Wandering Montreal and Railway Streets In Scale

I had a chance to chase (well, it's not much of a chase, certainly not a high-speed one!) CP's train from Smiths Falls tonight. CP was spotting an NYC boxcar of groceries at Quattrocchi's Specialty Foods, an empty gondola for scrap-loading at I. Cohen's scrap yard, nothing for Weston's Bakeries, and passing through the intersection of Montreal and Railway Streets. Sometimes hiding in its industrial camouflage, the locomotive ducked in and out of the scene in front of my iPhone (2024 technology in 1970s Kingston). 

Passing Weston Bakeries on Railway Street.

I. Cohen scrap yard.

The spur is on the correct side of the building as the prototype, but the CP lead has to pass behind to make its way down to Place d'Armes.

Lots more work awaited the crew before they could return to the Falls, from south to north:

• two coal loads for Sowards
• gondola of steel for Canadian Dredge & Dock
• two tankers for Shell Oil
• a car of propane for Quintane Gas

Two Railways, Two Tracks, Two Miles...to Obscurity?

I had the pleasure of presenting a program with the above title to the Kingston Historical Society on March 20, 2024. Each year, the KHS compiles the topics of the year's presentations into Historic Kingston. Now that this annual has been published, here's my article:

Over the past six years, I’ve been immersed in a facet of Kingston history that, while not long gone, disappeared from today’s downtown scene remarkably quickly. Two railways once plied the city’s industrial waterfront, though only traces remain. My research, while entirely voluntary, came with a rather unique goal – to reproduce, in scale, a miniature world of buildings, tracks, trains and scenes circa 1970 on a home model railway named Kingston’s Hanley Spur.

For purposes of my modelling, the Hanley Spur became an all-encompassing term for Canadian National Railways (CN) and Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) trackage, originally Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) and Kingston & Pembroke Railway (K&P), respectively. I often refer to the trackage by the predecessor/modern-era railway names K&P/CP and GTR/CN interchangeably. This near-parallel trackage extended two miles downtown from the current Division Street/Montreal Street area, ending at CP’s station yard across Ontario Street at City Hall. The GTR/CN reached water level along Rideau, Wellington and Ontario Streets, with spurs reaching Canadian Locomotive Co. and the shipyards near West Street.

TWO RAILWAYS

The first GTR trains on the newly-completed mainline linking Montreal and Toronto met in Kingston on October 27, 1856. The GTR barely entered the limits of the city, its Outer Station boasting a yard and railway offices, and 64x184-foot limestone engine house that stood until 1963. Later, CN referred to the spur line as the Kingston Subdivision until the mid-1960s. At that time, the Montreal-Toronto mainline, the busiest in Canada, was renamed the Kingston Subdivision and the waterfront line was renamed the CN Hanley Spur.

The GTR waterfront trackage extended 2.2 miles south from that mainline just east of the Outer Station on Montreal St. Built in 1860 along west shore of the Cataraqui River, it was crossed by the K&P at Mileage 1.0 (River Street), then extended across a causeway spanning Anglin Bay.

Local concern was voiced about the stagnant water behind that causeway. A swing bridge operated midway along its embankment, providing marine access to the bustling mills there. William Anglin filed suit for interference by the embankment in his business, as vessels had difficulty negotiating the obstacle. Sometime between 1875 and 1890, GTR’s branchline south of North Street would be relocated west of the K&P, rejoining the original GTR line near Ontario and Barrack Streets and the swing bridge was removed.

Sharing a mutual track crossing Ontario Street at Mi. 1.8-1.9, a switchtender’s cabin stood at the intersection of Ontario and Barrack Streets. The switchtender controlled CN and CP train movements on the joint section of track, just east of City Hall. Located opposite the corner wall surrounding the Tete du Pont barracks, the shanty remained in place until the early 1960’s. Continuing across Ontario Street, a causeway fifty feet out from the Market Battery led the GTR trackage towards the locomotive works, eventually ending at the Kingston Shipyards.

