Over two centuries have elapsed since the formal establishment of Kingston as a settlement in 1783. From these beginnings, there has always been a central market place: a place of congress dedicated to the essential need for merchants to meet their customers. Over these years, Kingston's Market Square has served this purpose. Indeed, because of this continuity of form and function, some believe that there should be no change, now, or in the future. Rather than attempting to dispel all the myths, I would like to take a brief walk through a long history that demonstrates how dynamic a place the Market Square has been. The importance of the location of this early marketing activity to the vitality of the growing town was recognized early. In fact, in 1792, the Anglican Church saw it as such an important place that it acquired all of the property on the King Street side and built the first St. George's Church where the "Old Whig" building still stands today. It was in front of that little church -- the first St. George's -- that the populace of Kingston and the surrounding countryside gathered on a sunny Sunday afternoon on 8 July 1792 to hear Governor John Graves Simcoe proclaim that Upper Canada would be a separate constitutional jurisdiction. But if Kingston was much boosted by this event, it was not to be blessed by the role of first seat of government. That honour fell initially to Newark and eventually passed to York [Toronto], Kingston's urban rival at the time.