🦷 This Hygienist Makes House Calls 🦋 811 Species in a Day 🎣 Worms & Kindness 📚 WritersFest Is Almost Here 🗓️ Events & More 🔦 September 21, 2026

LOCAL SPOTLIGHT

🦷 When Getting There Is the Hard Part: Mobile Dental Hygiene Across Kingston with DoorStep Dental

KINGSTON & AREA LOCAL NEWS

🧠 Sliding-Scale Therapy, a Personal Trainer and 14 Practitioners Under One Roof at The Compassion Clinic

🎻 The Isabel Turns 12 With More Than 25 Shows This Season

🦋 811 Species in 24 Hours: The Kingston Field Naturalists’ BioBlitz Report Is In

COMMUNITY CHAMPIONS

🥫 Kingston Food Help Puts Free Meals, Groceries and Food Banks in One Place

🚗 Hyundai Hope on Wheels Gives $100,000 for Kids’ Cancer Research at KHSC

🎣 Leftover Worms, First Fish and a Day of Kindness at Kingston Mills

NEW EVENTS IN AND AROUND KINGSTON

📚 Kingston WritersFest 2026 Opens Soon | The Isabel and Kingston Marriott | September 30 to October 4

🏋️ Fitness Frenzy: A Free Week of Group Fitness | City Recreation Centres | September 21 to 27

🐸 Marvelous Marsh Walk | Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area | September 22

🎨 Pay Attention! OKWA’s Annual Members’ Show | Tett Centre | September 22 to October 4

🩺 Aging Well & Talking Café: The Time Travelers Club | KFPL Central Branch | September 23

🌰 Black Walnuts: Biodiversity, Food and Forest Connections | KFPL Isabel Turner Branch | September 23

🧱 LEGO My Library With LEGO Braille Bricks | KFPL Rideau Heights Branch | September 23

🎤 Hannibal Buress | The Spire | September 23

🌶️ Chili Fest for United Way | St. Lawrence Youth Association | September 23

🎬 The Grey Fox and a Silent Auction for the Penitentiary Museum | The Screening Room | September 23

🍷 Wine Tasting Evening: Italian Wine and Dinner Pairing | The Seniors Centre | September 24

🤝 Enhancing Care Program Talk for Dementia Care Partners | The Seniors Centre | September 24

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.

That is a real dental appointment, happening in somebody's dining room, chandelier and all. DoorStep Dental packs a whole hygiene clinic into a couple of cases and brings it to wherever you are. For anyone who has stopped driving, gets around with a wheelchair, or cannot take half a day off work, that is the difference between going and not going. The two Registered Dental Hygienists behind it have collected a remarkable run of recognition this year, and one of them was a dentist in another country before she started over here. Read the full story.

Cost keeps a lot of people out of therapy, and The Compassion Clinic on Clyde Court is working on that. Justin Tudor Price, a Registered Social Worker and Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), founded the clinic in 2021, and since June it has grown to 14 practitioners: psychotherapists, social workers, a personal trainer and an athletic therapist, all working as one team on mind and body. Sessions with student therapists, who are mentored by experienced staff, start at $75, and many therapists offer sliding-scale fees. A matching tool on its site sorts therapists by cost, issue, gender and style.

Learn more at: The Compassion Clinic

The Isabel is turning 12, and it is celebrating with more than 25 performances in its 2026-27 season, The Isabel at 12, Celebrating Musical Traditions. The season opened on Sunday, September 20 with the piano quartet ensemble132, and there is plenty still to come across five series: the Indigenous chamber opera Missing (sold out) on Tuesday, September 29, Mariachi Herencia de México, pianists Janina Fialkowska and Jan Lisiecki, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra with violinist James Ehnes. Queen’s students get one free ticket to Isabel-presented shows (some restrictions apply), and tickets and subscriptions are on sale now.

Read the full story at: Kingston Daily

Back in June, 72 people spent 24 hours finding and naming every living thing they could at Camden Lake Provincial Wildlife Area, and the final count is in: 811 species. The Kingston Field Naturalists published the report on their 28th BioBlitz on September 14, and the count includes 367 arthropods (insects, spiders and their relatives), 209 vascular plants, 118 animals with backbones, and 76 fungi and lichens. Two species had never been recorded in the Kingston area before, the Long-horned Ant Fly and the Needle-duff Click Beetle. Species at risk showed up too, including three endangered bats, the Grey Rat Snake and the area’s largest colony of endangered Black Terns.