James Morton, the owner of the Ontario Foundry, was awarded the contract to build the 2.15-mile line that opened on November 10, 1860. This new trackage meant a more efficient delivery option for locomotives built on the site. Prior to this, the options were more challenging: water shipping from the lakefront plant, or intricate laying of temporary street trackage to the end-of-steel along Ontario Street. The first published date of a completed spur to the plant was December 17, 1864, though five locomotives had been delivered to the GTR in 1856 via temporary trackage.

The Kingston & Pembroke Railway was chartered in 1871 with the first sod for the line’s construction turned in1872. By 1883, 36,000 passengers had already been carried. The new line reached Renfrew in 1885, making a connection with the Canadian Pacific (Ontario & Quebec) at Sharbot Lake. Once the Canadian Pacific’s Montreal-Toronto mainline was refined, the connection was made at with CP Belleville Subdivision at Tichborne in 1923.

The K&P’s initial request to build on Fort Frontenac lands was denied, though a spur laid to Montreal Transportation Co. grain elevator came close to the site. The first passenger station, the southern terminus of the line, was built on Place d’Armes instead, in 1873. Eleven acres of swamp were filled in for yard tracks, turntable and roundhouse (at the foot of the current North Street) between 1877 and 1883.

The first car of American coal reached Kingston on March 14, 1884, having crossed the St. Lawrence River from Morristown, NY to Brockville, then north to Perth, west to Sharbot Lake, south on K&P to Kingston. While two-thirds of K&P tonnage in 1890 was lumber, lead, talc, feldspar, and mica were shipped to the US and Europe via Kingston’s spile docks. Easily-harvested mineral and lumber resources in the area quickly played out. It was said that in 1903 there was hardly a prospector in Ontario who searched beyond Frontenac and Hastings counties, though a year later, not one prospector would remain in the area!

Freight traffic generated little revenue for Kingston or for shareholders! High construction costs contributed to the K&P defaulting on loan payments as early as 1893, and by 1900, CP owned 83% of K&P capital stock. The CP subsumed the K&P as a paper railway in 1913, leasing it for a period of 999 years and naming it the CP Kingston Subdivision. Conceived and operated as a stand-alone railway up until that time, the 103-mile line was at most a resource-based artery that crossed CP’s Montreal-Toronto mainline many miles north of Kingston.

A rolling stock repair shop near Montreal Street (current Depot School area) was built, succumbing to fire in 1905. The long-lived passenger station, designed by William Newlands, was built in 1885 across from City Hall, incorporating stone from the demolished Market Battery, with yard tracks laid in 1886. A 125-foot covered awning to a baggage room was demolished in 1960 after the end of passenger service. CP’s nearby freight station was demolished in 1966 for Confederation Park development, with remaining railway business transferred to Dalton Avenue.

“Kingston’s really distinguished town hall constructed years before the railroad came and overlook the sweeping expanse of the river, now faces the CPR’s unbeautiful designed to station and yards. Drab freight cars are shunted and hauled immediately in front of the hall’s dignified pillared and porticoed façade, a glum reminder that in some of its aspects progress can be uncouth” – Maclean’s magazine, 1941 article “This Is Kingston”.

TWO TRACKS

The K&P crossed the GTR near the Outer Station, on the alignment of the current Hagerman Lane. As the number of trains increased, a grade separation was built to allow the CP to cross the CN via a bridge built over the CN in 1922 just east of the current Division Street. Between 1972 and 1974, CN realigned its severe Outer Station curve between Montreal and Division Streets. This spelled the end of the CP bridge, and when it was removed the CP line downtown was virtually orphaned. A connection was built to CN just west of Division Street, allowing CP to arrive from Smiths Falls and Tichborne once or twice a week to exchange freight traffic with the CN there.

