Seen On The Morning Run – Kingston, Ontario

These pictures were taken last Saturday while I was in Kingston, Ontario, for a wedding. Kingston is a little gem of a city, and has tons of historic interest. The old downtown has wonderful old world limestone buildings, lots of decent restaurants and pubs, and cultural life. Nearby Queens University keeps the place young and vibrant.

Saturday morning a storm was blowing off Lake Ontario but since our hotel was on the waterfront I decided to risk going for a run along the harbour trail. That trail brought me to Murney Tower, one one of the Martello Tower fortifications built in the 1840s. Kingston was a strategic communications point and garrison, both during the War of 1812 and later as it anchored the Rideau Canal being built northwards to Ottawa, so the Crown was anxious to fort up the place in the event of another spat with the United States.

In the picture below, you can see how strong the wind was by looking at the trees to the right of the tower. When I was running into the wind, I was really just walking.

This photo shows a view of the Kingston Harbour and the choppy water. If you squint you can see two more red roofed Martello towers, one on the right at Royal Military College (Canada’s version of Sandhurst or West Point), and one on the left by the inner harbour.

One of the pleasures of running, especially in a new place, is that it allows me to see things I would miss while travelling in a car. As I meandered around, I noticed how the local architecture mimics and echoes the Martello tower shape and theme. The picture below shows a residence building at Queens University. In the bottom right, just above the SUV, you can see an example of what I mean.

Another example of a Martello tower echo in a high-end townhouse complex I ran by along the waterfront.

So this post is a little longer than most of my Seen On The Run posts, but I encourage you to get out, be healthy, and notice things.