🔦 In This Issue of Kingston Spotlight
🌽 Best Sweet Corn in Kingston & Area: 2026 Local Picks
🎓 Move-In Weekend Lands Sept. 4, and the District Rules Change First
🏛️ Greek Fest Was Free, and the Food Bank Came Out Ahead
🗣️ The City Wants to Know How It Should Talk to You About Housing
🥪 A New Executive Director for The Food Sharing Project, and 88 Schools to Feed
🌱 “Sneak Attack Teaching” at Bloom Skills Centre, Now Open to Everyone
🎡 Inverary’s Jared Hunter Finished Second Out of Sixty at the Ex
🏊 PA Day Recreation Programming | City Community Centres | September 1
🚗 12th Annual Limestone City Car Classic | Kingston Memorial Centre Fairgrounds | September 5
🥞 United Way KFL&A Campaign Kick-Off Breakfast | DoubleTree by Hilton Kingston | September 10
🎭 Boodle Theatre Company presents Cymbeline | St. Mark’s Lutheran Church | September 10 to 12
It’s gotten too long to include here in the summary! Click Events Calendar to see our list for the next few days.
Too long? Too short? About right? Tell us what you would like to see more of, and less of.
📣 This space is for a local business worth knowing
Every issue, this spot goes to one business we think our readers would like to meet. Sometimes that's a shop, sometimes a service, sometimes someone who has been quietly doing good work for years and has never advertised anywhere.
I sit down with the owner, learn how they got started and what they're actually good at, and then write about that. It reads like the rest of the newsletter because it is the rest of the newsletter.
Founding rates are open while we're getting started. If that's your kind of thing, email Les at [email protected] and he'll walk you through it.
🔦 Local Spotlight
🌽 Best Sweet Corn in Kingston & Area: 2026 Local Picks
Local growers, one guide, and two weeks to pick your favourite.
Somewhere out there is a farm stand you would drive across town for, and you probably have opinions about which one. We asked, our readers answered, and the answers turned into the Sweet Corn Guide: who grows it, where you can actually buy it, and what to do with all those husks once you get home. Every grower who meets the criteria is on the list, so the vote is not picking a winner and nobody gets bumped off. It is just a bit of fun to see whose corn this town will go out of its way for. Have a look at who made the list, then pick your favourite.
📰 Kingston & Area Local News
🎓 Move-In Weekend Lands Sept. 4, and the District Rules Change First
Laundry baskets, boxes and a thousand volunteers in red shirts. Photo from a previous move-in weekend, via Queen's University.
Queen’s students start arriving the evening of Friday, Sept. 4, and move-in runs through Saturday, Sept. 5, so expect the streets around the University District to fill up with cars, boxes and parents, plus one-way routes and parking restrictions. The rules change before the students do. The University District Safety Initiative runs from Friday, Aug. 28 to Sunday, Sept. 13, a partnership between the City of Kingston, Kingston Police and Queen’s that puts extra by-law officers and police in the district and brings Administrative Monetary Penalties into play under the Nuisance Party and Noise by-laws. One knock-on for everyone else: the Gord Edgar Downie Pier and the Breakwater Park beach close to the public nightly, 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., for the same stretch. New neighbours, the City’s Good Neighbour Guide is a friendly place to start.
Read the full story at: City of Kingston
🏛️ Greek Fest Was Free, and the Food Bank Came Out Ahead
Greek Fest brought souvlaki and dancing to Johnson Street.
Admission to Greek Fest was free on Saturday, Aug. 22. The price of entry was a non-perishable food item or a cash donation to the Partners in Mission Food Bank. Inside the Greek Banquet Hall on Johnson Street there was live bouzouki, traditional dancing and a row of local artisan vendors, hosted by the Greek Community of Kingston. The community is also building something that outlasts a weekend. The Kingston Greek History Project, led by George Katinas and Paula Antonakos with Angeline Boswell as research assistant, has recorded 20 oral history interviews in its inaugural phase and donated them to Queen’s University Archives and the Kingston Frontenac Public Library.
Read the full story at: Kingston Daily
🗣️ The City Wants to Know How It Should Talk to You About Housing
The City wants to know how it should talk to residents about housing, and the survey is open to Sept. 21. Graphic from the City of Kingston's Get Involved Kingston page.
