Kingston is a city that’s literally overflowing with churches. That was one thing I noticed that set it apart from other places I’ve lived in. It’s almost as if someone used that Simcity 2000 cheat that causes churches to pop up everywhere in the city, while they were designing Kingston. I’m not sure why they are so abundant here; maybe it has something to do with the age of the city (Kingston is one of the older Canadian cities), or maybe it has to do with a need to balance out the inherent immorality of a large student population. Whatever the reason, I decided to take a few pictures of the many churches that call Kingston their home.

Now I’m not a deeply religious person. I was baptized Christian (Presbyterian) but am not a “practicing” Christian nor do I even attend a church. However, churches are usually interesting buildings and make for good photos.

The first church was St. James Anglican Church.

This church is actually on the Queen’s University campus. It was also a voting or polling station in the recent Canadian Federal Election. Nothing too remarkable, but it’s right across from the building I work in.

Chalmers United Church is about two minutes away, and it’s the only church I’ve seen with plenty of ivy on its sides.

It’s also on its own block, sort of. Because of the weird arrangment of roads, the church is on its own “island”, surrounded by three roads.

The next church, or cathedral was a little further away, requiring a whole three minutes to get there. It is St. Mary’s Cathedral and is probably the tallest place of worship in Kingston, and also probably one of the oldest. It was hard to get a good picture, since the building is so tall and surrounded by other buildings.

I also think it’s some sort of historical site.

Just down the road, is this Baptist church.

Nothing too remarkable, but this is one of about three churches on the same street and within five minutes of each other.

Further down the road is the only Orthodox church I saw.

It’s a quaint little Greek Orthodox church that appears to also have satellite TV.

Nearby is a building that looks like a church, but is actually a theatre.

It’s the Wellington St. Theatre. I’m sure it was a former church though.

Moving off that street, we find the St. Paul’s Anglican Church.

It’s actually more spacious than it looks. Unfortunately with the photo, as with most, power lines mar the picture.

Further down, I found this mysterious building, which looked like a church by wasn’t quite.

It looks like it was a former church, with the doors taken out and bricked in. It’s now part of a larger long-term care facility, and may be its chapel.

Moving along, we run into another United church, this time the Queen’s St. United church.

It’s basically one minute up the street from St. Paul’s Anglican church.

And, one more minute in the opposite direction, you’ll find St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, which was recently restored.

The church features a nice clock on its bell tower.

Finally, a little further away we find yet another United church, the Sydenham St. United church. I guess if you’re a United Christian, you’ll have no shortage of church-going options.

Lastly, we see the grandest church of them all. Okay, it’s only my house. But who’s to say I can’t start my own religion?

Well, that’s it – I hope you enjoyed it. (You can view the entire set of photos at Flickr.) But that’s not all the churches in Kingston; these are only the ones that I was willing to walk to, and most of them are within a mile of each other in an area just to the northeast of the Queen’s University campus. That’s a total of 9 churches all within maybe 10-15 minutes of walking distance of one another.