Queenston

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Queenston, Ontario, is a small, quiet residential community in the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Queenston was founded by Robert Hamilton in the late 1780s at the north end of the Niagara Portage, a road used to transport freight and passengers around the rapids and falls of the Niagara River. The community may have been named for the Queen's Rangers, a colonial regiment that built barracks here in 1792. It prospered on trade, and a ferry crossing to Lewiston was an important transportation link between Upper Canada and New York State. Queenston was merged into the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1970.

The house of Laura Secord, the most famous heroine of the War of 1812, has been restored as an operating historic site by the Niagara Parks Commission, and the one-time home of William Lyon Mackenzie has become a printing museum. The Willowbank National Historic Site houses a unique school of restoration arts where students learn the skills required for building restoration. Nearby, the RiverBrink Art Museum curates a stunning and significant collection of early Canadian art. Brock's Monument, overlooking the village, was dedicated in 1824 as the tomb of Sir Isaac Brock, whose troops defeated American invaders at the Battle of Queenston Heights (13 October 1812). This first monument was heavily damaged by an Irish-Canadian terrorist in 1840 and was replaced in 1853-56 by the present monument. The bodies of Brock and his aide-de-camp, John Macdonell, are interred in a crypt beneath the current structure.

See also Niagara Historic Frontier.