Smoke on the Waterfront - My New Book!

When my Dad and my siblings posed so placidly on CPR 1095 in August of Canada's Centennial year, a vacation trip to Kingston was something novel. This 1913 product of Kingston's own Canadian Locomotive Company rose from the erecting shop floor a mere few hundred feet to the west of the stuffed-and-mounted montage it presented to these pre-teen poseurs (top photo by Marjorie Gagnon, slide scanned by David J. Gagnon). 

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Our feet were firmly planted in two worlds: one Tennyson, the other Ten-wheeler. Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved Earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. Books were all around us. When our home moved from Montreal to Kingston, trips to Montreal were now the vacation trips. My train-watching here was decidedly main line. The east side of town, the gritty parts of this new city, the fading factories and withering waterfront escaped my attention. Until now.

Spruced-up if not steamed-up. I have progressed providentiality into adulthood 53 years after that top photo. I can still pose with 'The Spirit of John A', while those commemorative hand-painted letters still grace her tender flanks. Refurbished by the city, she remains, made weak by time and fate, but with a seemingly strong will to survive, I now pose near her pilot for my wife, now the photographer. I have transformed treasured archival photos and turns of text into my seventh book: Smoke on the Waterfront - The Trains, Ships and Industries of Kingston Harbour:

Conceived as modelling research, she has been birthed as a deep dive into the story of the berths, smoke-belching beasts and fire-breathing forges that led two miles from Kingston's kiss of Lake Ontario to the mainlines. You can find more information on this limestone-laced literary launch here:

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