OLS.

This week Spark of Life House celebrated another milestone, holding its first group meeting about its Micro-Loan program. This night, residents are gathered in their living room, leafing through their Micro-Loan binders as Wilson guides them step-by-step through the requirements and resources that will help them.

Community service is key

An important step in the micro-loan process is for applicants to become involved in community service as a means of expanding their sense of compassion and responsibility. This might include volunteering at another organization or writing a letter of support. (Compassion activities must benefit organizations other than OLS.)

Also in the room are volunteer evaluators, who will review the participants’ proposals, give feedback and help determine their readiness to move on to higher levels of loans, learning and responsibility.

Wilson walks them through the paperwork, which includes a proposal form and follow-up documents such as evaluation guidelines, self-learning reflections and earnings reports. All are short but thorough, and flexible. “Residents can do projects together,” she tells them. They can also suggest their own learning activities. There’s also a list of how-to web resources for starting businesses on $100.

She stresses that each of them can go at their own pace – “it’s not a competition.” A longtime small-business owner herself, she reassures them that failure is okay, it’s common in small business, and it’s a learning opportunity. But if it happens, they’re expected to pay back their loans, and do some community service, and reflect on why their idea didn’t work.

Self-sustaining model

Those who are able to earn from their ideas must pay back their loans before advancing to larger amounts. This self-perpetuating cycle should help to keep the program going and it motivates participants, Wilson says.

Jim talks about his plans to start a business that taps into his love of cooking. “I’ve always enjoyed cooking. My mom was a good cook. I like cooking because it’s about making people happy.”

His earlier career was as a mobile mechanic. “I was one of those guys at the side of the 401, out there in all weather,” he says. An accident ended that work and he retrained in a food service program at Sir Sanford Fleming College.

He’s since worked for a catering company, doing events such as weddings and breakfasts. He’s also a volunteer at Martha’s Table, where he’s invented a breakfast sandwich (a poached egg on a bagel with swiss cheese and pesto). In February he volunteered at OLS’s Warm Hearts Day, where his superb pancake-flipping got him an invitation to help out Crossroads Church’s Shrove Tuesday pancake day event.

Ultimately, he’d like to open a catering business for disabled and senior citizens, he says.

One of his housemates is planning to use his micro-loan to kick-start an indigenous crafts venture, making birchbark baskets, with traditional porcupine quill work and beading, using bark harvested from downed trees. An accomplished artist who has been through hard times, he’s enthused about the potential for his work. “I’m finding myself again,” he says.

Neil, who has been at the house for two months, is quietly optimistic about the program and his housemates. “Everyone helps each other here.” He says he’s leaning towarda cleaning or a computer-based business.

The evening’s meeting includes the house-naming, suggested by one of the residents. “It’s Spark of Life, because it’s given us back our lives,” he says. “It’s about a roof over our heads and having a bed to sleep in.”

Mary Anne Beaudette is Co-Editor of The Kingston Crow.

THE BOARD OF a downtown condominium building is currently in dispute with one of its apartment owners after the absentee landlord converted two of the unit’s main rooms into bedrooms, leaving the tiny kitchen and the bathroom as the only non-bedroom spaces. The intended occupants? Students.

This kind of ‘non-compliant use’ of dwelling units is happening all over the city. Turning a two-bedroom unit into a four-bedroom one to attract student renters is just one manifestation of the urban transformation process known as “studentification.”

Also part of the urban makeover underway in Kingston are “Purpose Built Student Accommodations” (PBSAs), the multi-storey, multi-unit buildings that in recent years have completely changed the look of Princess Street above Division.

Adding to that vista are plans for a 16-storey, 612-bedroom student residence in the low-rise environs at the junction of Princess, Clergy and Queen streets. Neighborhood opposition has been fierce, with concerns over its overall mass and height, loading and waste collection, as well as its incompatibility with its surrounding “heritage character” areas.

It’s the most recent expression of studentification in what’s been termed a housing crisis in the city. Kingston, like many Canadian cities with institutions of higher learning, has seen a steady migration of students into neighborhoods near campuses, as rising student enrolments overwhelm campus residence spaces.

In 2024 the City of Kingston published its Housing Needs Assessment, which included student housing. It projected that 2,300 new student housing units would be needed by 2051 to meet projected student enrolments of 48,300 students (up from 34,000 in 2021.)

