Literary

We don’t want anyone actually throwing bricks, but Oscar’s observation is astute – and it also applies to novelists, non-fiction writers, playwrights, and journalists. Kingston is a literary city; it has served as muse and home to many writers, whether passing through, studying, or living here more permanently, for years, decades, lifetimes.

On this tour of downtown Kingston, we’ll introduce you to some of Kingston’s poet laureates and visit some of the locations that have inspired local writers.

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Make your way to 209 Ontario St.

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Poet and novelist Jason Heroux believes in the power of public art – poetry installations, in particular. While he was poet laureate of Kingston from 2019 to 2022, he made it a priority to put poems in places where people could see and read them on their everyday travels, like this one on the old-fashioned red telephone booth.

“Some people see poetry as something that exists only in books, stuck on dusty shelves, and reached for to find quotable toasts for life-changing events like weddings and funerals. But public poetry installations remind us that poetry can be found everywhere, day after day, in parks and streets and market squares,” Heroux told the Kingstonist in 2019. “One of the key benefits to having public poetry installations is that they help change how we see, what we think, and the way we live, by letting the human spirit feel at home in the world.”

During his time as poet laureate, Heroux – who came to Kingston in 1990 to study English at Queen’s – also placed his own poems and other local poets’ work on the boards of a skating rink at McBurney Park, on a billboard in “the Hub” area, on a sidewalk outside City Hall, around a utility pole on Ontario Street, along the rim of the Confederation Basin fountain, and along a walking trail railing in Battery Park.

Look at the front of the phone booth.

Dear Telephone Booth, by Jason Heroux

Dear telephone booth
across the street, I’ll never forget the way you glowed
like a glass

of expired milk no one wanted to drink, how you rang

once late at night
asking to speak.

I remember you
as a wind chime,
some human voice was your gentle distant breeze.

Remind us when
you ring that no one is ever alone, remind us how

our only isn’t all there is, our only isn’t everything.

Heroux was the third poet laureate of Kingston. Prior to his posting, Helen Humphreys held the position, and the inaugural poet laureate was Eric Folsom, a longtime figure of the Kingston literary scene and the author of several books of poetry. The current poet laureate is Sadiqa de Meijer.

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Novel Idea

Walk to the crosswalk just west of the Visitor Centre, crossing the street. Turn right and walk 2 blocks to Princess St. and turn left. Walk 3 blocks north.

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Oscar Malan, owner of Novel Idea, speaks about the shop’s role in the community.

Novel Idea Bookstore has been part of the downtown Kingston literary scene since 1988. As its website says, “Novel Idea carries a captivatingly diverse array of titles and authors.” The store sells new fiction, non-fiction, and poetry books, magazines, and literary journals. The independent bookstore also promotes local authors and showcases books that detail Kingston-area history. It also has a great selection of children’s books. In April 2023, (to celebrate Canadian Independent Bookstore Day), Dundurn Press named Novel Idea as one of Canada’s notable independent bookstores.

Novel Idea has always supported writers in the city: and owners Oscar and Joanna Malan host readings for any writer who asks for one, enabling new connection between author and reader. In turn, the writing and reading community remains loyal to the store. Even during the pandemic, when many businesses struggled, Novel Idea thrived and is doing better than ever. “There is a real vibrancy to downtown Kingston,” says Oscar Malan. “The nature of the street makes it easier – it’s like a natural mall,” he says. Novel Idea has also survived the advent of online stores like Amazon. While life as an independent store owner isn’t always easy, the Malans have adopted this motto for Novel Idea: “Quid, me anxiari?” Latin translation of “What, me worry?” from Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Newman.

Before you go to the next stop, stop in and peruse the “local interest” section of Novel Idea.

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Skeleton Park

Walk 2 blocks north, cross the street and follow Sydenham St. for 2 blocks. Turn left on Ordnance St. and walk 1 block.

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Sadiqa de Meijer performs It’s the Inner Harbour Neighbourhood But Everyone Calls it Skeleton Park from her collection The Outer Wards, 2020.

