Tett a Tete: A Study in the Transformation and History-Telling of the Industrial Nitty Gritty of this City

As a model railroader recreating Kingston, I'm drawn to the trains that served the industries that gave employment to the citizens of our city. The area around the Tett Centre on King Street West (above) is an excellent example - stately buildings. But who knows the history of the site? Not truly a prison, a military site or a place of higher learning, it actually has occupied all three of those realms in its history!

This capsule history of the Tett Centre site includes the following quote, which in two sentences really encapsulates the part of Kingston's history that really interests me.

"In our post-industrial age we celebrate the legacy of our leaders and politicians but not that of the average citizen who actually did the work. Our industries were where people found employment to sustain their families, allowing our community to grow."

After an early focus on what I call the history of the stately limestone homes of the rich families of Kingston, the focus shifted to presenting prison history, military history, educational history. All that is well and good, and deserves to be studied. Perhaps industrial history was just too gritty and grimy for us to get our historical hands dirty in? Now, after glossing over it, our sights shifted again to the current historical focus: women's history, indigenous history, history of racialized and minority groups. Again, all well and good. But the industrial history lies weed-grown and begrimed, buried in indifference and disregarded to our detriment.

Indeed, in reading the capsule history, there is much to question about the activities of the early owner of the site as a site for brewing and distilling, James Morton. An industrial baron of the 1850's, he was well-connected politically and societally. His use of convict labour and tenement housing for his labourers did little to help his bottom line, and he died bankrupt a few years after his brewery boom.

Then things got interesting. The capsule history goes on to note the increasing need for military hospitals during WWI. The Government of Canada expropriated Morton's Mortonwood mansion in January, 1918. It was known as the Ongwanada Military Hospital. Not like our modern, multi-wing sprawling hospitals of today, in July of that year the brewery was expropriated as the Sydenham Military Hospital. In 1924 the buildings were converted to house the Canadian Army's Eastern Ontario Headquarters. Then in 1966, with Paul Hellyer's unified 'aerated mud' Canadian Forces unification, the EOAHQ was moved to Ottawa. In 1968 the upper property was transferred to Corrections Services. In 1971 the lower property was bought by the City of Kingston for $120,000. Imagine its current real estate value - prime waterfront!

Aerial views from 1955 (above - note rows of hospital buildings) and 2004 (below - prior to the construction of the Tett performing arts centre by Queen's University and the rebuilding of the city-owned Tett Centre arts cluster. Snapshot Kingston)