travel dates: June, 2025
Ah, Kingston! Birthplace of famed Canadian rock band, The Tragically Hip. Here, unnecessarily, are my three favorite Tragically Hip songs: Wheat Kings, Bobcaygeon, Poets. These are actually perhaps the only Tragically Hip songs I can even name. I’ve spent a fair amount of time trying to get more into the band, and I’m often surprised this hasn’t been more successful, because I really like those three songs. I note that two of the three songs are from Phantom Power, which leads me to another unnecessary tangent: the summer I moved to Boston, right before I started grad school, I worked for a couple of months at the Record Town in a mall north of the city. Phantom Power is one of a handful of freebie CDs I picked up during that stint, so perhaps those songs are benefitting from some long term residence in my brain, or sense of nostalgia for my brief retail career, or…something. And I believe I’ve already mentioned how every folk duo who plays a gig in Newfoundland is contractually required to play Wheat Kings. Anyway…if anyone wants to recommend a “get more into the Tragically Hip” playlist for someone with those three favorite songs, feel free!
Where was I? Right! Kingston! Which we really liked!
This post isn’t going to talk more about The Tragically Hip, but I did just find this fun post about how one could make their Kingston visit much more Hip-themed than we did.
Where we stayed
Kingston is about 160 miles east of Toronto; it overlooks the water, where the St. Lawrence river meets Lake Ontario…which means it’s both a great city to visit in itself and a solid base for exploring the Thousand Islands region. We wanted to do some of each and didn’t want to switch campgrounds, so we decided to focus on campgrounds close to the city. This pretty much narrowed things down to the 1000 Islands/Kingston KOA or Rideau Acres Campground and, honestly, Rideau Acres won out mostly because it was cheaper. Both are well-reviewed and both are about a 15 minute drive to downtown Kingston (Rideau Acres is on the east side of the city, so a little better positioned for exploring the 1000 Islands), so you’ll likely be happy with either option.
Rideau Acres is a big, sprawling campground on the water. It’s largely seasonal campers there, but the section we were in was set aside for transients. We had a pretty spacious pull-through site, gravel pad, full hookups and 30 amps. 
There are a good many amenities here: a small store, pool, mini-golf, disc golf…plus lots of walking trails and an oddly giant building that they rent out for events. There was a band playing there one night while we were there, with a heavy emphasis on American country music (we were hanging out outside for awhile and caught a Georgia Satellites cover at one point, which is a fairly deep cut). Speaking of the event space, this is one of the only areas with wifi in the campground; we tried to sit at a table outside and use it one evening, but the mosquitos chased us away pretty quickly.
We were similarly plagued by bugs when we walked one trail along the water, but we had better luck with the Lookout Mountain trail that led up to a lovely viewpoint:
My notes also want me to tell you that there are loud, frequent trains…although I would imagine how loud the trains are depends on where you are in the campground.
What we did
There are a surprising number of tourist-y things to do in Kingston, and we didn’t get to nearly all of them. We set aside one day to head over to the 1000 Islands area and back across the border to see Boldt Castle, which I’m going to talk about in a separate post. We skipped a number of things in Kingston because they were pretty expensive, and I have some regrets about that. In retrospect I probably would have splurged more and also added another day to our stay here (we were in Kingston for 4 nights; we would have picked another day here over 2 nights in Upper Canada Village–more on that later). We also considered buying a “K-pass” that gives access to a bunch of attractions for one price. We ended up deciding against it largely because we weren’t super interested in the boat tour that makes up a lot of the cost. Anyway, though, looking back, we did do quite a bit in Kingston, even though we ended up skipping some of the big sites.
Our first evening we drove downtown to the waterfront are and ate at Kingston Brewing Company. This was a lively place in a cool old building, with good beers and pub food. It was crowded (on a Wednesday evening in late June), and we had to wait for about 20 minutes for a table…they use the fun Canadian method where they don’t take your name; the hostess just tells you you can wait at the bar and she’ll let you know when a table opens up and you have to trust that she will indeed remember about you and remember what order people showed up in. At any rate, it all worked out–we got to eat!
After dinner, we walked around the waterfront area for awhile, complete with an ice cream stop. This is a really charming part of the town, and I recommend some wandering there at some point during your Kingston visit:
On our first full day, we went to Fort Henry. We love forts! Fort Henry was built in the 1830s to replace a War of 1812 era fortification. British soldiers were garrisoned there until 1870, and it opened as a museum in 1938 after an extensive restoration. Today it gives visitors a look into 19th century military life, complete with historical re-enactors and an elaborate daily (in season) garrison parade with music.
When we bought tickets, we learned that our admission included either a second day or admission to Upper Canada Village (something that wasn’t clear on the website). Upper Canada Village was our next stop, so this worked out really well for us and was a nice surprise. I have no idea if they offer the same deal every year or not, though, so YMMV. Either way, the admission cost seemed like a bargain for how much there is to see and how much scheduled programming they offer.