The namesakes of the spur were from the Hanley family, long-serving ticket agents in Kingston’s downtown. Thomas Hanley and Frederick Bolger opened a ticket agency in 1871 at the foot of Brock Street. Later, Thomas Hanley moved the ticket office into part of the Anglo-American Hotel, on the corner opposite to the Inner Station. Their ticket office finally moved in 1886 to the Grand Trunk station designed by William Newlands, later staffed by Joseph and Clearly Hanley. With the rise of the automobile causing the end of the Suburban service, the Hanleys closed their Ontario and Johnson Street office, relocating to the CN-leased office at Princess and Bagot Streets in the Mowat Building on October 1, 1930. A two-car shuttle train called the Suburban took 12 minutes to reach the Outer Station, linking the downtown Inner Station at Johnson and Ontario Streets from 1885-1930, with a through sleeping car from 1911-1929 for business travellers.

Both CN and CP gradually pulled up their trackage from downtown to the north. With the closing of the Canadian Locomotive Company (later Fairbanks-Morse Canada) factory in 1969, a single track remained skirting the lake opposite City Hall. Its last train was likely the British Flying Scotsman LNER 4472 steam locomotive on its North American tour in September, 1970.

The construction of the OHIP building on Wellington Street marked the southern end of the downtown trackage, though a CN spur to the Kingston Whig-Standard newsprint warehouse off Cataraqui Street, receiving its last shipments in 1986. The CP line north from Kingston was abandoned in that year.

TWO MILES

Downtown industries were growing and required rail service to reach wider markets. The city gave tax exemptions and incentives for spur construction to new industries:

•       1894 – Montreal Transportation Co. elevator

•       1894 – Joseph Carrington tannery

•       1896 – William Bailey broom factory

•       1898 – Dominion Cotton Mills

•       1899 – James Richardson elevator

•       1899 – Kingston Elevator & Transit Co.

•       1903 – Canadian Locomotive Co.

•       1904 – A. Davis & Son Tannery

•       1905 – Selby & Youlder Foundry

•       1907 – Stanley Smelting Works

•       1909 - Kingston Milling Co.

•       1910 – Kingston Shipbuilding Co.

•       1913 - Reliance Moulding Co.

 

Shipyards, coal yards, a tannery, feed mills, terminal grain elevators, downtown passenger station, freight sheds and team tracks lined the waterfront. The locomotive plant producing giant mainline locomotives rose to become Canada’s second largest locomotive manufacturer, second only to Montreal Locomotive Works. The Canadian Locomotive Company produced its 1000th in 1911, its 2000th in 1942, and its 3000th in 1958. The Kingston Shipyards built 108 freighters, corvettes and scows, and Kingston’s own lake freighter, the D.C. Everest.

Beginning in the late 1940s, several warehouses were built along Railway Street with CP spurs: Coca-Cola, MacCosham Van Lines, Canfor/Gamble & Robinson and Weston’s Bakeries.

At the Queen’s University Archives, I was able to find individual carloads handled by CN and CP to Kingston industries. An example of each: a 1919 Michigan Central gondola car loaded with steel plates from Steubenville, Ohio’s Labelle Iron Works to the Kingston Shipyards, and a 1949 boxcar of hides from Three Rivers, Quebec to the Davis Tannery.

TO OBLIVION

Due to failed attempts at trans-shipment (intermodal) business model, Kingston developed into a mercantile economy, not a booming industrial metropolis. Kingston’s proximity to larger cities with more expansive manufacturing, and the enlarging of the Welland Canal and opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway were contributing factors to the receding of waterfront industries and their accompanying rail spurs.

The rise of the personal automobile and the advent of freight-handling by trucks shifted travel and shipping from rails to roads. The extension of Highway 401 accelerated this shift through the 1950’s to the 1970’s.

Kingston’s new manufacturing sites like Alcan and DuPont were outside the downtown. Both were served by new CN spurs constructed in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Well-known industries that originated here, some being family businesses, would not or could not grow with the times, holding onto tried-and-true manufacturing methods.

Gentrification eventually took hold of former manufacturing and railway lands, as coal gave way to condos, rails to trails, workers’ housing to a seniors’ home and freight sheds to government offices.

