The first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, and his wife Elizabeth had a rare partnership. He was a visionary whose reach sometimes exceeded his grasp, and she was a true child of the Enlightenment. This presentation tells how they met and married and how they worked together during their five years in Upper Canada. He established the Parliamentary system of government in the province and struggled to abolish slavery in Upper Canada. She left us in her book Mrs. Simcoe's Diary and in her hundreds of painting an unsurpassed record of what life was like in late 18th century Upper Canada.

It all began with the beaver. The City of Kingston owes its existence to the beaver. If it were not for the beaver, Fort Frontenac would never have been built. And if Fort Frontenac had not been built, there would have been no settlement at Cataraqui.

It was competition for the fur trade that led to the construction of Fort Frontenac To block competition from the English, France needed to establish forts that would serve as trading posts in locations much closer at hand than English trading posts such as Albany to the south and Hudson Bay to the north.

Rene-Robert Cavelier de LaSalle chose the site where Fort Frontenac would be built. Count Frontenac, Governor of New France, built the first wooden fort. But it was LaSalle who in 1675 rebuilt the little wooden fort into a real fortress, which for the rest of his life he used as home base for his expeditions of discovery.

This presentation follows the fortunes of Fort Frontenac. How it was knocked down, rebuilt, abandoned, rebuilt, blown up, rebuilt again, destroyed by the British in the last days of New France, and finally became the site for the Loyalist settlement at Cataraqui following the American Revolution. Today, buried under streets and buildings, there is little of the historic old fort to be seen. This presentation digs up three hundred years of history.

Black History is no longer ignored, as it regrettably was in past years. Today we acknowledge that some of our ancestors were slave owners. Slaves were property, and as such could be bought or sold. In New France, both Africans and Aboriginal people were held in slavery. At first, the majority of slaves in New France were indigenous people. They themselves practised slavery—it was part of their culture. When the British conquered New France, the Articles of Capitulation signed at Montreal on 8 September 1760 included a specific clause made clear that slavery was legal under British rule. This presentation records the history of slavery in Canada. It focuses upon the efforts of Upper Canada's first lieutenant governor John Graves Simcoe to bring an end to slavery in this province. It includes historical figures, such as Black Barney of The Queen's Rangers, Chloe Cooley, Senegal-born Richard Pierpont of Butler's Rangers, and Colonel John Butler himself. As an "afterward" the presentation takes note the efforts of the Canadian Anti-Slavery Society to assist fugitive slaves escaping from the United States up to the time of the American Civil War.

The first Loyalists to arrive in what is now Canada were too concerned with survival to worry about schools for their children. Some parents had the skills to pass on the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic. But not all. While some were highly educated, others were illiterate. What kind of education was available for the first generation of Loyalists' children?

This presentation covers the years 1784 to 1810. It moves from east to west: Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Lower Canada and Upper Canada. What surprising difference there were!

This presentation is not preoccupied with the tortuous course of government legislation establishing and regulating schools. Rather, the emphasis is on people—the wealthy who wanted excellent schools for their offspring, the ordinary people who valued a basic education, and the schoolteachers themselves, an assortment of men — most were men — some learned and some barely literate. You will learn about curriculum as well, for in those days it was sometimes more than the "Three R's.")