Now the City has announced it will be developing a student housing strategy to address this gap. What form this will take remains to be seen. But many of the answers they need might be in their own backyard. David Gordon, a professor in Queen’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, has been studying where students live since the 1970s. (He was ahead of his time – the term “studentification” first emerged in British research in 2002.)

Old issue, new challenges

He has a longer view than most of us into Kingston’s student housing issue. “Student housing was an issue when the veterans returned from the Second World War with families living in barracks and Quonset huts,” he says. Older Queen’s (mostly male) alumni recall living in boarding houses near campus.

“Housing was also a major issue in Kingston in the late 1960s and early 1970s when the vast number of Baby Boom kids arrived at universities.” Students pitched tents on the lawn of Summerhill (where the principal lived) in protest.

Governments in those days helped. Large government loans were provided to vastly expand the university residence system nationwide, Gordon says. By 1974, the Queen’s residence system included 3,687 beds, accommodating 40 percent of the university’s 9,700 students. “A substantial number of graduate and upper year students lived in residence -- Including me -- at that time.”

Compare that to today, when the university’s current residence system accommodates approximately 4,800, or 17 percent, of its 28,600 full-time students. “The residence system is now almost entirely first-year students, and the University can no longer accommodate all the first-year students from out of town who wish to live in residence,” he says.

Gentrification by another name?

The long-term effects of this migration of students away from campus are significant. A just-published Master’s thesis by one of Gordon’s students, Myles Fox, describes the effects of studentification as similar to that of gentrification, resulting in resident displacement, higher rents and the breakup of neighborhoods and its social fabric. Kingstonians who still reside in campus-adjacent areas lament the loss of their local schools and long-term neighbours, and the transformation of commercial and service businesses towards student needs.

Studentification presents a special challenge for Kingston. “The problem is most severe in medium-sized cities with fast-growing medium sized universities and colleges.” But, Gordon says, “Kingston has some of the most difficult town-gown issues in Canada because of the size of the university in comparison with the size of the local population, and that few of the university students come from the host community.”

In fact, student housing, whether it be the conversion of family homes or the development of purpose-built residences, is a thorny local issue in university cities across North America, says Professor Nick Revington of Montreal’s Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), and Canada’s leading researcher in studentification. “Yet little research has considered the variety of approaches municipalities across an urban system have adopted to address student housing issues through land-use planning and their subsequent influence on development patterns.”

You can read Revington’s 2024 study, Land-Use Planning Approaches to Near-Campus Neighborhoods and Student Housing Development Patterns in Ontario, Canada here.

The data gap

Getting a grasp on the problem isn’t easy, and the challenges start with figuring out where students are living. Current methods for studying the location and intensity of studentification use census mapping. But they are entirely inadequate.

To avoid double-counting of members in a household, student houses aren’t counted in the census. “It makes the student area look 75 percent vacant. We have no idea where students live,” Gordon says.

(That wasn’t always the case. For many years, Queen’s students’ local addresses and phone numbers were listed in a student-produced directory called Who’s Where. The advent of privacy legislation ended that practice.)

Knowing where Queen’s and St. Lawrence students are living is essential to creating an effective student housing strategy, Gordon says. “Without good data, institutions and the city can turn a blind eye to the problems caused by studentification.”

Another step in the right direction would be for the city to implement a landlord registry and inspection service to address “terrible housing conditions” in some older rentals, he says. The city could also partner with Queen’s and St. Lawrence to promote housing rights awareness for students “who too often view their living circumstances as ‘temporary’ and thus do not report substandard housing conditions, including rodent infestation, mould, and fire hazards.”

The growing enrolment factor

Post-secondary institutions need to do their part, too, and Fox’s recent research paper underscores this point. “Universities need to understand the effects of their enrolment levels and [the effect of] their paltry student housing provision on the communities they occupy,” he writes. Neglecting this responsibility puts the onus for student housing on municipalities and private landlords, and harms both low-income residents who are displaced, and students who are forced to pay more and compete for lower-quality housing.

Building more campus residences is the single best way to reduce studentification’s impact on the community, both Gordon and Fox note. Additional potential solutions include creating landlord contract programs, in which student landlords agree to third-party property standards inspections in exchange for endorsement on an associated website; and regular student housing surveys.

They do not mince words about the critical role postsecondary institutions must play. “Failure to collect information on off-campus student rental locations is negligent of [Higher Education Institutions], especially while they increase enrolments and fail to increase their provision of on-campus housing accordingly – offloading the problem to the municipality and worsening town-gown relations.”

