🔦 October 1, 2026 🏠 Kevin Smith, From a Tent to the Housing Committee 🧺 A Market for the Prison for Women 🏃 Howe Island Runs for Terry Fox 🗓️ Events & More

The Cover

🎃 On the Cover: Mums, Pumpkins and a Season in Between

Local Spotlight

🏠 From a Tent in November to Kingston’s Housing Committee and a Council Run: Kevin Smith

Kingston & Area Local News

🧺 A St. Lawrence Market-Style Plan for the Old Prison for Women

📈 Kingston Visitors Spent $538.9 Million in 2025

🗳️ Check Your Voter Registration Before the Municipal Election

🤝 Two Free Groups for Caregivers at Providence Care

Community Champions

🏃 Howe Island’s Terry Fox Run Raises $51,628, and $233,404 in 21 Years

🌱 Meet the 2026 Sustainable Kingston Award Winners

🎤 Peter Katz Joins the Speaker Hall of Fame

🏒 Kirk Muller Comes Home as BGC South East’s Mentorship Ambassador

New Events In and Around Kingston

🚌 United Way Seeing Is Believing Tours | Memorial Centre | October 1 and 28

🎶 An Evening with the Harp | Next Church | October 2

👟 Willem Sagriff Runs 100 Kilometres for the NICU | Point Municipal Park, Sydenham | October 3

🍵 Cha Cha Tea Turns 20 | Days Road and The Secret Garden Inn | October 3 and 4

🏛️ Providence Village Community Open House | 1200 Princess St | October 3

🐞 Bug Safari | Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area | October 3

🔧 Repair It! | KFPL Central Branch | October 3

🪶 Family Storytime with Vicki from Kahwá:tsire | KFPL Isabel Turner Branch | October 3

🎧 Build Your Own Beat with Jam for Justice | KFPL Central Branch | October 3

🎨 Kingston Studio Tour | Studios Across Kingston | October 3 and 4

🎞️ Silent Movie Weekend with Live Piano | The Screening Room | October 3 and 4

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.

This is the in-between stretch of the year. The maples are only just starting to turn, but the colour has already shown up everywhere else, in yellow, purple, white and burgundy mums and pumpkins piled by the dozen. We caught this on September 27 at Glenburnie Grocery on #10, where local seasonal goodies always turn up in abundance.

In November 2021, Kevin Smith rode out a snowstorm in a tent tucked behind a Kingston store. Now he helps advise the City on housing. Somewhere in between came a Facebook post that landed in a Glass Tiger founder's studio, a phone call cut short by a fire, and a new home found faster than ever before, with a lot of Kingston pitching in. He's also on your ballot this October. Read the full story.

The owners of the former Prison for Women, Siderius Developments, have a new idea for its historic cellblock: Union Park Market, pitched as Kingston’s first year-round indoor artisan food market. Picture about 32 permanent stalls for bakers, butchers, cheese, produce and flowers, with about 35 rental apartments or offices upstairs instead of the condos planned earlier. A feasibility study with Tourism Kingston found it workable, according to Siderius. It needs a rezoning first, and the City holds a community meeting on Thursday, October 8 at City Hall, with an online option. If it’s approved, the market could open in late 2028. Vendors can already register their interest.

Read the full story at: Union Park Kingston

Kingston had company last year, and plenty of it. Tourism Kingston’s new 2025 economic impact report counts 2.65 million visitors, up 2.8%, who spent $538.9 million here, up 5.3% from 2024. The report puts the biggest slice on food and drink at $225.9 million, then $135.8 million on places to stay. All that spending supports about 4,400 jobs and $215.4 million in local income, and it brought in $24.8 million in municipal taxes. Most visitors, about 82%, came from elsewhere in Ontario, and tourism is now Kingston’s 10th-largest employer.

Read the full story at: Tourism Kingston

The municipal election is closing in, so now’s the time to make sure you’re on the list. The City’s Am I on the list? tool lets you confirm, update or add yourself to the Voters’ List. Internet voting runs Wednesday, October 14 to Monday, October 26, advance voting is Friday, October 16 and Saturday, October 17, and Voting Day is Monday, October 26. Canadian citizens 18 and up can vote if they live here or they or their spouse own or rent property here, and students living away from home can vote in both places. Once you’re on the list, your Voter Information Letter, with the number you need to vote online, comes by mail.

