🗡️ Ironwood Fantasy Escape 🚑 Camp Saved His Life 🥁 Alex Young Joins NYO 🔬 Cancer Tests, Safer Food 🗓️ Events | 🔦 July 23, 2026

Local Spotlight

🗡️ The Fantasy You Never Outgrew: The Ironwood Fantasy Fair and Dan Niznik

Kingston & Area Local News

🔬 Federal Funding Backs Two Kingston Biotechs on Cancer Detection and Food Safety
🩺 St. Lawrence College Adds Three Online Specialty Nursing Certificates

Community Champions

🚑 Counsellors and Paramedics Pulled a Westport Teen Through Anaphylactic Shock at Camp Iawah
🌊 The Thousand Islands Association Marks 92 Years of Looking After the River
🥁 Kingston Percussionist Alex Young Earns a Spot in Canada’s National Youth Orchestra

New Events In and Around Kingston

🎵 FEATURED EVENT: One Ground One Sound, a Benefit for Venezuela | The Spire | July 27
🩸 Free Hepatitis C Testing and Community Barbecue | Street Health Centre | July 23
🩰 OFF SEASON Dance Festival | Hotel Wolfe Island | July 24 to 25
🚓 Kingston Police 185th Anniversary Community Fun Fair | Kingston Police HQ | July 25
🌶️ Hobo Steve’s Hot Sauce Charity Event for Almost Home | Mike’s Pizza and More | July 26

Events Calendar

It’s gotten too long to include here in the summary! Click Events Calendar to see our list for the next few days.

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A listing, a build, a milestone, the whole team in one shot. Paul Carl runs Aanii Nichii Drones, an Indigenous-owned Kingston business, and the view above is his own.

Want the whole story? Read our full spotlight on Paul and Aanii Nichii Drones.

Some days you would happily hand reality back for a while. On Saturday, August 15, Kingston gets to do exactly that, for a full day and then the night that follows it. A local sword school has booked a castle on Sydenham Street and filled it with a friendly dragon, a witch giving away potions, a marketplace of local makers and a stage hosted by a wizard, and the point is not to stand there watching. Somebody puts a sword in your hand. Then the children go home, the building turns into something else, and the grown-ups spend the evening deciding who takes a dead king’s throne. Costume encouraged, never required. What surprised us most is who built all this, and why. Read the full story.

Cancer detection and food safety are not obviously neighbours, but in Kingston they share an address. mDetect and Spectra Plasmonics, both at 310 Bagot Street, have been selected for BioCreate, the Ontario Genomics accelerator funded with the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario. mDetect makes blood tests that track how cancer patients are responding to treatment, and a Queen’s-led study is now checking whether its mDETECT test spots that response in metastatic breast cancer earlier than conventional imaging does. Spectra Plasmonics is reworking its drug chemical analysis equipment into bacteria-sensing tests, so commercial kitchens and food plants can check safety on site before anything ships. Since 2023, BioCreate has backed 32 companies out of 288 applicants.

Read the full story at: Kingston Whig-Standard

Nurses who want to specialise usually have to choose between the training and the paycheque. St. Lawrence College has three new online certificates that ask for neither: Mental Health Nursing, Registered Nurse Neonatal Intensive Care, and Registered Nurse Perianesthesia Nursing, all starting September 2026. The mental health certificate covers promotion, assessment and intervention across care settings and finishes with a practicum. The NICU one is built for RNs who already have critical care behind them and want the competencies for critically ill newborns. The perianesthesia one covers patients before, during and after anesthesia and surgery. All three run online and asynchronous so nurses can keep working while they study, and in a release from the college, Laralea Stalkie, Dean Health, Wellness & Community Services and Academic Operations (Acting), pointed to growing demand for nurses with specialised expertise as healthcare systems evolve. More specialty certificates are coming in the months ahead.

Read the full story at: St. Lawrence College

Jack McAllister, 15, has a peanut allergy, so a cashew granola bar seemed safe. He told the Recorder and Times he did not think he was taking any risk at all. Then, on the second day of a weeklong kayak outing on Wolfe Lake near Westport, his mouth went itchy and his breathing went short. He paddled straight to his counsellor and said so, an epi-pen went in immediately, and counsellors in kayaks front and back guided him to shore where an ambulance was waiting. A second reaction hit at the shoreline, first responders brought it down, and about eleven minutes later he felt like himself again. Jack is in his third year of Camp Iawah’s leadership training program, which is exactly why he knew to go to an adult and say the words out loud. After a few hours of observation at Perth and Smiths Falls District Hospital he went home. His mother, Dana Moss McAllister, told the Recorder and Times she is still sending her seven-year-old twins to camp later this summer.

Read the full story at: Brockville Recorder & Times

Ninety-two years is a long time to quietly keep people safe. The Thousand Islands Association held its annual general meeting on Saturday, July 18 at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, with river safety, environmental stewardship and community partnerships leading the agenda, and Leeds and the Thousand Islands fire prevention officer Doug Richardson presenting “When the Road Ends...”. The association is a not-for-profit, and it is the only organisation placing the shoal markers that keep boaters off the rocks out there. It also supports emergency medical and fire response along the river. If you have ever spent a summer on those waters without incident, some of that is 92 years of volunteers you have never met.