Educational institutions might consider partnering with not-for-profit PBSA developers, rather than with traditional for-profit developers. An outstanding example of this can be found three hours away, in Montreal’s UTILE, a not-for-profit student housing service that has built four projects with 600 units in the past four years, according to a profile in The Globe and Mail. The company was started by graduate students who funded their first project, an 80-unit building in Montreal, via a $1.8M equity stake from the Concordia University students’ association. UTILE receives 10 applications for every available unit and keeps rents low by not providing services that students can otherwise access on nearby campuses via their tuition fees.

The planners also suggest that more permissive zoning bylaws to allow higher density housing, reflected in purpose-built residences, could help prevent the displacement of non-students. However, these PHSAs come with caveats. “The new privately-built student apartments are clean, well-maintained and well managed, but not affordable,” Gordon says. Rents of $1600-$1700 per month are not uncommon. (As one developer put it, “Mom and Dad get shaken down to pay more rent because the kid wants a better place closer to the school, right?”) These shiny new buildings also reinforce class and age segregation, and are often not compatible with their surroundings.

A towering issue

As well, the literal rise of local purpose-builds has instigated a kind of race to the top, Gordon notes. “Princess Street is zoned for six to eight storeys, but proposals have gone from 10-12 storeys, to 18 storeys, and now we have 24 storeys. It’s completely out of scale.” Developers are holding back from midrise buildings – such as the five-and-a-half-storey Foundry building -- because bigger is more lucrative. “They have dollar signs in their eyes.”

Even low-rise residential neighborhoods are feeling the pressure from the profit motive posed by converting family homes. “Landlords have realized they can make more money in student rentals,” he says. A four-bedroom traditional home can easily become a 10-bedroom student rental, and charging by the bedroom could net a landlord $10,000 to $12,000 a month in rent. “It makes them willing to pay a higher purchase price, so the average buyer can’t compete. Kingscourt residents are getting flyers from developers wanting to buy houses.”

He’s especially concerned about the Williamsville district, north of Princess Street. “It’s where affordable housing was; now it’s all being converted to student housing. Williamsville residents are feeling overwhelmed by the size and numbers.”

At the same time, Gordon says, “The City needs to develop better policy to limit the studentification of family homes and low-income rental apartments. It also needs to encourage development of new private housing to be at a scale that is compatible with existing neighbourhoods.”

Partners in problem-solving

As it develops its own strategy for student housing, Kingston will also be contributing to a broader set of solutions for Ontario and Quebec, which represent two-thirds of Canada’s student population. The Limestone City is one of six locations included in a new three-year research study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and led by Prof. Revington and co-investigators Professors Gordon and Max Hartt at Queen’s. They’ll be working with higher education institutions, student associations, municipalities, housing-related non-profit organizations, and other academics to address problems, share knowledge and best practices and create solutions to student housing issues. The partnership includes the Town and Gown Association of Ontario, and UTILE, with researchers from INRS, Queen’s, and Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). “We have started work already with a focus group last week,” Gordon says.

“With important consequences for student success and well-being, the ability of higher education institutions to recruit students, and of cities to attract and retain educated young people, there is an urgent need for solutions to Canada’s ongoing student housing crisis,” Prof Revington says.

OUR LIVABLE SOLLUTIONS, a community group that works in partnership with people with lived and living experience to find community solutions to homelessness, is launching a Micro-Loans Program to help individuals seeking paths away from homelessness.

The pilot program, targeted at residents of OLS’s Community House in midtown Kingston, is designed to build life skills, financial responsibility, work experience, confidence, and compassion through small, supported entrepreneurship projects, says Chrystal Wilson, Acting Executive Director of Our Livable Solutions and a local writer on housing and homelessness.

“We’re very excited. It’s something our group has been working on since our first days at Belle Park,” she says. It began simply, with a fund-raising T-shirt. Krissy Bedard, one of Wilson’s clients in the encampment, came up with the idea of designing and selling a T-shirt in support of the group’s work. $400 was raised, and encampment residents voted to direct those funds towards launching a sleeping cabin pilot project.

For Bedard, now a Director at OLS, that modest but successful venture was life-changing, says Wilson. Today, the structured Micro-Loan Program re-imagines that approach on a broader scale.