Read the full report at: Kingston Field Naturalists

Needing a meal today should not mean a scavenger hunt across a dozen websites. A Kingston resident has built Kingston Food Help, a free, ad-free directory of hot meals, grocery programs, food banks and pantries, all in one place. Pick emergency food or affordable food, filter for meals or groceries, search by name, street or neighbourhood, and switch on “open now or later today” to see what you can still reach. Each listing, from Martha’s Table to the Loretta Meal Program, says who can use it, what it costs and when its details were last checked. Not sure where to start? The site points you to 2-1-1 for help choosing.

Visit: Kingston Food Help

Hyundai Hope on Wheels is back with another $100,000 for kids’ cancer research at Kingston Health Sciences Centre, through University Hospitals Kingston Foundation. It funds pediatric cancer research and clinical trials, so kids in southeastern Ontario can join a trial without leaving the region to do it. Last year’s gift, plus $50,000 from Hyundai dealers in Belleville, Kingston, Smiths Falls and Brockville, paid for a second research associate and helped KHSC run more than 15 active pediatric trials. This year it also backs studies like one asking whether ice chips, popsicles and slushies can ease the painful mouth sores chemo can cause in kids.

Read the full story at: University Hospitals Kingston Foundation

Jim Reedyk’s fishing trip to Kingston Mills was going nowhere. His lures were not working, he wrote in a letter to the Kingston Whig-Standard, until a stranger heading home handed him their leftover worms. He spent the rest of the afternoon helping at least five families get set up to fish, many of them new to Canada, and several of them caught their first fish (all catch and release). One family cooking on the Kingston Mills grills shared their food with him. Add in frisbee, yoga and more than a dozen friendly dogs, and Reedyk wrote that the best catch of the day was kindness.

Read the full letter at: Kingston Whig-Standard

Kingston WritersFest opens on Wednesday, September 30 at The Isabel with Sculpted by Storms, Michelle Good in conversation with Shelagh Rogers. Good, the author of Five Little Indians, brings her new novel Eliza Sunshine, a family saga across three generations of Cree women, and singer-songwriter Kym Gouchie performs. It is presented with LodgePole Arts Alliance and The Isabel, and tickets are $50.

Then the festival settles into the Kingston Marriott from Thursday, October 1 to Sunday, October 4. Thursday brings Beyond the Veil of Things, Odds, Ends, and Exile: Essays in Focus, Into (and Out of) the Wild and the Short Story Showcase. Friday has Our Reconstructions with Helen Humphreys and Judith Thompson, Saturday has Familiar Creatures and Jody Wilson-Raybould’s The Inbetween Leader, and Sunday closes with Grease on the Palms with Maude Barlow and Don Gillmor. Day passes are $115 to $140 and a festival pass is $375 (ticket details).

The festival also runs Writers Studio workshops, a Salon Series and free events throughout the week.

Wondering how the festival almost did not happen? Our WritersFest comeback story has it. Full program at Kingston WritersFest.

The City of Kingston is offering a week of free group fitness classes, no membership needed. Fitness Frenzy starts today, Monday, September 21, with Low Impact at the Kingston East Community Centre and RIP at Artillery Park. After that it is Cycle Fit at the INVISTA Centre on Tuesday, then Power Bands on Wednesday, Cycle Fit on Thursday, Chair Fit on Friday and Zumba on Sunday, September 27, all at Artillery Park. You do need to register through the City’s recreation portal (set up an account first if you need one). Full class list at the City of Kingston.

Take a slow walk through the marsh at Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area with a guide on Tuesday, September 22. The Marvelous Marsh walk is one of Cataraqui Conservation’s programs for adults and seniors, and it is a lovely excuse to get outside as fall settles in along the creek. Spots are by registration: find the walk on Cataraqui Conservation’s events page and hit Register.

The Organization of Kingston Women Artists takes over the Tett Gallery at the Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning from Tuesday, September 22 to Sunday, October 4 with Pay Attention!, its annual members’ show. The theme borrows from the poet Mary Oliver’s instructions for living, which boil down to paying attention, being astonished, and telling about it. OKWA formed in 1989 and has about 60 members. Admission is free and all ages are welcome, with an opening reception on Sunday, September 27 and an artist talk on Tuesday, September 29. Details at the Tett Centre.

