On a hopefully warm day in June, residents, hundreds of them schoolchildren, will gather in City Park to celebrate First Capital Day.

The event, which was started in 1997, marks the opening of the first Parliament of the Province of Canada and Kingston’s place at its political centre.

While June invariably provides better weather for an outdoor gathering, the anniversary of Kingston being proclaimed capital is actually today.

On Feb. 10, 1841, the Act of Union officially united Upper Canada and Lower Canada to form the Province of Canada, with Kingston as its capital city.

Kingston’s selection as the first capital of the Province of Canada was as much a practical choice as it was political.

With a population of approximately 3,000 people in the early 1840s, Kingston was much smaller than other cities in the colony. But it was in the English-speaking part of the Canada and about halfway between Toronto and Montreal.

It was also on Lake Ontario and the Rideau Canal and could be defended from attack. It was also among the oldest communities in Canada at the time.

“People in Kingston kind of figured it was their rightful heir to being a capital from as early as the 1780s, it being the first area settled in Upper Canada after the American Revolution, and being the old boys on the block, it kind of deserved it,” said City of Kingston curator Paul Robertson.

Kingston’s reign as the capital was not to last long.

Lord Sydenham, who championed the city as the capital, died in September 1841. After the strongest voice in support of Kingston was gone from the upper echelons of power, its days as the capital were numbered.

Despite an economic boom sparked by the 1841 proclamation, growth that saw office buildings and houses built to accommodate government workers, the capital was moved to Montreal only three years later. It would then jump between Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto until, by decree from Queen Victoria in 1859, it finally moved to Ottawa.

As quickly as Kingston grew, its economy went into depression after 1844.

“It was great at the time and it was a great disappointment when it only lasted three years,” Peter Gower, president of the Kingston Historical Society, said. “And I think it’s the disappointment which makes people not celebrate it as much as they could.”

It would be more than a century before people in Kingston started to talk about its role as Canada’s first capital.

“When we lost the capital, we weren’t about to go and tell people about it,” Robertson said. “It was a bit of an embarrassment.”

But in some very real ways, Kingston’s term as capital shaped the city it is now, and to a certain extent the nation Canada has become, Robertson said.

Some of the early discussions about responsible government led by Robert Baldwin and Louis Lafontaine would have taken place in Kingston.

“The root of who we are as Canadians now, one could argue, those early discussions got started here,” Robertson said. “It didn’t get passed in Kingston but it got started here.”

Being the first capital, and its quick departure, left its physical mark on the city.

While a Parliament building was never built, the government used Kingston General Hospital as Parliament. The land where the Frontenac County Court House was built in 1858 was originally to be the site of the first Parliament Building.

The building boom that followed the 1841 proclamation created impressive inventory of stone buildings throughout Kingston’s downtown. When the capital left, so, too, did the imperative to modernize those structures to keep pace with the demands of the state.

“I wonder sometimes if it, in some respects, was good for the city because it helped to preserve us by way of the built heritage we have now,” Robertson said. “It’s here because we did get sidelined a little bit. In a backwards sort of way, it was good because it means our 19th-century downtown is very much intact compared to other centres that grew more.”

“If we had stayed as capital, we would be overrun with federal buildings and security and this and that,” Gower added. “As it is, we got all the benefits. We got those beautiful buildings, probably we got our city hall because the aldermen at the time wanted it to look like a really good city hall for the capital. We got a lot of these buildings and then we were able to just keep them.”

The federal government continues to have a huge presence in Kingston through Canadian Forces Base Kingston, Correctional Service Canada and 21 National Historic Sites.

As Canada prepares to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation in 2017, the federal government is also marking the 175th anniversary of the election of Baldwin and Lafontaine and their work to establish responsible government, the beginnings of which were in Kingston.

Kingston now, too, embraces its place in Canada’s history by marketing the city to tourists as Canada’s First Capital.

Last year, city council declared the Old Sydenham District, an irregularly shaped, triangular wedge of the city roughly bordered by King Street East, Lake Ontario, Barrie and Johnson streets, as the city’s third heritage conservation district.

The area contains about 550 properties and includes City Park, the Cricket Field, Macdonald Park, Memorial Park and the Kingston Yacht Club.

The Old Sydenham District joined Barriefield, which was designated a heritage conservation area in 1981, and Market Square, which received the same in 1985.

“If we had our own licence plates,” Gower said. “I’m pretty sure Kingston’s would say First Capital.”

elliot.ferguson@sunmedia.ca