Skills, learning and compassion

What makes the program unique is that each stage includes three parts: a business project, a learning activity (such as budgeting, customer service, or planning), and a compassion activity (helping others, volunteering, mentoring, or contributing to the community). “The goal is not just to help people earn money, but to help people build confidence, responsibility, skills, and a sense of purpose and belonging,” Wilson says.

For participants receiving Ontario Works and ODSP, the program is especially meaningful because they are able to earn extra monthly income without penalty. “It helps them safely and responsibly explore those earning opportunities while learning valuable life and work skills.”

The “test pilots” of this unique program are seven residents. “We’ll be learning and growing as the program develops,” says Wilson. It’s the most recent addition to OLS’s portfolio of practical, community-based solutions that help people move forward step by step.

Community members welcome

Kingstonians can help, too, Wilson says. “This initiative is strengthened by community support, so we invite you to take part.” OLS offers opportunities for involvement in a variety of ways:

· Mentors, people with experience and skills, from trades and small business to budgeting, crafts, or just life experience, can provide encouragement and help. V

· Volunteers can assist in a number of ways, including project evaluation, workshops, project ideas, and general support, among others.

· Donors can give to the OLS Micro Loans Revolving Fund, which provides the loans for small projects. This loan structure is unique: Because it’s a revolving fund, when loans are repaid the money is reused to help the next participant, meaning one donation can help many people over time.

If you are interested in mentoring, volunteering, donating, or simply learning more, you can contact OLS at info@ourlivable.solutions.

You can make a donation via OLS’s Canada Helps page.

You can learn more about the OLS Micro Loan Pilot Project and ask questions at the upcoming “Ask OLS Anything” event:

Wednesday April 1st, 2026
7:00 p.m. (ET)
Online via Zoom
Please RSVP to receive the link

THE MAN WOULD show up at the Kingston pharmacy weekly with various prescriptions for him and his family for inhalers, antibiotics, or steroids. The pharmacist wanted to know more. He discovered the family was living in an apartment with severe mold. “It never made sense to me to send a patient back into the same conditions that caused the illness,” Tarek Hussein, a local community pharmacist, says. Instead, he helped arrange for the man to get on a list for new housing.

Another time, Hussein grew concerned about a teenager who regularly came to the pharmacy for everyday supplies. “He looked very tired and weak.” He discovered the young person hadn’t eaten in three days. The pharmacy team offered food and a referral to a local organization that addresses food insecurity.

These kinds of life-changing gestures have traditionally been left mostly to family and friends. Now, they are being recognized as an essential component of healthcare. Guided by scientifically sound determinants of health, an increasing number of clinicians, community workers, and pharmacists are “social prescribing” to address issues such as social isolation and loneliness, food insecurity, homelessness, and a sense of belonging.

Founded in 2022, the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing is part of a global movement “bringing community capacity and healthcare services closer together” to address social determinants of health. The practice of ‘social prescribing’ is still new, or at least not yet a priority for most government health-care funders. But that hasn’t stopped many individuals and community services in Kingston from recognizing the need and value of this type of support.

One major local hub specializing in ‘social prescribing’ is Kingston Community Health Centres (KCHC). On Mondays and Fridays, about 50 to 80 people turn out to the Rideau Heights Community Centre, where KCHC offers programs ranging from exercise classes, music lessons, and hearing clinics to fall prevention classes, an Alzheimer Society group, crafts, games, and guest speakers. There’s also a market of fresh produce, hot meals, and volunteer snow-shoveling services.

Supporting the social prescribing concept, the City of Kingston offers a Municipal Fee Assistance Program for eligible adults and children, providing access to affordable transportation, recreation programs, certain health benefits, cultural events, and the Lionhearts Fresh Food Market.

More than 40 per cent of Canadians aged 50 and older are at risk of being socially isolated. More than 40 per cent of those aged 15 and over feel lonely some or all of the time. Issues of social isolation have only worsened with social media and the lingering effects of COVID.

Making people feel welcome

“A big breakthrough is getting people through the door the first time,” says Spencer Lanthier, a Community Development Worker at KCHC, which coordinates its many community partner organizations. “Getting people who have been socially isolated out of their shells is the most challenging. We want to get them into the space and make them feel welcome.”

Hussein, who has co-founded and worked in several pharmacies in the Kingston area, is a national leader in the movement to integrate social prescribing into pharmacy care. One of his first acts of social prescribing occurred 10 years ago when members of the Syrian community in Kingston needed help filling out tax forms, which was causing them lots of anxiety. “I referred them to a specific person at Kingston Immigration Partnership, KIP, and I followed up with them to make sure it worked out.”

