Thanks to Andrew Jeanes for the heads-up this week about the depressing demolition of dilapidated buildings at the Outer Station site. Andrew kindly shared the top photo. Fittingly, the word dilapidated originates from the Latin verb dilapidare, literally ‘scatter as if throwing stones but more commonly 'wasted' or 'squandered'. All apply to long and slow decline of the former Grand Trunk Railway and Canadian National Railways gateway to our fair city. As with most Canadian railway stations, settlers settled, soldiers departed, immigrants arrived.
A rear view of the station parking lot taken in 1972, with a CN AMC Hornet in the foreground, and CN passenger train stopped at the station, from Vintage Kingston Facebook:
Captioned March, 1974 this online auction site photo shows an eastbound CN passenger train making its station stop, providentially pre-dilapidation:
A similar angle showing a kid in short pants watching a Toronto-Montreal train arriving in 1970 taken by L.C. Gagnon:
Our family has a long association with Kingston. Growing up in Lachine, QC gave us the opportunity to drive here in our 1961 Volkswagen Beetle. There were five of us and I rode in the middle of the back seat, knees around ears with my feet on the drive-shaft hump. We visited local tourist attractions such as Old Fort Henry and Aunt Lucy’s Restaurant.
Kingston is a place where things don’t change much over time. At the time, we didn’t know our family of five would move here when my Dad accepted a teaching position at Sydenham High School in 1969.
My grandmother would come to visit and we would meet her train at the Outer Station. I would come to call it the ‘old station’ once the Counter Street station opened in 1974. It was impossible not to notice the Outer Station’s sweeping track curvature which blocked the view of most of a stopped passenger train. The freight yard was seldom full, but this busy corner of Kingston was a gateway, though the long, arrow-straight sightlines at the new station’s platforms were decidedly different.
My Dad and I had a regular Saturday morning routine, of course in a Volkswagen, albeit newer! Visiting local book shops, the A&P, Lloyd Shales Hobby Supplies on Division Street, the Co-op and Queen’s University’s Douglas Library. In the pre-internet era, photocopying there was the way to Copy-Save information! We would head home, surveying the remaining downtown trackage or along the waterfront and grain elevator, looking for any shipping activity.
With CN’s realignment and the stub-ending of the Outer Station trackage, my view of that property changed. It seemed sleepy, down-at-the-heels and no longer a gateway. I wasn’t old enough to know its role was passing into history. Old enough to drive, I made a few more visits on my own, perhaps finding an occasional train: a stored rail-grinding train, a fibre-optic laying train, even the cabooseless-operation display train.
Now, I visit that same property for auto rust-proofing! A new dealership is located at the former gateway, as the station buildings crumbled through benign neglect. Things can indeed change in Kingston, and the 50 years I’ve spent visiting the Outer station bear that out.
At present-day 810 Montreal Street, the stone GTR 7-bay Type A station had a gambrel roof with five gabled dormers on a curved attic extension of eaves to shelter passengers on the platform. Curved brackets led from the first storey to the buried roof dormers. Round-arched windows were reminiscent of the solidity displayed by Roman - Neo-Classical style of architecture used for public works, installing an air of permanence and confidence, even of Empire! Its Italianate proportions are attributed to Sir Francis Thompson, GTR’s Montreal architect.
A second, brick building was added in 1895-1898, sitting 100 feet east of the first, echoing its design features with seven arches and similar supporting brackets. The brick has been heavily-painted, with a low, single-storey wooden structure added between the two.
The earlier limestone building hosted offices and waiting room until at least 1892. The second building housed a lunch room. In 1939, the earlier building was converted to the baggage and express room and station functions moved over to the second building. Renovations in 1970 included extending ticket sales counters when sales staff relocated from the Princess Street ticket office.
The scope of commercial post-railway operations in the station buildings - Clapperton Crystal in the late 1970s and the Pig & Whistle in the late 1980s, among others, are beyond the scope of this post. The remaining yard track and connection to the mainline were last used for a rail safety display in June, 1995.
CN hasn't been a federal Crown corporation since its 1995 privatization. As a railway operating across provincial boundaries, it's a federally-regulated railway under the Canada Transportation Act. The Constitution of Canada gives the federal government exclusive jurisdiction over interprovincial railways, so properties owned by CN are beyond the jurisdiction of provincial laws like the Ontario Heritage Act.
The City of Kingston designated the Outer Station as a heritage property in 1987, but that by-law has no impact on CN. The lack of jurisdiction of provincial heritage laws is in large part why the federal Heritage Railway Stations Protection Act was passed in 1988, though the act does contains no provisions for maintenance or to prevent 'demolition by neglect'. The Outer Station was designated under the federal act in 1994, so CN needs permission from the federal Minister of the Environment & Climate Change to alter or demolish the station building or to sell the property - despite the fact that the property has been completely disconnected from CN's railway tracks
AND NOW...
From the City of Kingston:
CN to demolish two CN Railway Station Structures
March 10, 2026
CN owns the three railway station buildings at 810 Montreal Street. CN has notified the City of Kingston that the structural integrity of the baggage building and the breezeway attached to the baggage building have deteriorated so much that any entry poses extreme safety risks. CN has informed the City that demolition is the only viable course of action and that it will demolish these structures. CN has shared that it is taking this action under the federal legislation in effect on this historic railway station.
To further protect public safety, CN will install fencing around the site to prevent public access during and after demolition.
CN has determined that the stone railway station building on the property does not need to be demolished and that restoration efforts will be explored moving forward.
The railway station buildings are designated as heritage buildings under both federal and provincial legislation. When the City designated the buildings in 1987 (under provincial legislation), CN was a Crown corporation. The intent of the designation, and its consideration within the North Kingstown Secondary Plan, was to protect the heritage character of the buildings if and when CN sold them and to ensure that any future adaptive reuse or development proposals considered the heritage character of the buildings.
