Photo: DXR (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walking tour of Kingston, about seven kilometres on city streets from Fort Frontenac through downtown and west along the lakeshore to Portsmouth. It starts at Fort Frontenac, established in 1673 as a French trading post on the place once known as Katarokwi, rebuilt in masonry by La Salle in 1675 and captured by the British in 1758. Across Ontario Street from City Hall, completed in 1844 after the fire of 1840 and built when Kingston was briefly capital of the Province of Canada, lies Confederation Park, made in 1967; offshore stands the Shoal Tower of 1846–1847. The walk passes St. George's Cathedral, the 1890 Pump House of the Kingston Dry Dock at the Marine Museum, and the Celtic Cross in An Gorta Mor Park for the more than 1,400 Irish immigrants who died of typhus in 1847 and 1848. Inland it takes in Murney Tower of 1846, the Frontenac County Court House, the Cathedral of Saint Mary and Grant Hall at Queen's University. West along the lakeshore come Bellevue House, home of John A. Macdonald and his family in 1848–1849, the former Prison for Women, Canada's Penitentiary Museum in the warden's residence, Kingston Penitentiary, opened in 1835 and closed in 2013, and the Portsmouth Olympic Harbour of the 1976 Games.
16 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 116 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 25 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Fort Frontenac, Confederation Park, Shoal Tower, Kingston City Hall, St. George's Cathedral, Kingston Dry Dock and the Marine Museum, An Gorta Mor Park.
Murney Tower, Frontenac County Court House, Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception, Queen's University Grant Hall.
Bellevue House, Former Prison for Women, Canada's Penitentiary Museum, Kingston Penitentiary, Portsmouth Olympic Harbour.
The French post of 1673 where the Cataraqui meets Lake Ontario, rebuilt in limestone by La Salle in 1675, with its northwest bastion partly reconstructed.
A circular limestone tower of 1846–1847 standing in the harbour itself, its foundation laid from a coffer-dam built on the winter ice.
George Browne's Neoclassical limestone hall, completed in 1844 after the fire of 1840, with its Tuscan portico and dome facing the waterfront.
The 1846 tower on Murray Point, built for an officer and 24 men and run as a museum by the Kingston Historical Society since 1925.
The Picturesque Italianate villa of about 1840–1841 where John A. Macdonald and his family lived in 1848–1849.
Opened in 1835 and built largely by its inmates in local limestone, its Auburn-style plan became a model for federal prisons; it closed in 2013.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 16 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 16 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Kingston — the Limestone City, from City Hall to the Penitentiary, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
16 narration points, including Fort Frontenac, Confederation Park, Shoal Tower, Kingston City Hall and St. George's Cathedral. That is about 30 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~3 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 16 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.