He stresses that an important element of social prescribing is the link worker, a dedicated connector like Spencer Lanthier at KCHC, who actively facilitates a ‘warm’ referral to a community service or activity, rather than simply handing someone a flyer.

A new kind of pharmacy assistance

Hussein is part of a Canadian cross-university team commissioned by the Canadian Institute of Social Prescribing to conduct a national environmental scan of how pharmacy schools are teaching social prescribing. “There is a lot of variation in how it’s integrated into education right now,” he says. “Some mention it in a class or include it as part of a practicum, but there are no universal standards yet. This is a competency pharmacists should have, and we’re working to change that.”

Believing that pharmacists are in an ideal position to incorporate social prescribing into their daily routine, due to their accessibility and trusted relationships with patients, he is now helping to facilitate the integration of social prescribing into pharmacy education across Canada.

“We are trying to educate pharmacists about how you can ask those questions that will reveal more about the person’s situation and how to motivate your pharmacy team to also ask those questions, because the team members are the ones with the patient most of the time.”

Also, a strong advocate of social prescribing is Compassionate Communities Kingston (CCK), which defines its mission as “making it easier for us to give and accept help from each other.” Founded in 2017, it holds Talking Cafes for older adults who want to connect with others, advance care planning for those in care who might need someone to act on their behalf, and one-hour training sessions for ‘community connectors’ who want to learn how to help family, friends and neighbours find the local resources they need.

‘Sound health economics’

CCK has worked with Queen’s Family Health team, which offers two community clinics, to augment their work in providing social supports. CCK also funded a recent survey to gather demographic and anecdotal information about how the community is benefiting from social prescribing. Dr. Rylan Egan, an associate professor in Queen’s School of Nursing, who helped organize the study, believes “the integration of social supports alongside medical supports is important even in terms of economics. Some might think of it as a socialist thing to do, but this kind of preventative intervention is sound health economics.”

One of the biggest obstacles the social prescribing movement faces is proving its value to funders. “How to measure the benefits is a big challenge in social prescribing,” says Tom Harris, co-chair of the CCK board. “If you are the Ontario government, are you going to put more money into nurse practitioners and physicians or into something where it’s more difficult to quantify or measure the outcomes?” Harris promotes the idea of integrating social prescribing into existing services, such as libraries (Toronto Public Library has a multifaceted, five-year program to address senior loneliness), as well as clinical practices, such as pharmacies, nurse practitioners, and social workers.

Another big challenge for social prescribers is staying on top of all the resources the community has to offer, when already hard-pressed front-line workers must find time to keep databases up to date. “Programs are changing all the time. We need to be able to stay on top of the opportunities available in the community,” says Lanthier of the KCHC.

While the benefits of social prescribing may still be too elusive for governments with tight purse strings, those working in the field say the impact on individual lives is amazing to witness.

“I can tell you about one individual who attends our seniors’ group on the advice of his doctor while recovering from surgery,” says Lanthier. “For the first three months, he couldn’t walk. We referred him to an exercise group, and he’s now progressed to walking with a cane. His goal is to be able to kick a ball again with his grandchildren.

“The key was to find out what motivates him and to connect him to the right resource.”

ITS THE PART of pregnancy that’s not talked about: mental health. And now climate change is creating an added risk.

One in three women – 71 million worldwide— will experience anxiety and depression during pregnancy, and these stressors can affect their physical health, including diabetes, high blood pressure and pre-term birth.

It’s now also become important to understand how deteriorating climate conditions are affecting women’s mental health, says a Queen’s University Professor of Nursing who is leading the way to understanding what that means to perinatal health.

“Research into mental health in pregnancy and postpartum is not a new area, but the intersection with climate change is very new,” says Shahirose Sadrudin Premji, Sally Smith Chair in Nursing and an award-winning researcher who specializes in women’s mental health during pregnancy.

Her focus on climate change began with what she has observed in two countries, especially over the past three years. In Pakistan, she witnessed extreme weather conditions, including heat waves with temperatures in the 40s and 50s. In Kenya, the landscape in the coastal region has changed significantly, the land becoming drier and barren. “Seeing the area deteriorate has elicited a lot of discomfort and distress amongst people.”

Now turning her research focus to Canada, she explores how pregnant women’s emotional responses to climate change might relate to their mental wellbeing. Could it pose risks to their mental health?