Read the full story at: City of Kingston

Caring for someone you love is a lot, and Providence Care has two free groups to help carry it. CARERS is for care partners of someone living with dementia: eight weekly sessions of coaching on communication, problem-solving and handling stress, starting Tuesday, October 6 at City Place II on John Counter Boulevard. It’s capped at six, and you can refer yourself at [email protected]. SCALE Together, run with the Ontario Caregiver Organization, is for anyone caring for an adult with a progressive, life-limiting illness. It meets Tuesdays until November 3 at Providence Transitional Care Centre, and you can join any remaining week by calling 613-544-4900 ext. 59180.

Read the full story at: Providence Care

Howe Island earned a closer look after our September 28 Terry Fox roundup, with corrected numbers. On an island of just over 600 year-round residents, the run raised $51,628 this year, including $25,000 from Howe Islander Stephen Sorensen, bringing its 21-year total to $233,404 for the Terry Fox Foundation. Islanders walked, ran and biked through a cold, misty, windy morning, then warmed up with a free barbecue, a silent auction and live music. Coordinators Valerie and Dave Robb and Allison Hinton led the way. Terry Fox Ambassador Gerry Lyon, a retired paramedic, gave an inspiring talk about his own journey with cancer and how research has changed treatment for people who are diagnosed. As volunteer Joanne Forsythe told Kingston Spotlight: “We are Howe Island Strong!”

Sustainable Kingston handed out its 2026 awards on September 16 in Springer Market Square, and the winners show green work comes in all sizes. UNDO Carbon and Canadian Wollastonite won Environmental Impact for spreading crushed wollastonite on local farmland, which feeds the soil and locks away carbon. Tourism Kingston won Circular Economy, partly for a public refill station that has kept an estimated 3,000 single-use plastic bottles out of circulation. And the volunteer-run Skeleton Park Arts Festival won the grassroots award after sorting its waste so well that less than one bag went to landfill.

The youth winners might be our favourite part. Hassan Amir took the postsecondary award for his work with The Starfish Canada’s Youth Advisory Action Committee. The under-18 award was shared by Grade 2 students Carys Etienne and Myla Hayes, who do after-school litter cleanups around their school and neighbourhood, and nine-year-olds Niina Dale and Matthew Chaplin, who organized a family cleanup at Crerar Park in Reddendale, along the park and the Lake Ontario shoreline.

Read the full story at: Sustainable Kingston

Kingston’s Peter Katz, the JUNO-nominated singer-songwriter turned keynote speaker, was inducted into the National Speakers Association’s CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame on July 27 in Austin, Texas. He’s only the fifth Canadian ever, it was his first nomination (some finalists had been nominated up to 30 times), and he told the Whig-Standard he first thought the call was a prank. Katz moved to Kingston early last year after buying a cottage in South Frontenac, and his speaking career started when he found out a youth mentoring program in Fort Macleod, Alta. was using his songs.

Read the full story at: Kingston Whig-Standard

Kirk Muller is back in Kingston full time, and BGC South East has put him to work. The Kingston native went second in the 1984 NHL Draft behind Mario Lemieux and scored the 1993 Stanley Cup winner for Montreal. Now he’s the club’s 2026-27 Mentorship Ambassador, helping with youth programs, mentorship, and staff and volunteer development. Next March he’ll speak at BGC’s Making a Difference Speakers Series, to about 1,000 high school students by day and a gala crowd at night. BGC South East serves more than 6,000 kids and youth a year.

Read the full story at: Kingston Whig-Standard

Someone landing on our Facebook page can see plenty of what we do, but it's all coming from us. What tells them more is hearing from the people who actually read it, about what they like and why they stick around.

Our Facebook recommendations section is empty, and that's because we've never asked. We've been kinda busy building everything ;-)

Honest is the only kind we want, same as always.

Ever wonder where your United Way donation actually goes? United Way KFL&A’s Seeing Is Believing bus tours take you straight to the agencies it funds, where you meet frontline workers and hear the stories behind the numbers. The first tour is Thursday, October 1, the day this issue lands, so the one to aim for is Wednesday, October 28. It leaves from the southwest entrance of the Memorial Centre at York and Albert, lunch is included, and you can ask about a seat at [email protected]. Details at unitedwaykfla.ca.

