Kingston, Ontario

Kingston is a city in eastern Ontario, Canada. Kingston is a regional centre of healthcare and education, being home to Queen’s University, Royal Military College, and St. Lawrence College and three major hospitals: Kingston General Hospital, Providence Care Hospital and Hotel Dieu Hospital. It is located on the eastern end of Lake Ontario, at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River (south end of the Rideau Canal). The city is midway between Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal, Quebec. Kingston is also located nearby the Thousand Islands tourist region to the east and the Prince Edward County tourist region to the west. Kingston is nicknamed the “Limestone City” because of the many heritage buildings constructed using local limestone.

Growing European exploration in the 17th century, and the desire for the Europeans to establish a presence close to local Native occupants to control trade, led to the founding of a French trading post and military fort at a site known as “Cataraqui” (generally pronounced “kah-tah-ROCK-way”) in 1673. This outpost, called Fort Cataraqui, and later Fort Frontenac, became a focus for settlement. Since 1760, the site of Kingston, Ontario, was in effective British possession.[4] Cataraqui would be renamed Kingston after the British took possession of the fort, and Loyalists began settling the region in the 1780s