National Archives of Canada #PA-164326.
Photographer: Frederic Hathaway Peters.
The first few women to practise medicine in Canada served as an inspiration to many other women. Dr. Jennie Trout, practising in Toronto, inspired Elizabeth Smith, of Winona, Ontario, to follow in her footsteps. Smith, the only daughter of well-off parents, was encouraged at every turn by her family. It was on her behalf that the rector of the Hamilton Institute petitioned the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Kingston in 1877 to admit women to medical school.
This led the college to institute a summer course for women wishing to study medicine in Kingston. Although several women contacted Smith regarding the opportunity to study medicine, only four, including Smith, could raise the funds needed to enter the first session in April 1880.
This first freshman class endeared themselves, not only to their professors, some of whom stayed on through their scheduled holidays to give lectures, but also to the townspeople, who were fascinated by them.
The following year the segregated summer course was scrapped in favour of co-ed classes, and, in October 1881, the women began attending regular classes with their male counterparts at the college. The male medical students were courteous and supportive throughout that first year. However, with the graduation of the senior class, all that changed.
The majority of the remaining students, aided and abetted by a few of the junior staff, harassed the women unmercifully throughout the semester. By the beginning of December 1882, things came to a head. The female students walked out in the middle of a Physiology lecture. During the next ten days, the male students refused to attend lectures, and resolutions flew back and forth between them and the faculty. Finally, a deal was struck which allowed the female students to finish out the year. After the segregated classes resumed, it was decided to establish a separate medical school for women.
This solution was enthusiastically adopted by students, faculty, and townsfolk alike, and in June 1883, work frantically began to find faculty, funds, and facilities in time for the proposed entering class to begin in October. The city of Kingston promptly donated several rooms in City Hall, including Ontario Hall, for the new facility. All was ready on the appointed day for the eleven students of the new college.
Although supported wholeheartedly, the college could not compete with rival schools in Toronto and Montreal. Faced with declining enrollment after a decade of valiant effort, the college was dissolved in September 1899 (Travill, 1982).
First telephone cable being laid, 1881.
Queen’s University Archives #PG-K 163-16. Rob Buttle collection.
Princess Street looking west from Wellington, c. 1890s.
Queen’s University Archives #PG-K 128-1.
Photographer: Henry Henderson.
The citizens of Kingston have always had access to a fine variety of entertainment in their city. The fact that it was a garrison town, drawing a steady stream of soldiers from all over the British Empire, meant the community had no lack of talent within its confines. However, the consensus by the mid-1870s was that the best in live entertainment was bypassing Kingston in favour of other communities in the region. The blame for this was put squarely on the fact that existing facilities, namely those at City Hall and the Victoria Music Hall, were too small to accommodate the better acts which were touring North America at the time.
In March 1878, after several years of false starts and abandoned plans by various groups in the city, W.C. Martin proposed the building of an Opera House. Construction began in September, and was completed in time for the grand opening on January 6, 1879. Unfortunately, the premiere was marred by poor scene changes, no artificial lighting, and insufficient heat. Despite this inauspicious start, the Opera House continued to draw crowds with the top-notch performances it attracted, until a fire, sparked by unknown causes, razed the building in December 1898 (Waldhauer, 1979).
Princess Street looking east from the Opera House portico, c. 1890s.
Queen’s University Archives #PG-K 128-22.
Sir John A. Macdonald’s coffin, 1891.
Queen’s University Archives #PG-K 152-10A.
City Hall draped for the death of Queen Victoria, January 1901.
Queen’s University Archives #PG-K 151-2.
Ice factory.
Queen’s University Archives #PG-K 163-1 A.
John Alexander Macdonald was born January 11, 1815, in Glasgow, Scotland. He immigrated to Kingston five years later, where he passed the bar at age 21. He practised law in Kingston for many years, and was involved in a wide range of duties in town, both legal and otherwise, throughout his life.
Macdonald was first elected as the Conservative member for Kingston in 1844, four years after Union was declared. Thirteen years later he formed a coalition government with Sir George-Etienne Cartier. When George Brown, leader of the Opposition, threw his support behind the government’s proposal for Confederation in 1864, Macdonald invited the leaders of the other North American provinces independent of the United States to join him at Charlottetown for negotiations. Once the British North America Act was passed in 1867, the Dominion of Canada became a reality, and Macdonald became Canada’s first prime minister.
Macdonald was knighted for his efforts and, under his leadership over the next four years, the four original provinces were joined by Manitoba, British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island. Although Macdonald’s administration was rocked by scandal soon after, forcing him to resign, he returned to power in 1878, and continued as prime minister until his death in Ottawa on June 6, 1891 (The New Encyclopaedia Britannica).
Cutting ice on the bay, 1894.
Queen’s University Archives #PG-K 163-4. Mrs. de L’Panet collection.
John Palmer Litchfield was a reporter whose time masquerading as a doctor landed him in an Australian debtors’ prison in the early 1800s. Upon leaving prison, Litchfield set sail for Canada, where he met John A. Macdonald. In 1854, Litchfield leased Rockwood Villa, built by George Browne for John Solomon Cartwright on his estate outside Kingston. By using Macdonald’s name, and the skills he had learned to pose as a doctor in Australia, Litchfield was also able to obtain a licence to operate an asylum for Kingston’s elite.
Litchfield then campaigned long and loud for the government to establish a public asylum at Kingston, thus treating the elite separately from the criminals with whom they were currently housed in the penitentiary. In the fall of 1856, the government acquiesced. However, the actual construction was delayed by three more years. In the interim, the Villa’s stables were refurbished to shelter twenty-four female inmates who transferred from the penitentiary. The stables continued to house female inmates until 1868.
Although the new asylum was built, using local limestone, by convict labour, supposedly providing a considerable savings over contracting out the work, the government complained continually