Kingston harpist and singer Malobi Elueme plays an intimate night at Next Church on Colborne Street on Friday, October 2. Expect her own songs plus jazz, indie folk, R&B and Afrobeat tunes reimagined for harp, which is not a sentence we get to type every day. Born in Lagos and shaped by years in Alberta and Newfoundland, she’s also a pianist and theatre performer, and was most recently one of CFRC’s Airwave YGK Musicians in Residence. There’s a coffee and tea stand, merch and an R&B DJ set before the show. Tickets at Humanitix.

Back in July we told you about Willem Sagriff’s plan, and now it’s go time. On Saturday, October 3, the 27-year-old Kingstonian runs 100 kilometres around the track at Point Municipal Park in Sydenham, which he expects to take 11 to 12 hours. No starting gun, no competitors, no medal. He’s raising money through University Hospitals Kingston Foundation for the NICU at Kingston Health Sciences Centre, with a $15,000 goal. He and his wife welcomed their daughter in June 2025, and as he put it on UHKF’s event page, “Our room was just past the NICU.” Cheer him on with a donation.

Kaoru Miller came to Kingston in 2004, was surprised to find no tea shop in town, and opened Cha Cha Tea in 2006. Twenty years later she’s a certified tea sommelier, and she’s celebrating all weekend. The Days Road shop holds a 20th Anniversary Open House on Saturday, October 3, with tea tastings and something sweet to sample, and everyone’s welcome. On Sunday, October 4, the party moves to The Secret Garden Inn on Sydenham Street for an anniversary Afternoon Tea: $80 all in (tea, tax, gratuity and a take-home gift), two seatings of 28, and everyone is entered to win an Afternoon Tea for Two. It has sold out quickly the past two years, so grab your seat early.

We mentioned it in our September 28 issue, and it deserves a spot of its own: Providence Village is holding its first-ever public open house on Saturday, October 3. It starts with a community presentation in McKinley Hall with CEO Laurie French and MPP Ted Hsu, then you can tour the Village, stop by booths from the organizations that now call it home, and have a look around the shared spaces and grounds. It’s free and everyone’s welcome, you just need to register on Eventbrite.

Feel like a kid again: Cataraqui Conservation staff are leading a Bug Safari at Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area on Saturday, October 3. You’ll start with dip nets on the boardwalk, meeting marsh dwellers like diving beetles, backswimmers and dragonfly nymphs, then head out on the trails to see what’s living in the forests and fields. It’s $5.25 for adults, $3.75 for kids and free for annual pass holders, and you need to book a spot under Little Cat Weekend Events.

Got a lamp that won’t light or a toaster that won’t toast? Take it to Repair It! at KFPL’s Central Branch on Johnson Street on Saturday, October 3. Volunteer fixers help you work out what’s wrong and show you how to fix it yourself, so you leave with a working thing and a new skill. It’s a drop-in for adults, and you’re welcome even if you have nothing to fix. No gas-powered items, and everything goes home with you afterward. Details at KFPL.

Little ones get a cozy autumn storytime at KFPL’s Isabel Turner Branch on Saturday, October 3, led by Vicki from Kahwá:tsire Indigenous-Led Child and Family Programs. There’s a story about a woodpecker, songs in Ojibwe and a craft, and there will be painting too, so dress for mess. It’s a drop-in aimed at ages 6 and under, though everyone is welcome, and caregivers of children under 7 stay in the room. Details at KFPL.

Ever wanted to make your own track? Jam for Justice at Queen’s University and KFPL are running a free beginner music production workshop for youth ages 14 to 24 at the Central Branch on Saturday, October 3. You’ll learn the basics in Soundtrap, which is free to sign up for. Bring a laptop or tablet and headphones if you have them, and if you don’t, you can ask for a device when you register. Registration is required, and there were 13 seats left as of September 30. Register at KFPL.

Make it a fall drive: the Kingston Studio Tour opens artists’ studios across Kingston on Saturday and Sunday, October 3 and 4. It’s self-guided, so you pick your stops, meet the artists and see where the work actually gets made. Stops include Joanne Gervais’s studio on Unity Road, with live music on Saturday, and Tim Atkinson’s oil paintings and stone garden art on Hillcrest Avenue, and Tett Centre Creativity Studios artists Sumera Khan and Leisa Rich are taking part too. It’s run by Kingston Artist Events, where you’ll find maps and the full lineup.

