Shoal tower in Kingston's harbour. -- Photos Kingston Tourism

Kingston is known as the limestone city, for its gleaming stonework, but when I arrived after a steady afternoon of rain, the city glowed even more than I remembered. It was as if the shower had cleansed the churches and mansions leaving them shining in the day's last light.

But there's something else: The city shines because its citizens take such good care of it. They dedicate a day every April to beautification.

"About 10,000 took part last year," Terri Flindall of the Chamber of Commerce told me, "This year it was 14,000."

Mostly we think of Canada's origins when we think about Kingston. It was the location of Upper Canada's capital in the 1840s, later the home of our first Prime Minister.

But there's another Kingston that has grown in recent years. You'll find it in new inns such as the one where I stayed, Rosemount Bed & Breakfast, a Tuscan-style villa from 1850, set downtown and furnished with tables, chairs, beds and ornaments from the 1800s.

You'll see it in the city's fine art gallery, The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the bequest of a wise woman who instructed it be for the use of the city, not just the university on whose campus it sits.

"Because of her vision," Janet Brooke, the director, said, "we work hard to involve the public, including the children."

And you see it in the wide harbour, where you can board an early evening boat, enjoy a quality meal as you sail to Gananoque, a pretty town, for a play at Thousand

Islands Playhouse, a theatre of deserved reputation.

Take a trolley to the city's sights.

Kingston is a compact city, but its streets can seem to be a slight maze at first, so I did what I usually do on my first day when I visit anywhere: Took the trolley, with its good onboard guide. Then the next day, I went here and there on foot, and while some distances were a bit of a hike, the city is pedestrian-friendly and I counted my walks as exercise.

In my opinion, the top three historic sites to visit are: Fort Henry, the citadel of Kingston's past, a massive fortification of the 1830s; the Military and Communications Museum with one of the continent's biggest collections of war artifacts; and of course Bellevue House, where John A. MacDonald, who championed confederation and became our first prime minister, lived in 1848.

Italianate architecture

I'd been to Bellevue House before, but this time I stayed longer. I let the house speak to me about MacDonald and his family, who knew both hardship and honour. I took time for the building itself, which is worth touring for its architecture.

Like the Rosemount Inn, it's Italianate, one of the few in Kingston, built in the 1840s, and memorable for stairways, rooms, and secluded corners. So are selections from MacDonald's letters, excerpts of which are on small plaques mounted at room doorways.

Kingston is noted, like it or not, as the site of our first penitentiary, a grim place built in 1835 and known simply as KP. You can only visit if you're on official business or, should you have the misfortune to take up permanent residence. If you want a sense of KP's past and that of our other prisons, just cross the street to Canada's Penitentiary Museum, the country's only such place, where guides, often retired prison officers, show you artifacts, some dating to the late 1800s.

Some are more recent -- like paintings by inmates, several by a man destined to die after years in Kingston, during a robbery. There's a child's rocking horse made by an inmate and given to a staff member in 1875.

"Last year more people than ever visited," said curator David St. Onge, a correctional officer's son and history graduate of Queen's, "about 26,000."

One day in 1919, a man named Ambrose Small, owner of the city's Grand Theatre, sold it and his other properties for almost $2 million. Then he disappeared. It's said his ghost still haunts the Grand Theatre, on Princess St., but that only makes the place more popular.

"There truly is something for everyone," director Cliff Edwards said as we talked about this season's playbill, a mix of comedy, drama and music, including A Streetcar Named Desire, Fame and Lorne Elliott's Tourist Trap.

It's not just what's on the stage that can make a vacation, but what's on the table -- the cuisine. So it's no surprise that with Kingston's cosmopolitan style has come cosmopolitan cuisine. And one example is the great meal I had at Minos, a warm and friendly place on Ontario St. On my last evening in the city, I was at The River Mill, regarded as Kingston's finest cafe, set in a stone building that 120 years ago was a cotton mill. There, over Caesar salad prepared at my table, and a dinner of pheasant, I looked out on a sunset over the peaceful Cataraqui River and contemplated how, in Kingston, we see the present as we're enveloped by the past.

Bottom Line

GETTING THERE: A swift and economical way to reach Kingston is by Via Rail, which offers a summer special of just over $92 return, if booked 10 days in advance. (Children free.) 1-888-VIA-Rail.

For information on Rosemount Inn, call 1-888-871-8844.

For information on Kingston, call 1-888-855-4555 or visit www.kingstoncanada.com.