St. John's Catholic Church, in Gananoque, has been preserved by the members of its congregation. Its historically authentic slate roof cost nearly $1 million. -- Photos by Kenneth Bagnell

No Ontario town I know has a past that lingers in the streets like Gananoque, just east of Kingston, on the St. Lawrence River. A century ago, the population was 3,500. Now, it's just past 5,000.

"We like our past," says John Nalon, a mail carrier whose father was a longtime mayor of the town. "I hope we always will."

Nalon is head of the historical society and in the last days of May, the scent of early lilac perfuming the air, we went for an evening walk. I'd asked him to pick the town's three or four finest historic sites. It didn't take long to see them -- three were just steps from the inn I'd chosen for my stay, Trinity House Inn. The red brick manor, itself dating to 1859, was, like many small town inns, the home of doctors for generations.

EDWARDIAN HOUSES

"You're already in the historic neighbourhood," Nalon said pointing across to nearby Pine St., where a line of fine Edwardian houses stands. These were once homes of merchants who built close to the main street so they could carry the day's receipts home without fear of thievery.

We began by looking upward to the grey beauty of St. John's Catholic Church.

"I think," he said, "it's one of the finest church buildings in eastern Ontario."

It was completed in 1892, with stone quarried on Howe Island, then built for $48,000.

Parishioners, Nalon being one, have preserved it, recently replacing the roof with the same kind of slate as the original, which cost almost $1 million, more than the entire building a century ago.

Then we stood beneath a 28-metre ornamental clock tower, built in 1903, a gift from a well-to-do citizen. Its lines are memorable, for they aren't strictly vertical, swelling out slightly below the crown to the ground. Even more remarkable, the tower's original clock still runs. Almost next door to Trinity House is the old post office, a three-storey building with lines that make you wish all old post offices were still among us. It now houses small offices, but Nalon hopes that it may soon become the museum.

His choice for the most historic and beautiful building in Gananoque rises in a park-like swath of greenery, about five minutes from Trinity House Inn. The Town Hall fairly gleams and has stood a long time -- since 1831. It's still the Town Hall, despite Nalon's passion to have it become the museum.

Nearby is a 1921 bandstand, so well designed that people still praise its outstanding acoustics. History is pretty well everywhere, even in Trinity House Inn itself, which is listed in John Nalon's walking guide.

When I fell into conversation with innkeeper Jacques O'Shea, he said my room -- a comfortable suite with exposed bare stone walls -- had once been a doctor's own office. But in the 1960s, during the Cuban missile scare, the innkeeper made it a bomb shelter. I was grateful for its walls -- a metre thick, keeping me cool on very warm nights.

The past that you see in Gananoque extends well beyond the town to the famous waters that wash it -- the St. Lawrence with its almost numberless islands, more than 1,800. Hence the descripton of Gananoque as a "Gateway to the Thousand Islands."

Gananoque Boat Line had its origin in Thousand Island mail boats that now and then took visitors along for the ride with the letters and parcels.

Years ago, mail was delivered to these river-washed islands by boats run by mail carriers who sometimes took a few passengers along. Eventually a few got the idea of starting a boat line for visitors. The best known is Gananoque Boat Lines with glassed-in cruisers, one of which I boarded for a three-hour trip.

I'm sometimes surprised at the number of travel-minded friends who haven't yet seen the Thousand Islands. They're missing something. It's not just the nature of the islands -- some large enough to have farms, others mere rocky islets -- but the history that resides there.

Here, you'll see a small island where a man intending to murder Abraham Lincoln was found dead, the summer homes of luminaries of bygone American grandeur -- Irving Berlin, Kate Smith, John Jacob Astor.

The great spectacle is a massive European castle on Heart Island, started in the early 1900s, intended to have six storeys and 120 rooms. Its creator, wealthy American hotelier George Boldt, planned it as a tribute to his wife, Louise.

In 1904, just as it neared completion, Louise died. Boldt ordered all work stopped. He never saw the place again. It sat empty for half a century. Now it's been restored and can be visited -- a memorial to great ambition and great heartbreak.

BEAUTIFUL SETTING

On my last evening, after a fine dinner in a beautiful setting -- The Victoria Rose Inn and its wonderful garden -- I took in a play put on by Thousand Island Playhouse. Founded in the '80s, its summer season continues to Oct. 8. It's doing so well, some predict it's on the way to matching the stage of the Shaw.

Next day, after one last stroll to the Town Hall and the shore of the river, I drove away. Now, looking back, I don't doubt Charles Dickens, who after his visit long ago in 1842, said Gananoque and the islands were part of a picture "fraught with uncommon interest and pleasure."

I'd add that they have a beauty that is truly distinct -- totally unlike the beauty of any part of Canada I have ever known.

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BOTTOM LINE

MORE INFORMATION

- For Trinity House Inn, contact 1-800-265-4871 or log on to trinityinn.com. Rates start at $90 per room.

- For Gananoque Boat Lines information, see ganboatline.com.

- Heart Island and Boldt Castle are both in American waters, so be sure to bring proper identification.

- For Gananoque tourism information, go to 1000islands gananoque.com.

DIVERSIONS

The hamlet of Rockport makes an interesting side trip. The family owned Rockport Boathouse Country Inn overlooks the water and is renowned for its delicious Linzertorte.