You can walk around on your own as much as you want, but I highly recommend doing one of the guided tours and seeing some of the scheduled talks. We watched one about rifle firing and another about music to start off, and these were a little wordy for Abe’s tastes (and it didn’t help that we were sitting in the hot sun on bleachers):
But the 50 minute guided tour was super engaging, with a tour guide who stayed in character as a 19th century soldier (they offer these tours frequently in French and English, and there are different characters who do them, so you’d get a different perspective with every tour). I’d do this tour early on the day, as it’s an excellent overview.
After the tour, we spent a good bit of time wandering on our own. There’s a system of tunnels under the fort which were very creepy and cool:
We went up top for views and cannons:
There are fairly extensive and well-done museum exhibits, too:
We noted as far back as our 2018 Nova Scotia trip that they know a lot more about the War of 1812 in Canada than we do in the US (where we’re mostly just told it was a tie and that Dolly Madison saved George Washington’s portrait before the White House was burned….if it gets mentioned at all, sandwiched in between the Revolution and the Civil War)…that focus is really ramped up when you’re visiting historic sites right across the water from the US, where the fear of invasion hung over everything pretty much up until the Civil War. Hence the fort (and it’s not lost on me that this is an…interesting (and embarrassing, as an American who’s not like that) time to be writing about Canadian fears of a US invasion).
And then Abe went to school for a bit, with the very strict (and, again, strictly in character) schoolteacher. There was much giggling because she kept telling all the croc-wearing kids that they needed to have their parents fix the holes in their boots.
Then it was parade time! This went on for a very long time. There was period music on period instruments. And much marching.
On our way out we came across a “kid’s muster” program, which looked really fun, but which Abe refused to participate in. He watched appreciatively, though:
Our last day in Kingston had rain on and off all day, so we opted for indoor activities. In the morning we went to the Great Lakes Museum …the big attraction at the Great Lakes Museum these days is the SS Keewatin, an Edwardian-era steamship that is now permanently docked next to the museum and available for tours. This is one of the things we were on the fence about because of the cost. If I remember right, what eventually happened was that we decided we would go ahead and spend the money (around $40 CAD/person) for the tour…only to find out they were all sold out for the today. The other big ticket tour we considered and also found sold out by the time we made up our minds was the Kingston Pen. So if you’re interested in those things, plan ahead!
With steamship touring unavailable to us, we turned our attention to Shipwrights, an escape room type game that takes you all over the museum solving puzzles. Right now the website says Shipwrights is closed for renovation, which does not surprise me. The game was well-done and fun, but clearly a little neglected and some of the puzzles didn’t work as they were supposed to. It was a less expensive experience than touring the Keewatin, but still kinda pricy at around $17 CAD a person. You can also, of course, just tour the museum itself without any games, but, honestly, the exhibits are a little sparse.
The woman working at the front desk set us up with the kits to do the escape game, but she seemed like she wasn’t really used to people asking about it. And this impression was confirmed when our first clue was tucked away behind the table where they were checking people in for Keewatin tours. The guy working there apologized and explained that hardly anyone ever does the escape room. Heh. When we eventually got the answer we were looking for, the woman at the front desk had to go find someone who knew something about the game to tell us whether we were right (we were!). So, anyway, I think Shipwrights is fun and a great addition to the museum, and I’m glad that it sounds like they’re giving it a little TLC to restore it to its former glory.
At this point, with all the expensive tours in town sold out for the day, we turned our attention toward…a historic home where Canada’s first prime minister once briefly lived. The Bellevue House National Historic Site details the “complex legacy” of John A. MacDonald, while also giving a glimpse into life in 1840s era Kingston. It was, perhaps, bit of a Canadian history deep cut for us Americans, but I’m not good at passing up historic sites. John A. MacDonald was prime minister right after confederation, serving from 1867-1873 and again from 1878 until his death in 1891. No one seems quite sure what to do with him these days, though, owing to the aforementioned complex legacy. Like, he was definitely an important figure in Canada’s early development as a nation, but Wikipedia tells me that historian Jack Daschuk says of him, “He built the country. But he built the country on the backs of the Indigenous people.” The residential school system where they separated Indigenous kids from their families, often resulting in all sorts of mistreatment and abuse? Yeah, he’s one of the guys who started that. Along with a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t make him seem like a terrific guy.
This is where I must reveal that I seem to have accidentally deleted all my photos from Bellevue House. This hasn’t happened to me in a long time! But I just looked all over and couldn’t find them, so. At any rate, there is a small visitors center and museum and then you can do a self-guided tour of the house. The first floor is all about life in Kingston in the 1840s, with details about MacDonald’s pretty sad family life (his first son died suddenly when he was a toddler, I believe, and then his wife died after years of struggling with illnesses, leaving him and his young second son alone). The upstairs is mostly devoted to exhibits about all the people MacDonald treated poorly.
And on that cheery, photo-less note, our time in Kingston came to an end! Except I still have to go back in time and talk about Boldt Castle!
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