Today I delivered the SWIHHP archives to the Queen’s University Archives for safekeeping and for sharing. The collection includes interviews with 81 people — current…
Thanks to funding from a City of Kingston Heritage Fund Project Grant, SWIHHP is delighted to announce a new online resource on stoneskingston.ca based on…
For 24 years I’ve lived within sight of Lorraine Snider’s house and garden. It’s a little old white house perched on a cliff near the…
You can learn a lot from shadows. You can learn the shapes of things you can’t see — including yourself. Sometimes we overemphasize shadows’ propensity…
The post-Mike-Harris municipality of Kingston is an amalgamation of various formerly independent towns and villages — Portsmouth, Barriefield, and Glenburnie among them. It also includes…
What’s new and happening today — planting gardens, organic food, chickens in the back yard — that’s what we did! Our whole back yard was…
The photo exhibit Facing the Street, featured on the streets of the Swamp Ward and in the Elm Cafe for one month this summer, was…
Take a look at this photograph. What do you see? When Chris Miner — my co-curator for the Facing the Street exhibition — first encountered…
SWIHHP is delighted to have a guest blog post this month from Joan McCulloch, telling the story of her grandmother’s arrival in Kingston in 1913.…
Fernando Monte and Bill Cassidy both live on Raglan Road. Both were raised Catholic, found fulfillment in the arts — and they are exactly the…
Twenty of the Facing the Street photos are on the streets at these locations until June 30. See one, or see them all. Twenty four…
I’ve been busily working away with Chris Miner, my co-curator, Anne Lougheed, production manager, and Vince Perez, designer, to get this fabulous show together. Let…
When I first started interviewing people in the Swamp Ward, I was a bit perplexed by all the bootlegging I heard about. To me, bootlegging…
Ella Mackay Singh worked with SWIHHP this summer on a fellowship through Queen’s. She did some fascinating thinking about what happens when we move words…
Our sixth podcast starts with an account of an explosive City Council meeting on August 31, 1970. Even the Whig-Standard stood up and took notice: On…
I hope you enjoyed the Bennett’s podcast episode. You might also appreciate the brief post I wrote to celebrate a photo shared with me by…
At the Oral History Association conference in Minneapolis last week, I was lucky to hear Staughton and Alice Lynd talk about their long career as…
As the Inner Harbour is the heart of the Swamp Ward, I’ve published quite a bit about it already: check out particularly the post about…
The many small businesses of the Swamp Ward were a constant theme in our research and so have featured several times in our blog previously.…
At long last, the Stories of the Swamp Ward podcast series is almost ready to release. These half-hour windows into our oral history collections will…
July 28th, 2017 7:30am My alarm goes off and I check the weather network. The first time I met Stan, he agreed to go on…
You might be here because you already heard this podcast episode, but if not, here it is! I’m not sure when I first heard the…
You’ve all seen this word around a lot, right? There’s the creek, the river, the conservation area, the dental clinic, the golf club, the cemetery,…
I’m Ella Mackay Singh, a Queen’s student, and I’m thrilled to be working with SWIHHP this summer! Part of what drew to this project was…
Some demolished buildings are missed for their elegant architecture, but that isn’t likely to be the case with Bird’s Grocery. 462 Bagot Street was an odd…
“My dad always had a joke, or a smile on his face waiting for somebody to make a joke,” Rosalyn Routbard remembers. In the 40s…
On one of those horribly hot and sticky days in July, a group of 15 people gathered at 99 York Street to learn how to…
Growing up on Stephen and then Bagot Streets, the five Wallace sisters — Helen, Elsie, Jean, Isobel, and Betty — got a stylish start in life. Their…
Few of us have had our new hockey skates handed to us by an NHL coach. Garry Lavallee, though, is the rare exception. And not…
Alma Street, all one block of it, runs along the west side of McBurney Park, which was once the Upper Burial Grounds. The park is…
For the last couple months I have been in the Queen’s Archives, going through city directories and doing general research on streets around Skeleton Park…
SWIHHP is participating in the Skeleton Park Arts Festival this weekend. Come to Side Stage #3 at Alma and Balaclava Streets on Sunday June 26…
Ronen and I have been poring over some more city directories lately, looking at who lived where, what they did for a living, who they…
SWIHHP is lucky to have two new team members this summer. You may meet them soon out and about on the job — and there…
Sometimes maps and pictures aren’t enough to make history come alive: you have to experience and imagine it in the place it actually happened. SWIHHP…
We are excited to invite you to the launch of the app-based walking tour “Life and Labour in the Inner Harbour,” and our Second Summer…
Do you have a deep appreciation for the human voice and how people remember and talk about their lives? Do you have the technical chops…
Qualified candidates are encouraged to apply for this position! Hiring: Oral History Coordinator Swamp Ward and Inner Harbour History Project (SWIHHP) Terms of Work -Approximately…
In case you’re wondering: here’s a bit of a progress report! Today I had the pleasure of accompanying Mary Farrar and Elizabeth Durno (Friends of…
I was very sorry today to hear of the death of Claude Clement, my cherished neighbour, a role model for community engagement, my very first…
Earlier tonight, as the geese flew south and a banjo played over by the LCBO, a group of SWIHHP mailing list members examined the foundations…
This blog has been silent for the past month but not for lack of activity at SWIHHP! The highlight of September was Bronwyn Jaques’ walking…
Who would have thought reading phone books could be a fun thing to do? But the Might’s City Directories, published until the early 2000s, are…
In early July, I had the pleasure of interviewing John Duerkop for SWIHHP. Although he was not born in Kingston and only came to call this…
It’s interesting to know the past lives of buildings we take for granted. Last week, I picked a few Montreal Street addresses that I had…
To enrich the stories of work and war, I have decided I’d like to hear love stories from the Swamp Ward. I usually try to…
As Kingston is still home to a military base, it is probably no surprise that the city contributed greatly to Canada’s World War II efforts.…
The recent death of Flora Macdonald, Kingston MP from 1972 to 1988, reminded me to listen again to our fascinating interview in June with Pat…
Last evening, lovely as it was, Lauren, Nancy, and Laura did our first street swihhp. The idea is to visit people at their homes, tell…
What a fun photo! This is the wedding party of Joan Evans and Ron North in May 1957. The photographer would have been standing on…
Lauren and I had good fortune a couple of weeks ago to visit to Bob Fray’s sign-painting shop on Division Street. Bob’s father started Kingston…
Lorraine (Burns) Good was born in Hotel Dieu Hospital in 1926 and grew up on Rideau Street and Raglan Road. Her mother, Lorida Laurin, moved…
I’ve been a student at Queen’s University for 5 years and you would think, by now, I would know the ins and outs of campus and…
A couple of weeks ago, I visited the Frontenac County Schools Museum in Barriefield with hopes of finding information on the history of the schools…
We are pleased to welcome you to the website of the Swamp Ward and Inner Harbour History Project. The acronym for that is SWIHHP, and…
Last week, I walked through Kingston’s Inner Harbour and along the shoreline of the Cataraqui River. I tried to imagine the Inner Harbour at its…
As part of the Jane’s Walks that honour Jane Jacobs and her vision of a walkable city, I led a tour of Bagot Street from…