This one is about process, and it matters more than that sounds. Following a Council motion, the City of Kingston is asking residents how it should engage the community when it puts housing solutions in place: who hears what, when, and through which door. There is a short survey on Get Involved Kingston, and an in person drop-in session at the INVISTA Centre on Wednesday, Sept. 16. Feedback closes Monday, Sept. 21. If you have ever wished you had heard about something sooner, this is the form where you say so.
Read the full story at: City of Kingston
🏆 Community Champions
🥪 A New Executive Director for The Food Sharing Project, and 88 Schools to Feed
Yu Jier Kou takes over a charity that feeds 16,000 students across 88 schools. Photo via the Food Sharing Project.
The Food Sharing Project reaches roughly half the students enrolled across Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington: 16,000 of them every school year, in all 88 schools, plus packaged lunches out of three off-site production kitchens. It now has a new executive director. Yu Jier Kou steps in as Andy Mills retires after seven years, and in its release the organization credited him with a legacy of “more food, more staff, more deliveries and far more students and schools receiving the support they need”. Forty years of donors, volunteers and partnerships sit behind that.
Read the full story at: Kingstonist
🌱 “Sneak Attack Teaching” at Bloom Skills Centre, Now Open to Everyone
Bloom Skills Centre's garden workshops now run for the wider community as well as its own students. Photo from cfka.org.
“Sneak attack teaching” is what Amber Potter calls it in the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area’s own impact story. Students read and prioritize a task list, work as a team, and keep a community pantry stocked and rotated, picking up transferable job skills without ever being told that is what is happening. A $14,500 grant from the Foundation, made this spring from the Helping Hands for Those with Disabilities Fund and the Opportunities Kingston Fund, has opened Bloom Skills Centre’s Birds, Bees and Butterflies workshops to the wider community rather than just its own students. Potter wanted somewhere “our students could actually integrate with other gardeners, with other community members”. Bloom graduates have gone on to work at independent farms, Costco and CVS.
Read the full story at: Community Foundation for Kingston & Area
🎡 Inverary’s Jared Hunter Finished Second Out of Sixty at the Ex
Jared Hunter, in the Kingston Ambassador sash, on stage with the other 2026 ambassadors at the CNE. Photo from the Ontario Association of Agricultural Societies.
Going to Toronto was optional. The Kingston ambassador can enter the CNE Ambassador of the Fairs or skip it, and Jared Hunter of Inverary chose to enter. On Sunday, Aug. 23, on stage at the Canadian National Exhibition, he came out of a field of 60 as first runner-up, one of seven semi-finalists and one of only four men in the whole competition, and the other contestants voted him the Congeniality Award on top of it. Olivia Avery of the Lindsay Agricultural Society took the title. Jared represents the Kingston & District Agricultural Society, who put on the 194th Kingston Fall Fair from Sept. 17 to 20.
Read the full story at: Kingston Daily
📍 One place, and you'd be doing us a favour
What is your favourite spot around here? Hit reply and name one. A diner, a trail, a bench, a bookshop, whatever you would send a visitor to. One place is plenty, and we read every one. We are collecting them for a future issue, and replying also tells your email provider we are someone you know, which keeps us out of your Promotions tab.
🆕 New Events In and Around Kingston
🏊 PA Day Recreation Programming | City Community Centres | September 1
Four City community centres open their gyms, pools and the arena for the Sept. 1 PA Day. Graphic from the City of Kingston's Facebook page.
School is out on Tuesday, Sept. 1, and four City spots are open for it. Kingston East and Rideau Heights community centres run family open gym, badminton, pickleball and parent and tot sessions. Artillery Park Aquatic Centre adds open gym plus parent and tot, family and leisure swims, and the INVISTA Centre arena has parent and tot skate, stick and puck, youth shinny for ages 7 to 9 and 10 to 12, and public skate. At Rideau Heights the City of Kingston marks parent and tot gym, family open gym, and open gym and racquet sports as free, and family badminton as paid. It does not say either way for the other three spots. The full schedule by centre is on the City’s Facebook post, and you register through the City’s drop-in programs page.