Read the full story at: Kingstonist

Kingston-born percussionist Alex Young is one of 90 musicians selected for NYO Canada’s 2026 Canadiana Tour, which is the kind of thing that happens to a young player once and then shapes everything after it. The tour opened Saturday, July 18 and runs to Friday, July 31, and here is the part worth acting on: it stops at the Isabel on Thursday, July 23, which is today. A national youth orchestra, a hometown percussionist on the risers, and a hall a few minutes from your door. Check with the Isabel for tickets.

Read the full story at: Kingstonist

One Ground One Sound is Monday, July 27 at The Spire, 82 Sydenham Street, and if you have been meaning to sort out tickets, this is the week to do it. Gia Nahmens grew up on the Venezuelan coast the June 24 earthquakes destroyed, so she asked Kingston’s musicians to play, and a remarkable lineup said yes. The Levon Ichkhanian Group headlines, with Geoffrey Sirett, Larissa Koniuk, Gisèle Dalbec-Szczesniak, Jill Vitols, Anna Sudac, Mauricio Montecinos and Tim Stiff on the bill. Nobody on that stage is being paid, so every dollar goes to Ventura Orbit and the children and women hit by the quakes. Tickets are $20. Grab yours at Donorbox.

Hepatitis C gets called a silent killer because plenty of people carry it with no symptoms at all until the liver damage has already set in. It is also, now, curable in most cases. Both of those facts are the point of Thursday, July 23 at the Street Health Centre, 115 Barrack Street, where Kingston Community Health Centres runs its annual free community barbecue for World Hepatitis Day. The Hepatitis C team is in the parking lot with free testing and education, and this year’s theme, “Hepatitis: Let’s Break It Down”, is about the systemic barriers standing between people and treatment, stigma very much included. Free food and a five-minute test that could save you a liver. Full details at Kingstonist.

A 21-year-old Juilliard student decided Wolfe Island should have a dance festival, and on Friday, July 24 and Saturday, July 25 it gets one. James Street is bringing Canadian dancers to Hotel Wolfe Island for workshops, a panel and performances on an outdoor stage, with Citadel + Compagnie, Esie Mensah, the National Ballet’s Emma Ouellet, Quinte Ballet School and Metis choreographer Jera Wolfe all on the roster. It is free, with donations suggested, and the ferry ride over is arguably part of the experience. Full lineup at offseason.live.

Kingston Police turn 185 this year, and they are marking it the way you would want a police force to mark a birthday: with a free family fun fair at headquarters, 705 Division Street, on Saturday, July 25. There is a barbecue, bouncy castles, a drone demonstration and a lineup of historical vehicles, and the whole thing is built for kids to wander around and ask questions. Details at Kingston Police.

Hobo Steve’s Hot Sauce makes home made, garden grown hot sauce out of Harrowsmith, and on Sunday, July 26 it is setting up at Mike’s Pizza and More, 4423 William Street in Sydenham. A dollar from every bottle sold goes to Almost Home, the Kingston house that gives families somewhere to stay while their child is getting medical care, which is one of those places nobody thinks about until the day they need it. Buy hot sauce, help a family sleep near their kid. Details on Hobo Steve’s Facebook page.

🎵 FEATURED: One Ground One Sound, a Benefit for Venezuela  |  The Spire, 82 Sydenham St  |  July 27

🩸 Free Hepatitis C Testing and Community Barbecue  |  Street Health Centre, 115 Barrack St  |  July 23

🥁 NYO Canada, Canadiana Tour  |  The Isabel  |  July 23

🎡 Delta Fair 2026  |  Delta Fairgrounds, Delta  |  July 23 to 26

🏰 Kids Take Over the Museum  |  Murney Tower Museum  |  July 23

🩰 OFF SEASON Dance Festival  |  Hotel Wolfe Island  |  July 24 to 25

🎨 Kingston Craft & Collectable Show  |  The Kingston Shrine Club, 3260 Princess St  |  July 25

🏝️ Howe Island Rockin’ the Rock  |  Howe Island  |  July 25

🚓 Kingston Police 185th Anniversary Community Fun Fair  |  Kingston Police HQ, 705 Division St  |  July 25

🏛️ Historic Places Days 2026  |  Kingston area historic sites  |  to July 25

🌶️ Hobo Steve’s Hot Sauce Charity for Almost Home  |  Mike’s Pizza and More, 4423 William St, Sydenham  |  July 26

🎒 United Way KFL&A Backpack Program  |  United Way office, 417 Bagot St & Cataraqui Centre  |  July 27 to August 14

🏥 Health Adventures Camp  |  Canadian Museum of Health Care, 32 George St  |  July 27 to 31, and August 10 to 14

⛳ 28th Annual Rose of Hope Golf Tournament  |  Cataraqui Golf & Country Club  |  July 28

🚲 United Way KFL&A MEGABike Community Ride  |  Springer Market Square  |  July 29

Festivals, free weekly programs, museum seasons and every farmers’ market we know about, all in one place and updated with every issue. See the full Kingston Events Calendar, and bookmark it while you are there.

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