What remains? Doug Fluhrer Park hosts a recreated short track segment, at the southern end of the Urban K&P Trail on Wellington Street. The angled rear of buildings along Ontario Street between Princess and Queen Streets belies the presence of the joint section that once passed there. Though there are former K&P and GTR passenger stations still standing downtown, the stabilized, fire-tinged shell of the Outer Station on Montreal Street is slowly decaying. Nearby, on the Village on the River apartment property, are the remnants of the Montreal Street subway underpass removed in March, 1976.

One would have to be over 70 years of age to have worked in Kingston’s downtown industries, or perhaps even to know a family member who did. I have a few memories of the area from the 1970s, but even I find it challenging to reconcile the booming industries that lined the waterfront with the mere traces that remain. Achieving the goal of my research, I have been able to enjoyably and accurately portray over 30 of these businesses, amid historically-accurate scale scenes of railway operations that trundled along Kingston’s industrial waterfront circa 1970.

Keynote Speaker!

And when I say Keynote, I say it with a bit of trepidation. I used to be a PowerPoint, if not a powerful, speaker when I was making presentations on my HO-scale Hanley Spur layout. That's because I entered the MacBook era after living in the Microsoft/PC era since I first got a laptop. Now I'm using Keynote software for the first time, as I prepare the presentation for my next Zoom audience, my hometown Associated Railroaders of Kingston in a couple of weeks.

Moving ARK meetings to Zoom for the winter months not only allows a wider audience, with interested viewers tuning in from Ottawa, Montreal and points west, but also gives me motivation to participate and present. While I fine-tune and test-fire the Keynote presentation, here are a few slides to show you what I'll be covering:

In-progress (above) and prototype/model comparisons (below).

Lots of layout-top views of completed scenes:

Steacy's Limited Kingston, Ontario

At the recent Kingston Stamp Festival, I roved, roamed and ravaged the Kingston Stamp Club consignment table looking for cheap sorting fun. I did not leave disappointed.

With the colder months approaching, I found a $2 consignment lot containing some interesting stamps. I noticed the inside of the box's rubber-banded lid was labelled "Steacy's Limited Kingston, Ontario". I knew this was a Kingston department store, once on Princess Street and later in the Kingston Shopping Centre, and that my mother-in-law had once worked at the downtown store. A comprehensive history of this storied Kingston store is beyond the scope of this blog, however...

Once I'd removed the box's contents, I was about to recycle the box but had second thoughts. Maybe someone would like it as a local historical artifact? I offered the box on social media and found that, indeed, several people were interested in it.

So just today, a member of the Steacy family picked up the box. They have a room in their house devoted to the history of the family business, of which this box would become a part. 

This box may have been 50+ years old. In terms of pyramids, hanging gardens and castles, that's not very historic. But in Kingston, it nevertheless has historic and sentimental value!

Special Trains visit the Hanley Spur - Enhanced Post

The Rexall Train, the Flying Scotsman, the Discovery Train and Royal Trains are among special trains that have graced the Hanley Spur and CP trackage over the last 90 years. Although I originally published some of this material in January, 2019 you're reading an enhanced post. 

It was September, 1970 when the British Pacific arrived on a goodwill tour (top photo) and a certain insouciant six year-old future Hanley Spur layout-builder mugged for the camera. Note City Hall at left and the Holiday Inn at right. Read more here and see more photos of this venerable LNER Pacific along the waterfront.

In 1933, the London, Midland & Scottish 4-6-0 “The Royal Scot” arrived by ship in Montreal from the United Kingdom. The locomotive, renumbered 6100, was heading for the Chicago World’s Fair, travelling from Montreal to Toronto when it stopped in Kingston. Peter Gower kindly shared this photo showing the London, Midland & Scottish visitor here, with CN-style switch stand in foreground: 

On August 17, 1936 the Rexall Train came to the city. Pulled by New York Central 4-8-2 Mohawk 2873, the entire train was royal blue and white. The locomotive’s streamlined sheet metal and conversion to an oil-burner prepared it for a 29,000-mile trip across North America. Four display, lecture and dining cars, plus private observation car for Rexall President Louis Liggett were part of a train consist of twelve cars. All cars were given balloon-style roofs over their existing clerestory roofs. Coming from the U.S. Midwest and Michigan, the train visited Kingston on its way to Quebec City. Parked on CN trackage along Ontario Street near CLC and Gore Street, the train attracted large crowds.