For nearly two decades, poet and author Sadiqa de Meijer has lived in Kingston, and like many other artists and writers, she has sometimes wished she were living somewhere else – New York City, London, Toronto, Montreal – somewhere bigger, with a larger artistic community. But over time, her ambivalence turned to appreciation, and she began seeing how she could “write the local into being.”

With her young daughter, she began taking notes on their walks through the neighbourhood, through Skeleton Park, just a block from their house. “Observing and taking it all in was an antidote to that uprooted feeling, that ambivalence,” says de Meijer, Kingston’s current Poet Laureate, 2023-2026, and Governor General’s Literary Award-winner for her memoir Alphabet/Alfabet. “I believe in the idea of mythologizing a place to make it real. I think a place needs to exist in stories and art. Someone has to be watching the place and reflect it back to the people that live there.”

de Meijer has done just that with many of her poems and essays. Her poem, “It’s the Inner Harbour Neighbourhood But Everyone Calls it Skeleton Park” from her collection The Outer Wards (2020), is an ode to her home neighbourhood, the people living there, and the small details that envelope their lives.

de Meijer is in fine writerly company in the area around McBurney Park. Part of the neighbourhood has been unofficially named “Writers Block” because of the large concentration of writers living in the area, including Helen Humphreys, and the late Steven Heighton. de Meijer is also a member of local poetry pack The Villanelles, founded by Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang and including Nancy Jo Cullen, Kirsteen Macleod, Y.S. Lee, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Susan Olding (who now lives in western Canada), and Juliane Okot Bitek.

The Skeleton Park Arts Festival (SPAF) is also an important promoter of writers, featuring readings at its annual June event. The festival and its artistic director, Greg Tilson, also produced the film, Who Is Bruce Kauffman?, about local poet Bruce Kauffman. The film, available on the SPAF website, features short films by local filmmakers about the works and lives of several poets in the community, with Kauffman’s work and life threading through the film.

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Hear about Skeleton Park and Kingston’s music scene.

Princess & Clergy

Exit the park to the east at Clergy St. Walk for 2.5 blocks. The plaque is beside a church.

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Carolyn Smart, poet, memoirist, Queen’s University professor, and friend of Bronwen Wallace, reads Mexican Sunsets.

Kingston boasts two Project Bookmark plaques, one at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in honour of Bronwen Wallace and one in Portsmouth Village in honour of Merilyn Simonds. Project Bookmark celebrates Canada’s authors by placing plaques at the exact location where literary scenes are set. Project Bookmark Canada is the only national, site-specific literary exhibit in the world.

Take a moment to read her [Bronwen Wallace] poem “Mexican Sunsets” inspired in part by Kingston’s limestone churches and their stained-glass windows.

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Chez Piggy

Walk to Princess St, crossing the street. Walk south 5 blocks and turn right into Rochleau Court.

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Merilyn Simonds and Wayne Grady reflect on their time spent at Chez Piggy.

But before heading into Rochleau Court, take a look across the street to where Score Pizza is now – this location used to be home to The Sleepless Goat, a beloved café, hangout, and writing space for many authors in the area and those who have moved on – including Michael Casteels (who also runs Puddles of Sky Press), Bruce Kauffman, Ned Dickens, Wanda Praamsma, and Nasser Hussain.

Merilyn Simonds came to Kingston in 1987 to write for Harrowsmith magazine, based out of Camden East north of Kingston and a bastion for the “new journalism” – long-form non-fiction that allowed reporters to immerse themselves in their stories and use literary techniques to tell those stories. Wayne Grady had already been editing the magazine for several years when they met. Moving between non-fiction and fiction, the two prolific writers have each published numerous award-winning books, and co-wrote a travel memoir together.

For the pair, and many other writers, Chez Piggy – run by musician and arts advocate Zal Yanovsky – was their hangout of choice in the early ’90s. It was also where Simonds and Grady married in 1995.

“There was a real dynamism here in the city. On Friday afternoons, writers would meet at The Pig and we’d have our salon – Steve (Heighton), Diane (Schoemperlen), Helen (Humphreys), me, Wayne (Grady), Matt (Cohen) if he was in town,” Simonds explains, with Grady adding that they would host their own salons at their home on Patrick Street, with dozens of writers and friends gathering for impromptu readings.