The Kingston Frontenac Public Library and the Canadian Museum of Health Care bring a show-and-tell of historical medical artifacts to the Central Branch on Wednesday, September 23. Each object is a prompt for memories, stories and a bit of reflection, as part of a speaker series for older adults. Afterwards, Compassionate Communities Kingston hosts an informal Talking Café. It is free, but registration is required and seats were going fast at last check, so register with KFPL.

Meet the tree that feeds more than 100 kinds of butterflies and moths, including the Luna moth. The black walnut is this year’s National Tree Day theme, and KFPL and the City’s Neighbourhood Climate Action Champions are marking it at the Isabel Turner Branch on Wednesday, September 23. Guest speakers from Little Forests Kingston and Portsmouth Urban Forager cover how the nuts are eaten and how their husks make dye, and then you get to shell and taste black walnuts yourself. It is free, for teens and adults. Details at KFPL.

Kids can learn braille by building at the Rideau Heights Branch on Wednesday, September 23. LEGO My Library brings out LEGO Braille Bricks, so kids play their way into braille and learn how people who are blind or visually impaired read and communicate. It is free, drop-in and for all ages, with Duplo for kids 2 and up and LEGO for 4 and up. Caregivers of kids under 7 stay in the room, and caregivers of 7 to 9 year olds stay in the library. Details at KFPL.

Hannibal Buress, the stand-up and Saturday Night Live writer you might know from Broad City, brings his comedy to The Spire’s Performance Hall on Wednesday, September 23. The show is presented by KPP Concerts with Spectrasonic, and it is 16 and up. Tickets run $49.50 to $65 through TicketWeb.

Here is a lunch plan for Wednesday, September 23: chili for a good cause. The St. Lawrence Youth Association hosts Chili Fest at 817 Division Street, and every dollar raised goes to United Way KFL&A. Bring an appetite, grab a bowl, and help keep United Way’s local work going. Details at United Way KFL&A.

The Friends of the Penitentiary Museum are screening a 4K restoration of The Grey Fox at The Screening Room on Wednesday, September 23. The 1982 film stars Richard Farnsworth as Bill Miner, the outlaw behind Canada’s first train robbery. The night also brings prison artifacts, talks from curators at Canada’s Penitentiary Museum, a silent auction and a surprise gift for everyone who comes. Tickets are $18, the film is rated PG, and proceeds go to the museum. Tickets at The Screening Room.

The Seniors Centre is pouring four Italian wines on Thursday, September 24, each one paired with a course of an Italian-inspired dinner: garden salad, bruschetta, chicken pesto spaghettini and a chocolate dessert to finish. It is $55 a person, and it is part of the Seniors Association’s 50th anniversary year. Register by phone at 613-548-7810 or online with the Seniors Association Kingston Region.

If you are caring for someone living with dementia, this one is for you. Natalie Litner, RSW, of Providence Care visits The Seniors Centre on Thursday, September 24 to introduce Providence Care’s free, skills-based support groups for dementia care partners. The talk itself is $5 a person, and you register by phone at 613-548-7810. Details at the Seniors Association Kingston Region.

🗳️ All-Candidates Meeting: Collins-Bayridge District  |  Online, advance registration required  |  September 21  |  🔦 Read our story

🪵 Fall Brush Pickup Starts, and the Map Has Changed  |  Across Kingston  |  Week of September 21

🍽️ CFKA Speaker Series: Food Sustains Us  |  Delta Hotel Kingston Waterfront  |  September 22  |  🔦 Read our story

🌿 A Marvelous Marsh Experience  |  Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area  |  September 22

🗳️ All-Candidates Meeting: Pittsburgh District  |  Online, advance registration required  |  September 22  |  🔦 Read our story

💻 Free Webinar on Website Accessibility for Businesses  |  Online  |  September 22

🍂 Fall Forest School at Cataraqui Conservation  |  Cataraqui Conservation  |  September 22

🕰️ Aging Well and Talking Cafe: The Time Travelers Club  |  KFPL Central Branch  |  September 23

🌰 Black Walnuts: Biodiversity, Food and Forest Connections  |  KFPL Isabel Turner Branch  |  September 23

🧱 LEGO My Library with LEGO Braille Bricks  |  KFPL Rideau Heights Branch  |  September 23

🎤 Hannibal Buress  |  The Spire  |  September 23

🌶️ Chili Fest for United Way  |  St. Lawrence Youth Association  |  September 23

🎬 The Grey Fox and a Silent Auction for the Penitentiary Museum  |  The Screening Room  |  September 23