The Royal Train of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth arrived in Kingston on May 21, 1939. Thirteen trainloads of spectators were brought to Richardson Stadium to cheer on the King and Queen’s motorcade while on their extensive cross-Canada tour. Their daughter Princess Elizabeth and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh visited the Royal Military College in 1951.

In 1950 and 1952, hundreds of Canadian troops boarded special troop trains in Kingston during the Korean Conflict. CP trains at Place d'Armes and CN trains departing the Outer Station carried the soldiers to other bases or overseas. In September 1953, three cars of an Africa Zoo Train were spotted near CN’s freight shed. Spectators came to view animal displays in the cars. In October 1959, a carnival midway was loaded on flat cars at the Outer Station for furtherance to the next fair on its fall tour.

City Hall and the newly-opened Confederation Park hosted Canada’s Confederation Train from August 22 to 25, 1967. Arriving on the last remaining track across from City hall, the train was uncoupled with the two locomotives and steam generator car across Johnson Street near CLC, and its ten coaches between Johnson and the foot of Brock Streets. A line-up of eager visitors formed near preserved CP 1095, waiting to pass through the display cars. 

On September 28, 1970 the London & North Eastern Pacific 4472, “Flying Scotsman” arrived on the very same track along with its coaches and boat-tailed bar car. Designed by Gresley and built in 1923, the green-painted steam locomotive and train were brought to Boston from the United Kingdom to tour North America. It was specially fitted with a headlight and operating bell for the tour. Open to the public on September 29, the weather was generally English and overcast before departing for Toronto the next day!

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip arrived by Royal Train at the Outer Station on June 27, 1973 for a motorcade to City Hall to celebrate the city’s Tercentenary. The Royal Train was wyed and staged on the Hanley Spur, with the Governor-General’s cars placed adjacent to the Belle Park golf course parking lot for the Royal Couple to reboard in the evening. Visiting Kingston again on September 28, 1984, the Royal Couple was taken by motorcade from the CN, now VIA Rail, station on Counter Street to Amherstview to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Loyalist settlement in Ontario.

In June, 1973 Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Kingston to celebrate its tercentenary. The train was stashed in the Hanley Spur, its tail-end observation car at Belle Park (above). Earlier, the guard of honour was ready at the Outer Station; the Hanley Spur behind the Vimy Band in the right-hand photo (L.C. Gagnon photos):

In July, 1978, Kingston was the premiere stop for Canada’s Discovery Train. Between July 22 and 26, the orange, black and white train was parked at the Hanley Spur’s north end along Montreal Street. The National Museums of Canada mounted displays in 15 cars which toured Canada between 1978 and 1980. One of the silhouettes painted on the cars was one of Kingston’s own bearded Fort Henry Guard. The display cars had previously been used for the U.S. Bicentennial American Freedom Train.

Wandering Wellington Street in Scale Yet Again

S. Anglin offices, Bay and Wellington Streets

I wandered the layout at extreme street level tonight. One iPhone, 75 images, 45 minutes. Fellow modeller and rail enthusiast Mark Perry of Winnipeg made a comment, one that I consider high praise, having seen these photos: 

"Let me first just say I love that Eric shares these images, I love looking at them. They sure tell a story! The story I get from them, is:

A) his layout is a lot more sceniced than most people's layout (including my Plywood Pacific), his efforts need to be applauded for that!

B) it is not the most super detailed 100% accurate layout any of us have ever seen and it doesn't have to be, Eric is happy with it and he probably gets hours and hours of enjoyment doing what he is doing model wise. I think it is killer, I love all the little details instead of the endless new super detailed plastic locomotives and high priced freight cars.

C) model railroading is all about fun, take what you can out of it, after all it is only a simple hobby to enjoy, it is certainly not a way of life. Or is it?"