There’s such a stigma around mental health during pregnancy, she says. “Everyone sees pregnancy as a happy time.” But the tendency not to talk about mental health problems during pregnancy only contributes to the problem. “That’s the worst thing, because it exacerbates it, and you don’t get the support you need to build coping and resilience.”

An emerging area of research

Premji’s preliminary research, published last year, provides a summary of existing studies. It shows that, although no research focused specifically on the emotional effects of climate change, many studies find that specific climate change-related events such as wildfires, hurricanes and floods are linked to mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.

Now she has more evidence. Her most recent study, presented at the Kingston Nursing Research Conference earlier this month, looks at the impact of climate change on pregnant women in Canada using three measures: depression, anxiety and pregnancy-related anxiety. (The latter refers to the specific worries and fears connected to pregnancy and childbirth.)

The study was small – 27 individuals from Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Yukon – but the results shocked her. “The perinatal mental wellbeing rate in Canada is 20 to 25 percent, at most. In our small study 47 percent showed depressive symptoms and 44 percent showed pregnancy-related anxiety.”

The emotional responses to climate change also showed worrisome results: 37 percent reported eco-anxiety, and 57 percent reported symptoms of emotional distress, also known as solastalgia.

Potential connection

“Our question was, is climate change making mental health worse for pregnant women? It didn’t seem to affect general anxiety, but the high rates of depression-related symptoms and pregnancy-related anxiety suggests there may be a connection.”

The small sample size means we can’t make inferences, she says, but it does point to the need for a larger study.

While social support is recognized as a key protective factor for mental wellbeing during pregnancy and after the birth of the baby, other factors such as population and individual circumstances are important to consider. More research is needed to inform effective strategies for interventions.

Premji thinks in practical terms and our overburdened health-care system when it comes to treatment. “Mental health resources are very limited, so whatever we design needs to be very simple, so that you can train local community members and students to deliver the interventions. It’s about not increasing demands on a health-care system that’s already stretched to begin with.”

She cites the World Health Organization’s Thinking Healthy program, which offers psychological interventions that can be delivered by community individuals. It is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, a form of talk therapy, targeting negative and catastrophic thoughts to “help pregnant and postpartum women reshape their thinking,” Premji says.

The positive effects are proven to be long term lasting three to even six months, she says.

A promising approach

This model offers a treatment approach that has not yet been applied in North America to climate change.

Reframing thinking is one approach; others include art therapy, music or immersing oneself in nature.

Premji and her colleagues will be looking at the effects of passive music listening on climate emotions.

The promise of the climate change research was recognized recently, when Dr. Premji and her colleagues were awarded a CIHR Catalyst grant. They aim to identify the many areas of research that may shed light on the connection between climate change and mental health during pregnancy and postpartum as well as preconception. They are engaging the community to shape the research agenda. This includes interviewing pregnant and postpartum women and women planning to conceive on what they would like to see studied and help determine priorities.

There is a pressing need for health care to recognize the effects of climate change, she says. “When I saw the numbers, it made me sick to my stomach, to see how many people are out there suffering because of climate change,” Dr. Premji says. “This is not reflected in clinical practice; it’s not at the forefront of our minds, it’s not part of our routine vocabulary.”

ONCE THE provincial leader in heritage preservation, Kingston has of late been pursuing different priorities. A housing crisis and provincial incentives to build, build, build have resulted in a wave of high-rise developments and development proposals, many of them in the downtown area. The rapidity of the transformation has both thrilled new residents now enjoying the dynamism of downtown living, and galvanized local groups concerned about the impact of densification on their historic downtown.

The interruptive sight of Homestead’s Toby Tall at the formerly vacant corner of Queen and King streets still hasn’t settled comfortably into many people’s mental map of that part of downtown, and the prospect of a nearly-as-tall student residence in the low-rise neighbourhood of Queen and Clergy streets recently unleashed a deluge of concerns and comments.

For Ryan Leary, Senior Planner, Heritage for the City of Kingston, that modernity-versus-history push and pull is typical Kingston. “Property owners love and value their community. They’re all very interested in its future, in its sense of identity,” he says, “That’s what heritage is about, that’s what makes Kingston unique. It has its own sense of place that’s different from anything else.”

Until relatively recently, historic recognition was limited to elites and institutions – mainly the homes and workplaces of the prominent. But that’s changing.