The Screening Room’s annual Silent Movie Weekend is back, with pianist Bruce Vogt, a professor of piano at the University of Victoria, improvising the soundtrack live. Saturday, October 3 is Buster Keaton’s The General, 100 years old this year, after Charlie Chaplin’s short The Adventurer. Sunday, October 4 gets spooky with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari plus three silent shorts. It’s rated G, so bring whoever you like.

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

🗳️ All-Candidates Meeting: Trillium District  |  Online, advance registration required  |  October 1  |  🔦 Read our story

🤠 Lyle Lovett and His Small Large Band  |  Slush Puppie Place  |  October 1

🎸 The White Buffalo  |  The Spire  |  October 1

💛 United Way Seeing Is Believing Tours  |  Local United Way agencies  |  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  |  🔦 Read our story

🌕 Harvest Moon Celebration With David R. Maracle  |  The Isabel  |  October 2

🎻 The Festival of Small Halls: Ashley MacIsaac  |  The Spire  |  October 2

🎶 An Evening With the Harp  |  Next Church  |  October 2

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

📚 WritersFest Saturday: The Inbetween Leader with Jody Wilson-Raybould and Roshan Danesh, and Familiar Creatures  |  Kingston Marriott  |  October 3  |  🔦 Read our story

🏡 Providence Village Community Open House  |  Providence Village, 1200 Princess St  |  October 3

🐛 Bug Safari  |  Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area  |  October 3

🥁 Build Your Own Beat With Jam for Justice  |  KFPL Central Branch  |  October 3

📖 Family Storytime With Vicki From Kahwá:tsire  |  KFPL Isabel Turner Branch  |  October 3

🔧 Repair It!  |  KFPL Central Branch  |  October 3

🤘 Hells Bells (AC/DC Tribute)  |  Kingston Grand Theatre  |  October 3

🌵 Los Desperados (Eagles Tribute)  |  Kingston Grand Theatre  |  October 3

👟 Willem Sagriff’s 100-Kilometre Challenge for the NICU  |  Point Municipal Park, Sydenham  |  October 3

🥫 OPP Auxiliary Operation Full Plate Food Drive  |  OPP drop-off sites  |  October 3

🖼️ Pay Attention! Exhibition  |  Tett Centre  |  September 22 to October 4  |  🔦 Read our story

🎃 Forman Farms Pumpkin Smashing and Corn Maze  |  Forman Farms, Seeley’s Bay  |  October 3 and 4  |  🔦 Read our story

📚 Kingston WritersFest 2026  |  The Isabel and Kingston Marriott  |  September 30 to October 4  |  🔦 Read our story

🫖 Cha Cha Tea Turns 20  |  Cha Cha Tea and The Secret Garden Inn  |  October 3 and 4

🎨 Kingston Studio Tour  |  Studios across Kingston  |  October 3 and 4

🎞️ Silent Movie Weekend With Live Piano  |  The Screening Room  |  October 3 and 4

📚 WritersFest Sunday: Grease on the Palms With Maude Barlow and Don Gillmor  |  Kingston Marriott  |  October 4  |  🔦 Read our story

🎂 W.J. Henderson Community Centre Turns 50  |  W.J. Henderson Community Centre, Amherstview  |  October 4

☕ Free Coffee at the Solar-Powered Waterfront Café  |  Waterfront Pathway, Lake Ontario Park  |  October 4

👗 Montreal Street Vintage Market, Last of the Year  |  Montreal St and Princess St  |  October 4

🗳️ All-Candidates Meeting: Kingscourt-Rideau District  |  Venue to be confirmed  |  October 5  |  🔦 Read our story

🎸 Bahamas: Industrial Sport and Sound Tour  |  The Spire  |  October 6

🍂 Featuring Fall Guided Walk  |  Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area  |  October 6

🗳️ All-Candidates Meeting: Sydenham District  |  The Spire  |  October 7  |  🔦 Read our story

💃 Svaha!  |  Kingston Grand Theatre  |  October 7

🕵️ Murder at the Golden Gala  |  The Seniors Centre  |  October 7

🪶 The Art of Visiting: National Indigenous Presenters Gathering  |  Wolfe Island and Kingston Grand Theatre  |  October 5 to 8

🎤 We Ain’t Petty and Let’s Go  |  Kingston Grand Theatre  |  October 8

📸 Cataraqui Trail Photo Contest  |  Cataraqui Trail  |  July 8 to October 30  |  🔦 Read our story

🥾 2026 Hike Challenge  |  Cataraqui Conservation Areas  |  September 1 to October 31  |  🔦 Read our story

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