Sowards Coal office, Place d'Armes

Esso limestone warehouse, North Street

Houses, Wellington Street

Millard & Lumb, Place d'Armes

Bajus Brewery, Wellington Street

Davis Tannery, Rideau Street

Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile, Cassidy Street

K-D Manufacturing, Montreal Street

Quattrocchi's Specialty Foods, Montreal Street at Railway Streets

Dye & Chemical Co. of Canada Ltd., Orchard Street

Pigeons roosting on the roof of Bajus Brewery, Wellington Street

Tank car unloading Queen City Oil Co., Rideau at Cataraqui Streets

National Grocers, Cataraqui Street

 

Cooler Weather: Back to the Hanley Spur

During the spring and summer, my wife and I usually head to our sunroom after supper to enjoy the sunset while pursuing our respective hobbies. Now it's often a little cool in the sunroom in the evening, so it's time for me to spend an hour each night on my HO-scale Kingston's Hanley Spur home model railway layout. 

This past week, I reset the layout after its summer slumber. That means checking and repositioning the freight cars on CN and CP lines, moving vehicles around, cleaning up layout-top detritus and generally preparing to operate the layout after summertime visits from our grandsons. They both enjoy making realistic and sometimes fantastic scenes on and around the layout trackage.  

While doing the reset, I was building a CN switching run that would switch the industries in the vicinity of the CN Outer Station: Frontenac Floor & Wall Tile, the Davis Tannery, CN Express and Presland Iron & Steel. The engine crew is pictured here in one pose but multiple photo angles with my iPhone.

Each night between now and when the weather warms up, I'll be 'on-duty' from 1830-1930 hours each night. With the CBS Evening News and Erin Burnett OutFront keeping me updated on current events in the background, I do a deep dive into 1970s Kingston. I'll be learning about the real-world outside while doing my best to escape it in this tiny world I've created - moving freight cars around and serving Kingston's once-diverse waterfront industries as realistically as possible!

Kingston & Pembroke's Original Enginehouse

Its request refused to build on Fort Frontenac lands, the Kingston & Pembroke (K&P) instead settled on Place d’Armes in 1873. Its principal address was listed as Place d’Armes in 1885. The original station of the K&P in Kingston was built there. It later became the office building for the Frontenac Lumber & Coal Company. A spur was later laid here to serve the Montreal Transportation Company grain elevator. A small two-stall engine shed and turntable was nearby, in use between 1877 and 1883. 

Andrew Jeanes recently shared an excellent analysis of the above photo, made from a glass negative in the Queen's University Archives Vosper Collection. It shows one of my favourite parts of Kingston's industrial waterfront and its trackage. The photo may have been taken from a building on the east side of Barrack Street.

Andrew writes:

The photo shows the lumber yard of the Rathbun Company and the coal yard of the James Sowards Coal & Wood Co. at Place d’Armes and Ontario Street in downtown Kingston. 

Boxcar No. 444 belonged to the National Despatch Line, a private car operator that existed between 1869 and 1914. According to the June 1890 and June 1895 Official Railway Equipment Registers, National Despatch boxcars nos. 400-999 were all assigned to the Grand Trunk Railway, along with about 495 other boxcars in several number series.

James Sowards began conducting a coal and lumber business at the corner of Place d’Armes and Ontario Street in 1889, and the Rathbun Company moved its operations there from the foot of Queen Street in 1893. By 1907, the Frontenac Coal & Lumber Co. had taken over the Rathbun operation, so the photo must date from sometime between 1893 and 1906.

What’s really interesting to me is the building behind the boxcar with the large Rathbun Company sign and smaller Sowards sign on the roof. This was the original Kingston & Pembroke Railway enginehouse, built in November 1877. It was reported in the Whig as 70x53 feet, of frame construction, covered in iron and having a fire-proof roof. There was a turntable in front of this engine house from 1877 to 1883. In the 1908 fire insurance plan the building is labelled iron-clad “storage, cement salt etc."