“I personally really believe in community, and that’s a large part of why I started the festival (Kingston WritersFest). It’s fine to write but there is that saying, ‘a book isn’t finished until it’s read’ – there’s that interaction between writer and reader, and it’s also writer to writer to writer. We had great discussions. It’s a quiet lonely life living inside your head all the time, writing books. You can’t just feed off your own experience, you also have to live,” Simonds says.

“You have to live – and write about other people’s experiences,” adds Grady, laughing, alluding to the many relationships between writers in the ’90s Kingston scene.

“The Pig” also found its way into the writing itself. Diane Schoemperlen sets one of the stories in The Man of my Dreams on the patio of this famous Kingston eatery, which she renames:

“The Red Herring, on the other hand, is a classy place, and having a drink or even two or three there in the afternoon, especially on a Friday, is an acceptable thing for a real writer, even a female one, to do. I imagined that as I sat there sipping, my writer’s block would be hanging off me with a certain attractive, highly intelligent sheen . . .. The only empty table was one to the right just beneath the magnolia tree. Our table was occupied by four cheerful young women in straw hats and lacy sundresses. They were eating elaborate salads and toasting the glorious day with Perrier and lime. I had no reason to resent, dislike, or envy them, but I did anyway.”

Schoemperlen’s short story collection The Man of My Dreams was shortlisted for both the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Trillium Book Award in 1990.

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Hear about Chez Piggy and Kingston’s music scene.

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British Whig Building

Return to Princess St. Turn right and walk to King St. East, turn right and walk 2 blocks to Clarence St.

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Printed Passages author reading poster. Courtesy of Queen’s Archives.

In spring 1980, journalist Larry Scanlan took the train eastward to Ontario from British Columbia, where he had been working at The Nelson Daily News. He got off the train in Kingston and headed downtown to The Kingston Whig-Standard, then housed here, in the heritage British Whig Building overlooking Market Square.

“Editor Neil Reynolds immediately gave me a job as a copy editor, and within six months I became the paper’s literary editor,” says Scanlan, who stayed at The Whig until 1988. “This was the golden era for newspapers and magazines, and it was fabulous. The books section I edited ranked as the very best in the country.”

While literary editor, Scanlan was at the forefront of Kingston’s literary scene, and witnessed and welcomed many of the top national and international writers to the area for events, including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, David Adams Richards, and Ruth Rendell. He also provided much-needed work for local authors at The Whig, and over the years many wrote for the paper (Joanne Page, Bronwen Wallace, Merilyn Simonds, Wayne Grady, Maureen Garvie, Jamie Swift, among them).

Scanlan left The Whig to write for and edit Harrowsmith magazine (and he lived in Camden East, where the magazine was based, for 18 years) before turning his pen toward writing his own books (Big Ben, Wild About Horses, A Year of Living Generously, and many others), and ghostwriting for public figures (he co-wrote Margaret Trudeau’s memoir, Changing My Mind, a national bestseller).

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Crawford Wharf

Walk east along King St. E to Princess St. Turn right and walk 2 blocks south. Walk past The Merchant and turn right onto the path. Follow it to the wharf.

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Merilyn Simonds, Barbara Bell, and Aara Macauley speak about Kingston WritersFest.

We end the tour here looking out at the Wolfe Island Ferry near Holiday Inn, where many writers and readers have gathered over the years. In the 1990s, when readings at Printed Passage Books on Princess Street became too large for the bookstore, organizers moved the readings into larger conference rooms at the Holiday Inn. Later, when WritersFest began in 2006, the hotel was the perfect venue to host the multi-day event.

“I was certain there was a reading public here in Kingston, because of those earlier events,” says Merilyn Simonds, founder and first artistic director of the festival.

The festival steadily blossomed and now welcomes an audience of more than 6,000 to more than 50 events, which bring about 70 local, national, and international authors to Kingston in September each year. The festival celebrated its 15th anniversary in 2023. Programming includes not only readings and Q&As with authors, but also writing workshops and retreats, panel discussions and off-season special events.

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The city of Kingston, in all its guises, beauties, and imperfections, has been a place where poets and writers, whether temporary or long-term, have struggled and succeeded over many generations in getting words onto the blank page.

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