Toronto Airport to Kingston & Queen's University

How do I get from Pearson Airport to Queen's University?

The honest alternative is the train: VIA Rail from Union Station to Kingston takes two and a quarter hours and runs many times a day, and for one student with one bag it is the right answer — this page says so. What the train does not do is start at Pearson (add the UP Express and a change at Union) or finish at the residence (Kingston station is on the city's north edge, fifteen minutes from the campus by taxi), and it does not carry a family's luggage between three vehicles gracefully. The chauffeur is the version that runs from the arrivals curb to the residence door in one movement at a fixed fare, and for two or more people with residence luggage it is competitive with the train and far easier; the long-distance page explains how a three-hour fare is set.

The campus, the residences and the limestone city

Queen's occupies the blocks between Union Street and the lake, west of downtown Kingston, with the residences along Albert, Bader Lane, Stuart and University Avenue and on the west campus a mile further out. Victoria Hall on Bader Lane, the largest, has a drive; Leonard, Watts and Waldron on the main campus are reached from Albert Street; Chown, Gordon-Brockington and Smith House are on University Avenue and Stuart Street; the west campus residences — Jean Royce and the newer halls — are on Sir John A. Macdonald Boulevard with a proper loop. Brant House and the newest residence, Endaayaan-Tkanónsote on Albert Street, have their own entrances. The chauffeur knows which street serves which hall, which matters at move-in when the campus streets are one-way and marshalled. Upper-year students in the houses of the University District — the streets between the campus and Princess Street — are an ordinary Kingston address, and the fare to any of them is the same.

Move-in, Orientation Week and the international arrival

Queen's move-in runs the weekend before Labour Day with assigned windows per residence, and its Orientation Week — the Gaels in their coloured coveralls, the tams, the Frosh Week traditions — is one of the country's oldest. A family flying into Pearson for it lands in the morning, has lunch at the Port Hope or Trenton service centre on the 401, and arrives at the assigned window in the afternoon in a Sprinter sized for everything a residence room needs. International students arrive in the last week of August: a single arrival from a long-haul, met inside Terminal 1 or 3 with a name board on the meet-and-greet add-on, driven three hours with a stop, delivered to the residence check-in with the luggage inside, and a text to the parents overseas at the door. The pickup page explains the meeting points; the family and accessible page explains the luggage allowance and the extra time we build in.

Homecoming, convocation and the parents' weekend

Queen's Homecoming in October is the weekend the university is famous for, and the Kingston hotels — the Delta on Ontario Street, the Holiday Inn on the waterfront, the Residence Inn, the Four Points and the Frontenac Club — fill months out with alumni flying in from Vancouver, Calgary, London, New York and Hong Kong. The pattern is the Friday arrival from Pearson to the hotel, the Saturday — the game at Richardson Stadium, the receptions, the dinners on Princess Street — as a chauffeured block with a car that waits, and the Sunday departure, all on one confirmation. Convocation in late May and June repeats it with grandparents and the graduate's belongings for the flight home; the ceremonies are in Grant Hall and the family car waits on University Avenue. A parents' weekend in the fall term is the same three-legged trip without the crowds, with the Saturday spent on the lake, at Fort Henry, or on the Thousand Islands cruise from the harbour.

Smith, the hospital and the working visitor

The Smith School of Business at Goodes Hall and its executive programmes in Kingston and Toronto, the Queen's medical school and Kingston General Hospital on the campus's east edge, and the research institutes bring the professional traffic on this route: executives on the Smith programmes staying at the Delta, visiting physicians and researchers, recruiters running interview days, and the case-competition teams from other universities arriving as a group on the Sprinter. A visitor's trip is the three-hour transfer to the hotel, a chauffeured day between the campus, the hospital and downtown, and the departure timed to the flight — on a corporate account with monthly invoicing and the three hours each way as working time with the vehicle's Wi-Fi. Many Smith visitors compare the chauffeur with the train and choose the car for the door-to-door certainty; the frequent ones keep a profile with the account.

From the campus: Kingston, the islands and Ottawa

Queen's is a base for eastern Ontario. The Thousand Islands and the Gananoque cruise are thirty minutes east; Prince Edward County and its wineries are forty-five minutes west; Ottawa is two hours north on the 401 and the 416, and a student with a placement or a family visiting both cities books the leg between them as a fixed fare; Montréal is three hours east. Within Kingston, the Leon's Centre for the Frontenacs and for concerts is downtown, Fort Henry and the Royal Military College are across the causeway, and the Kingston waterfront and Princess Street are the visiting family's evening. The Kingston airport on the west side has a handful of regional flights; the VIA station on John Counter Boulevard is the connection for a student going to Toronto by train after a chauffeured start.

Winter: the 401 in January

The January return and the January intake put this drive into the hardest weather of the year: the 401 east of Oshawa crosses open country where the snow drifts off the lake, and the stretch between Port Hope and Belleville closes a few times each winter in a squall. The chauffeur reads Ontario 511 before leaving, the vehicles run winter tyres, and a drive that cannot be made safely is rescheduled rather than attempted; a trip already under way waits out a closure at the Port Hope or Trenton service centre with the passengers warm inside. Students returning from Christmas at home overseas land into this, and the fixed fare and the tracked flight are the reason the trip is routine.

Departures and what the fare includes

The departure to Pearson is the 401 westbound, planned backwards from the flight: pickup at the residence at the time that reaches the terminal ninety minutes before a domestic departure and two and a half to three hours before an international one, which for a morning flight means a pre-dawn start and a chauffeur at the door on the minute; the terminal finder confirms Terminal 1 or 3. The fare is fixed by vehicle class for the Kingston address and includes the chauffeur, the vehicle, fuel, tolls, taxes, curbside pickup at the pre-arranged area, a stop on the way and the included waiting; meet and greet is the paid add-on; gratuity is never added; a cancellation before dispatch is free; the departures page has the check-in cut-offs.

Graduate students, the medical school and the mid-year arrival

Queen's January intake, its exchange students on a single term and its graduate programmes bring the arrivals outside move-in weekend: a master's student landing in the first week of January into the coldest week of the year, a visiting scholar with a family and a year's luggage, a medical resident arriving for a placement at Kingston General or Hotel Dieu. The addresses are the graduate residences on Union Street, a rented apartment in the University District whose keys are collected from a landlord who closes at five, or a hotel for the first week, and the booking carries each of them; the child seats are fitted before the pickup for a family. The hospitals bring their own traffic — patients transferred from Pearson after an overseas flight, visiting physicians, families of patients — booked with the extra time and care a medical trip needs, and the Royal Military College across the causeway brings cadets and their families on the same three-hour fare.

Book Pearson to Queen's