In 1883 the K&P relocated to its new roundhouse at the foot of North Street, which was still there in the late 1970s. The old turntable at Place d’Armes was removed and the former enginehouse was leased for commercial purposes. The building survived until January 1920, when it was torn down along with a number of other buildings on the property. Today, this site is covered by the reconfigured intersection of Place d’Armes and Ontario Street and a portion of the Frontenac Village condo development.

An aerial view, circa 1915, shows the original K&P station and its engine house at opposite ends of the green line.

The buildings were located at the bottom left of this map:

A 1908 fire insurance map shows the station and engine house along Ontario Street:

Frontenac Lumber and Coal Company circa 1915 (below) Ontario Street at Place d Armes. Earlier, this was the first K&P station (Queen's University Archives, Kingston Picture Collection).

Kingston's Ukrainian Community - New Plaque

Lubomyr Luciuk is a professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada. Excerpts from a Whig article of September 2 in which he describes his childhood in the Swamp Ward are below. Especially interesting are his experiences at several of the waterfront industries - none of which still exist in the locations he remembers:

I’m not a north-ender. From the day I was born, and for all the years I have lived in Kingston, I’ve never made my home in what some people call “the swamp ward.” That’s the portion of our city roughly contained to the north and east of Queen and Division streets. In my time, we used a geographical descriptor, calling it “the north end.” It was a working-class and immigrant part of town, populated by many Irish, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian and other eastern European immigrants and their kids. The homes I visited were modest, they were always tidy, warm and welcoming. Most had large gardens, well-tended sources providing nutritious food, not all of which was intended only for family. Guests were always served something good to eat, an almost ritual observance. To this day, the redolence of a homemade cabbage soup simmering on a stove brings back memories of the simple but delicious food I ate in “the north end.” 

We enjoyed exploring our neighbourhood as kids. We’d furtively hop the fence of an adjacent lumberyard to construct hiding spots amongst the piled timbers. Not safe, but fun. And, a bit further afield, astride Rideau Street, we’d foray into rather gritty industrial properties, everything from Rosen Fuels (which supplied our family’s Nelson Street home with coal) to the Anglin Company’s massive oil storage tanks. And, nearby, was the odiferous Davis Tannery. I got a summer job there in my senior high school year. I lasted but a day: the fetid smells and toil were all too much. Yet this experience taught me about how tough those who got and kept jobs there had to be. 

On a list of Davis Tannery employees, I found the name of John (Ivan) Zubyck, quite possibly the first Ukrainian to settle in Kingston. Hired in March 1911, he married 20-year-old Ida Adrain, April 20, 1917. Although his marriage certificate identified him as an “Austrian” he was gainfully employed and a married man. Most of the other tannery workers I met arrived in Kingston much later. Among them were Mike Polomany (hired in December 1926), Ivan Zaplotinsky (who began working in February 1927) and Sylvester Kotowich (employed as of September 1935). Many boarded close to where they worked and were still living nearby when I spoke to them in the mid-late 1970s. They were true “north enders.” 

Of course, depicting all this history on one plaque is impossible. Even so by unveiling a Kingston Remembers monument in Riverview Park, not far from where many of our people worked and lived and played – myself among them – we’ve tried to remind others that we were here and who we were. 

A September 5 Kingston This Week article covered the ceremony that occurred in Riverview Park at 129 Rideau Street on August 24. A Kingston Remembers: Enduring Roots plaque (top photo) was unveiled. (The location is variously and somewhat confusingly described as 'downtown', 'north end' and even 'east end'!)

Lubomyr is quoted in the article, perhaps paraphrasing the above in his remarks, "I'm an old guy now. I grew up over on Nelson Street, but I used to play in the Ukrainian Hall that opened up here on Bagot and North Streets. This was a neighbourhood that I roamed. I'd go down to the Davis Tannery. I'd go to the Rosen Fuels yard and the Anglin tanks, and we'd go to a timber yard and build forts. This is the Kingston I remember, the north end, as a boy. This was the immigrant, working-class Ukrainian area. It's just a good memory."