Out of the Archives and Onto the Trolley

Bishop Barker Co., Aerial view of the Kingston penitentiary - taken from an aeroplane, 1919, Canada. Patent and Copyright Office / Library and Archives Canada / PA-030472.

This year the Queen's Archives did something rather different for their annual archives lecture. Instead of having one speaker who talked to a predominantly gray-haired audience, the Archives put on a series of five Social History Tours of Kingston. This past Saturday, they rented the Confederation Trolley, filled it with quite an impressive cross-section of the community, and took to the streets to discuss the Jewish Experience of Kingston, A Prisoner's Life in Kingston, The Gay and Lesbian History of Kingston, A Black History of Kingston, and The Chinese Community of Kingston. I went on the middle three and all were excellent. The first, the Prisoner's life, was led by the curator of the Penitentiary Museum. We went into Portsmouth and were shown the buildings and sites that make up or were once a part of the Kingston Pen - the first federal penitentiary in Canada (built in 1835). Filled with historical contexts of the prisons, tales of escapes (and eventual capture), and local history it also satisfied long held curiosities about a number of buildings in the area. The next, and best of the lot, was the Gay and Lesbian History of Kingston. This tour was given by Marney McDiarmid, based on her master's thesis. Marney was fun and engaging while sharing her research on the queer history of Kingston, based on oral histories she conducted over several years. This tour took us around campus, through the downtown, across the LeSalle Causeway to RMC, to the steps of City Hall, and to City Park - once known as Pervert Park. The final tour, A Black History of Kingston, highlighted key figures in Kingston's Queen's history, dating back to 1776 when the first black settlers came to Kingston as United Empire Loyalists and the slaves of Loyalists. All three tours were interesting and informative. It was rather fun riding around Kingston on the big trolley - a tourist in my own town - and was funny to see the looks of people as we went by and I learned quite a bit about the people and sites of Kingston that I had absolutely no idea about before. The lectures will be aired on CFRC on Fridays and, eventually, they will be made into virtual tours on the Queen's Archives' website.
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