It’s not just about buildings

One outstanding example can be found in Barriefield Village, where local residents, proud of the neighborhood’s rural and shipyard roots, set a new standard for historical recognition. In 1980 it became the first village in Ontario the be designated a Heritage Conservation District. The designation was unique because it recognized the village as not just a collection of historically significant buildings, but for its distinctive rural character, including its street patterns, views and green spaces where local residents used to pasture their cattle.

Over time, that holistic view has been adopted across Ontario, which now boasts just over 130 historically designated places. (Other local examples include Kingston’s Market Square and Old Sydenham, and Picton’s Main Street.)

One of the ways that Barriefield celebrates that designation is through commemorative, cast aluminum plaques, a project that Leary inherited about 15 years ago. Today, at least 90 buildings in the village are decorated with these attractive mini-histories, making a walk through the village a trip back in time. What’s unusual is that this history celebrates those who would otherwise have never made it into Canadian history books. “It was a working-class community, of royal naval shipyard employees,” he says. “The houses were simple and functional. That sort of history is built into Barriefield.”

Another kind of evolution is the integration of history into modern developments. In Kingston, proposals to develop or build adjacent to a protected property, or in cases where there’s a history or story to be told, Leary says, developers are encouraged to include an interpretive or commemorative component.

The former Capital Theatre and the Smith and Robinson building on Princess Street both feature interpretive displays in their lobbies. Another example is the Bailey Broom Factory, near the Kingston Woolen Mill, which decorated its bicycle annex with interpretive panels about the site. Developers of other downtown sites, such as the Anna Lane condominium and the Heist restaurant, installed exterior plaques.

“It’s a small expense to them and it’s a way of telling the story of the intangible heritage value that’s associated with the site,” Leary says. It’s also about bringing modern values into the interpretation of history, such as recognizing groups or events that were previously forgotten. Irish famine victims, the Ukrainian community, and the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame.

“It’s the evolving story of our community, it’s not just prominent citizens,” Leary says. “There are so many more stories in the community.”

Broadening history’s lens

Those stories are now coming out into the open. In 2018, in response to difficult public conversations about the complicated legacy of Sir John A. Macdonald, the City of Kingston launched its Your Stories, Our Histories project, as a way of fostering a broader representation of Kingston’s communities.

“The original rationale was to get community feedback on what stories are we not telling, or not telling,” says Melissa Cruise, City Curator of Heritage Programming. That information feeds into the city’s programming and exhibition plans. One of the ways those voices are heard can be seen in City Hall’s Market Wing Cultural Space, where six of the room’s arched niches feature visual displays on a broad variety of local topics. Current displays highlight the 40-year history of Lunch By George, Kingscourt district’s wartime housing, and Kingston’s Jewish community, among others. Upcoming displays will include the Chinese Canadian community, Kingston’s drag kings and queens, and the Cataraqui Longhouse Research Project.

More elaborate programming in the space includes travelling exhibits such as the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21’s A History Exposed: The Enslavement of Black People in Canada, currently on display, free of charge, until May 22. These kinds of cross-Canada partnerships help to reduce barriers to accessing history, Cruise says. “If people can’t travel, we bring the displays here.”

Natural environments are also part of this storytelling. Cruise points to a partnership between the Honeybee Centre and the Museum of Surrey, B.C. and local apiarists that will see a “BEES!” exhibit open at the Pump House and Steam Museum next month.

A bird’s-eye view of Kingston’s cultural-historical landscape can be found at the Stones Kingston interactive website, which has mapped the histories of a number of communities (the Greek community and the Swamp Ward are the most recent inclusions) and even animals. The project, instigated by Queen’s University Archives, features the contributions of researchers and local citizens and includes text and photographs, short audio clips and podcasts.

Another way to access local history is via the Kingston and area Association of Museums website. Next week it’s once again hosting its free festival, March of the Museums, on all week for March Break.

Community input is vital to local storytelling, Cruise says. “We want to work with community groups, strengthen our partnerships, and ensure heritage reflects living experience.”

Residents who have stories they’d like to propose for exhibits can learn more at the Your Stories, Our Histories Community Exhibits page.

A map of Kingston’s heritage-designated districts and properties can be found here.

You can learn more about Barriefield here.

Pat Agnew’s painting “Barriefield” is from Barriefield: Two Centuries of Village Life, by Robert Cardwell, Barbara Carr, Christine Sypnowich (eds.). (Quarry Press, Kingston, 2016.)