🚗 12th Annual Limestone City Car Classic | Kingston Memorial Centre Fairgrounds | September 5
Hundreds of classic cars fill the Memorial Centre fairgrounds on Sept. 5, and spectators get in free. Poster from the Limestone City Car Club.
Saturday, Sept. 5 at the Kingston Memorial Centre Fairgrounds on York Street, rain or shine, and it costs spectators nothing to walk in, parking included. Bring a car and it is $15 to register, with a dash plaque for the first 350 through the gate, 25 classes, four memorial trophies and door prizes. Sittin’ Ducks play. The Limestone City Car Club has raised more than $137,000 since 2013, when Brian Beatty started the show in memory of his daughter Melonie, who died of melanoma at 35, and the money goes to the Cancer Centre of Southeastern Ontario at Kingston Health Sciences Centre. Details at University Hospitals Kingston Foundation.
🥞 United Way KFL&A Campaign Kick-Off Breakfast | DoubleTree by Hilton Kingston | September 10
The kick-off breakfast returns to the DoubleTree on Sept. 10, when United Way KFL&A reveals this year's goal. Photo from a previous campaign kick-off, via United Way KFL&A.
United Way KFL&A launches its 2026 campaign over breakfast at the DoubleTree by Hilton Kingston on Princess Street on Thursday, Sept. 10, and this is where the year’s fundraising goal gets announced. Last year’s campaign raised $4.1 million, which gives the new number something to be measured against. 2026 Campaign Chair Krista Wells Pearce leads it off. Tickets are $25 a person or $150 for a table of eight, parking is complimentary, and the organizers ask you to register early to be sure of a seat. Full details are on United Way’s event page, and tickets are on Eventbrite.
🎭 Boodle Theatre Company presents Cymbeline | St. Mark’s Lutheran Church | September 10 to 12
A brand new Kingston theatre company opens with Shakespeare, and calls it punky. Poster from Boodle Theatre Company.
A brand new Kingston non-profit is opening with Shakespeare, which takes some nerve. Boodle Theatre Company was set up to create theatre opportunities for students and community members, and its first ever production is Cymbeline, directed by Charli Birdgenaw, at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church on Victoria Street. The company calls it “punky, out of the ordinary, and extremely funny”, and this staging casts Posthumus as a woman. Thursday, Sept. 10 is an open dress rehearsal, pay what you can. The shows are Friday, Sept. 11 and Saturday, Sept. 12, two of them on the Saturday, at $25 general admission and $15 for students. Tickets are on the company’s Tickettailor page.
📅 Events Calendar
What’s happening in and around Kingston over the next few days
🍿 Movies in the Square, Season 19 | Springer Market Square | Thursdays to August 27
💃 Free Zumba in the Park | Breakwater Park | Tuesdays and Thursdays to August 27
🎥 To Labour, with Love Film Screening and Mixer | Broom Factory, 305 Rideau St | August 27
🔭 Curious Minds Kingston: See the Universe like a Scientist | Fine Balance Brewing | August 27
🎨 Tett Centre Adult Arts Retreat | Tett Centre for Creativity & Learning | August 24 to 28
📜 Kingston Heritage Fund Seeks Grant Jurors | Expression of interest closes | August 28
💚 Kingston Canal Pursuit for Mental Health | Confederation Park | August 29
🍋 Mending Hearts with Declyn Lemonade Stand | 1018 Old Colony Rd | August 29
🔋 Second Household Hazardous Waste Drop-Off | Public Works Sand and Salt Dome, 1307 Innovation Dr | August 29
🏊 PA Day Recreation Programming | City community centres | September 1
🚲 Raffle in Support of SFCSC, prizes from Revell Ford | Southern Frontenac Community Services, Sydenham | Draw September 1 | 🔦 Read our story
🎓 University District Safety Initiative | University District | August 28 to September 13
🗓️ That is just the next few days. The full Kingston events calendar lives here.
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.
BTW, if you don’t want to receive this anymore, please help all the subscribers by just using the Unsubscribe link at the bottom instead of marking this as SPAM… remember, you did subscribe ;-)
All feedback and suggestions are appreciated!
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