Kingston, Ontario

On the road again, this time its Kingston, Ontario. I have managed to get myself settled in and have found a gym, a grocery store and the waterfront pathway. Time to get creative and find a way to train while I'm here for 3 weeks.

The most interesting thing so far was the cab ride into town.

The cabbie is a long time resident and within the 20 minutes I was with him, he gave me some of the rich history of the town, such as...

It was slated to be the capital of Canada, especially since John A. Macdonald resided here, however, at the time us Canucks were not on such friendly terms with those American types to the south, so clever as we were, we decided to pick a lesser accessible location like Toronto...I mean Ottawa!

Fort Henry was built here just to make sure those Americans didn't get any ideas!

On a more dark and serious side, Kingston is also home to Canada's most notorious penitentiary. Kingston Pen was opened in 1835 and can hold around 500 inmates, each having their own cell. Its where the "worst of the worst " come. The ones who can not function in the usual incarcerated populous.

Infamous inmates date back to the Black Donnellys, Mr. James Donnelly was a resident in the 1800s and more recently housed Clifford Olsen and presently Paul Bernardo. According to the cabbie, Bernardo still stays in solitary confinement for 23 hrs a day with little to no contact.

Unfortunately, his ex-wife, as we all know, was released but seems to have gone on with her life with a new husband, child and living in Europe.

He left me with this, simply because in his mind, we as Canadians seem to forget or want to forget the injustice that is inflicted upon the innocent. If anything good can come from the past is that we remember. We need to remember to prevent history from repeating itself. So that being said, he admits he is still angry about the botched conviction but says he tells the same story to all his fares simply because we should not forget.

Whether you agree with him or not, he is right about keeping the past in your rear view mirror or how else do we change what is ahead.