Religious Diversity in Kingston
Some Resources
"Places of Worship in Frontenac County"
A 48-page listing of sites available as a PDF file. Compiled by the Ontario Genealogical Society, Kingston Branch. Edited by Stephanie Stone and Dawn Broughton (October 2001).Faith Communities in Kingston, a webpage with links to the database of the Kingston District Community Information Centre.
A partial alphabetical listing of Kingston's Places to Worship with addresses and phone numbers.
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has a website with essays on religions and religious topics, definitions of terms, and religious issues in the news.
Harvard University's Pluralism Project documents "the growing religious diversity of the United States." Many of the methods of the Pluralism Project are adapted for this project on Religious Diversity in Kingston (e.g., the template for the profile of each religious site).
Multi-Faith Service at RMC held in October 2002 (Press release from the Royal Military College of Canada).
Religious Diversity in Kingston Penitentiary (from The Globe and Mail).
Painting a Portrait of Religion in Kingston on the RDK project (The Kingston Whig-Standard, 11 October 2003).
"In Search of the Spiritual," on changing patterns of religion in Canada (Time Magazine, 24 November 2003).
Context: Recent Trends in Kingston, Ontario
From an article in the Whig-Standard about the 2001 census by Sarah Crosbie on Wednesday, May 14, 2003 :
Statistics Canada has released data about Canadians’ religious affiliation for the first time since 1991.
One of the major changes nationally was how many people listed “no religion” on their census questionnaires. In 1991, only 12.3 per cent listed no religion, compared with just 7.3 per cent in 1981. For the 2001 census, the national average was 16.2 per cent. In Kingston, 17.5 per cent said they had no religion.
The most popular religion was Roman Catholic, which made up 33 per cent of the population of Kingston. The next most popular religion was United Church with 17.2 per cent of the population, followed by Anglican with 13.3 per cent. Excluding “no religion,” the top four religions in Ontario are Roman Catholic (34.3 per cent); United Church (11.8 per cent); Anglican (8.7 per cent) and Muslim (3.1 per cent).
The number of Muslims in Canada increased by more than 128 per cent during the 1990s--a reflection of Canadian immigration patterns during that period. For the first time ever, there are more Muslims (579,640) than Jews (329,995) in Canada. Moustafa Fahmy is the past president of the Islamic Centre of Kingston and now a member of the centre. He said while Kingston doesn’t attract the same number of Muslim immigrants as bigger cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, Kingston does have a strong Muslim population. He says the Muslim population has steadily increased here over the years and estimates about 1,000 people belong to the Islamic Centre.