What I Wish I Knew Before Spending a Summer in Kingston

No one tells you that summer in Kingston doesn’t arrive in the usual way. It doesn’t crash in like a parade of sunshine and plans and swimsuit-lined urgency the way it might in a bigger city. It slips in slowly, like the tides on the edges of Breakwater Park in the morning - deliberate, yet delicate.

One moment you’re walking home from your last exam with tired eyes and crumpled notes in your backpack, and the next, the streets are quieter, the campus barer, and you’re still here. It is in this sudden stillness that you begin to understand summer in Kingston is not just another season of the year but has the potential to be your new unfolding chapter.   

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If you are staying here this summer, by choice or by fate, I want to tell you what I wish someone had told me. Not the logistical things - though, yes, the market runs Saturdays and Sundays, and yes, CoGro stays open (thank goodness) - but the truths that lie beneath the surface.

The ones that don’t make it into orientation handbooks or campus emails. The ones that only rise to meet you when the days grow long and unstructured, when the noise of the semester has faded, and the only person you wake up to, day after sun-drenched day, is... well, yourself. 

1. You will feel both free and lonely. That’s normal. 

Freedom is intoxicating until it starts to ache. Until the days blur, until time no longer tethers you, until your friends scatter to cities that sparkle and your world shrinks to the square footage of your apartment and the radius of your daily walk. I wish someone had told me that this is the part where growth happens. That the loneliness is not a punishment, but an invitation. Because in the absence of noise, whether it be academic, social, or digital, you begin to hear things.

Your own voice, for one. Your desires, not the ones shaped by professors or group chats, but the quieter ones that rise up in the stillness, such as: “I want to sleep well. I want to take care of my body. I want to feel whole. I want to write again.”

Give yourself permission to befriend that voice. To tend to it like a garden. Go on solo coffee dates and read poetry by the lake. Watch the sunset without recording it. Let yourself be a little bored. Because boredom, stripped of guilt, becomes spacious. And within that space, you might just remember how to dream.  

2. Student life doesn’t stop. It just looks different.  

There’s a misconception that once the semester ends, everything shuts down. The truth is, the heartbeat of Queen’s keeps pulsing. It’s in the soft whir of fans in the ARC, it’s in the quiet hum of the library, where someone always seems to be curled up in a corner, and it’s in the work we do at Health Promotion and Student Wellness Services, which continues long after the last exam is written.

Student life shifts into a lower gear, one more aligned with the pace of summer. This is a time to care for yourself not because of academic pressure, but because you deserve it. Because wellness isn’t seasonal, and your mental health matters just as much on a sunny day as it does in the depths of November. 

3. Kingston’s charm is subtle. Learn to look. 

This city doesn’t flash neon or beg for your attention. It offers itself slowly, like a friend who only tells you their secrets once you’ve shown you can keep them. You have to earn Kingston’s affection, but once you do, it stays with you.

Walk slowly through the downtown core and you’ll start to see it: the way the golden hour pours like honey across the limestone buildings. The quiet alleys that open into bursts of colour and murals, the smell of espresso drifting from small cafes, the musicians who play their instruments.

Find the market stalls with their imperfect fruit and hand-woven earrings. Sit on a bench by the marina and count the sailboats. Ride your bike just a little too far without knowing where you’ll end up. Let yourself wander. Because Kingston doesn’t give up its magic easily,

but it rewards the ones who stay curious. 

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All in all,  here is what I wish someone had told me before my first Kingston summer: that the quiet would not consume me, but bring me clarity. That the city, in its soft and sprawling way, would teach me how to belong to myself. That staying behind was not missing out, it was a gift.

May your summer be slow in the best way. May you meet yourself anew and may you learn the promising language of stillness - and while you are, may you remember that we are here with open arms, ready to support your growth no matter what wellness looks like for you.