🍷 Italian Wine Tasting and Dinner Pairing  |  The Seniors Centre  |  September 24

🤝 Enhancing Care Program Talk for Dementia Care Partners  |  The Seniors Centre  |  September 24

🗳️ All-Candidates Meeting: Countryside District  |  Online, advance registration required  |  September 24  |  🔦 Read our story

🎓 2026 Royal Society of Canada Eastern Ontario Symposium  |  The Isabel  |  September 25

🌃 Art After Dark  |  Downtown Kingston  |  September 25

🎷 The Jazz Room: A Journey to the Heart of New Orleans  |  The Spire  |  September 25

🎶 Sound Escapes: Retro Kings  |  The Seniors Centre  |  September 25

💀 Domino Theatre: I Hate Hamlet  |  Domino Theatre, 52 Church St  |  September 10 to 26  |  🔦 Read our story

🎖️ Napanee Legion Week  |  Legion Branch 137, Napanee  |  September 20 to 26

🥞 Breakfast on the Farm  |  River Valley Cattle Company, Newburgh  |  September 26

✈️ Wheels on the Runway  |  YGK Airport  |  September 26

🎸 Guitars ’n Cars  |  Downtown Napanee  |  September 26

🥁 Culture Days Drum Circle at Rossland Gardens  |  Rossland Gardens, Amherst Island  |  September 26

🖌️ Culture Days at the Tett  |  Tett Centre  |  September 26

🏡 Culture Days at Fairfield Gutzeit House  |  Fairfield Gutzeit House, Bath  |  September 26

🖼️ Bath Artfest  |  Centennial Park, Bath  |  September 26

🦇 Bats, Birds and Housing: Build a Bat House for Local Wildlife  |  212 Church St, Bath  |  September 26

🌳 TD Tree Days at Lemoine Point  |  Lemoine Point Conservation Area  |  September 26

🍄 Foraging for Local Wild Food  |  KFPL Isabel Turner Branch  |  September 26

🌈 Vibrant Voices: A Song Circle for the 2SLGBTQIA+ Community and Allies  |  KFPL Central Branch  |  September 26

🌙 Up Close with the Moon  |  L&A County Dark Sky Viewing Area, Erinsville  |  September 26

🏋️ Fitness Frenzy  |  Various City recreation facilities  |  September 21 to 27

🚗 QMC Kingston Car Show presented by Wraptors Kingston  |  Springer Market Square  |  September 27

🪶 Beyond Land Acknowledgements: From Words to Transformative Change, With John A. Olthuis  |  The Spire, Upper Hall  |  September 27

🍕 Kingscourt Street Festival: Potluck and Pizza  |  Fourth Avenue, Kingscourt  |  September 27

🎞️ My Dear Theo Documentary Screening  |  The Screening Room  |  September 27

🎻 Surprise! Kingston Symphony With Angela Cheng  |  The Isabel  |  September 27

📖 WritersFest Kick-Off: Sculpted by Storms, Michelle Good with Shelagh Rogers  |  The Isabel  |  September 30

📚 WritersFest Thursday: fantasy, personal essays, nature writing and the Short Story Showcase  |  Kingston Marriott  |  October 1

🎭 Ontario Culture Days in Prince Edward County  |  Prince Edward County  |  September 18 to October 2

📚 WritersFest Friday: Helen Humphreys and Judith Thompson, Wayne Johnston, and a free night at the RCHA Club  |  Kingston Marriott and the RCHA Club  |  October 2

🦹 Dr. Experimentor and the League of Evil!  |  Lennox Community Theatre  |  September 18 to October 3

📚 WritersFest Saturday: Jody Wilson-Raybould, Tara Henley on trust in the media, and a full day of workshops  |  Kingston Marriott  |  October 3

🎨 Pay Attention! OKWA’s Annual Members’ Show  |  Tett Centre  |  September 22 to October 4

🎃 Forman Farms Pumpkin Smashing and Corn Maze  |  Forman Farms, Seeley’s Bay  |  September 26 to October 4

📚 Kingston WritersFest 2026: five days, about 40 events, passes available  |  The Isabel and the Kingston Marriott  |  September 30 to October 4

📚 WritersFest Sunday: Maude Barlow on the climate crisis, Kingston’s own Adrian Michael Kelly, and the state of CanLit  |  Kingston Marriott  |  October 4

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