History of KUF

For more than fifty years, Kingston Unitarian Fellowship has offered a liberal religious tradition to Kingstonians. The Fellowship was born when prominent Kingstonian Henry Cartwright placed an ad in the Kingston Whig-Standard inviting Unitarians and other "liberal-minded persons" to participate in evening discussion groups. Originally a group for adults, participants with families wanted to include the children as well, so meetings for both began to be held. From the mid-sixties through the mid-nineties, records show the ongoing development of a small but steady group of people celebrating a largely humanist perspective on life.

For its first 40 years, the Fellowship was entirely lay-led, although Reverend Max Coots, the minister of the Universalist Church in Canton, New York, conducted Sunday services here four times a year during much of this period, and Unitarian ministers from Ottawa and Montreal also visited a number of times. In 1994, the group decided to make the financial commitment necessary to engage a minister. Rev. Carol Meyer became minister in 1994. After serving as extension minister for three years, she was chosen to become the KUF settled minister in 1997.

In September 1999, Rev. Meyer accepted a call to a UU congregation in Pennsylvania, and Rev. Ann Fox became the interim minister, while a search committee was struck to begin the work to find a new settled minister. Rev. Kathy Sage became our choice, and she has continued to serve the KUF congregation as our settled minister to the present.

1999 also saw a flurry of activity related to the Fellowship's decision to take the plunge into building ownership. In 1999, we purchased "A Home of Our Own" (as the funding drive to support it was called) at 214 Concession Street, where we continued to meet until 2011. From 1954 to 1999, the Fellowship had met in each other's homes or in rented spaces. Over the years, the latter included the Kinsmen Clinic at the corner of Division and Main, a house on Barrie Street rented from Queen's University, the Queen's Faculty Women's Club on Union Street, the YMCA, St. Lawrence College, John Watson Hall at Queen's U, and the basement of an office building at Barrie and Queen Streets.

In 2011, the Fellowship bought the building at 206 Concession, just 3 doors down from the old building.