Past image of Confederation Park in downtown Kingston. Photo via Earth Fest Kingston Facebook page.
Local climate activists are inviting the Kingston community to attend the first iteration of Earth Fest, a family-oriented environmental event. This one-day festival is a celebration of the Earth with live music, activities, and informational booths.
Earth Fest will take place on Saturday, Jun. 6, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Confederation Park in downtown Kingston, according to an Earth Fest press release issued on Tuesday, May 26, 2026.
“We’ve put together a family-oriented environmental fair,” explained Earth Fest organizer Laurie Davey-Quantick. Quantick is the proprietor of Verde, a green retailer that used to have a store on Princess Street.
“Earth Fest will be vibrant, with something for everyone. Everything reminds us of just how much we value our planet and our climate.”
The event will include live music performances all day long, as well as a puppet show and theatre performance. Additionally, there will be art activities and informational booths, showcasing the work of 44 exhibitors, performers, and artists.
Poster via Earth Fest.
Kingstonist caught up with Judi Wyatt, head organizer of Earth Fest, to learn more about the upcoming event. Wyatt has lived in Kingston for over 50 years and is a retired English teacher. She worked at Ernestown Intermediate and Secondary School in Odessa for 31 years.
Wyatt shared what prompted her to create Earth Fest.
“I became a member of Seniors for Climate Action Now, about four years ago, five years ago, and we’ve done many events… I’ve been frustrated that the events that we’ve organized have been largely the same, attracting the same people over and over again,” Wyatt expressed.
“I want to broaden the demographic of the people who care about climate and to move away from the doom and gloom… my idea was to do something quite different from what we’ve done before. It’s a celebration of the earth… and it’s very family-oriented with lots of fun things for people to do.”
Earth Fest falls on the last day of Canadian Environment Week, which has the theme of ‘Breaking the Silence’. Wyatt expressed her hopes that Earth Fest can help visitors break the silence on the climate crisis in a celebratory way.
She hopes to attract particularly young people and people with families, and expressed that she knows they care about the climate crisis, but are often too busy to support climate action.
Wyatt detailed that the Kingston Frontenac Public Library is going to be at the festival in a big way, encouraging visitors to get memberships to the library and hosting a mending station similar to its Repair It! program.
“Did you know that if you’ve got something that’s broken, whether it’s an appliance or the zipper on your backpack, you can go to the library on the first Saturday of every month, and there are volunteers there that will fix it for you, appliance repair, and they do free mending?” Wyatt asked.
“We are encouraging people to… bring their broken things or their pants that need a new button sewn on. There are volunteers there that will fix them and show people how to do simple repairs like that.”
In addition, the library will have a kids area with activities, story time, children’s musicians, and a puppeteer.
“On the more serious side, members of Seniors for Climate Action are running a civic action booth. We have an election coming up in the Fall… and they’re going to be conducting a little vote to ask people what aspects of climate mitigation and climate concerns they want our city council to address,” Wyatt explained.
“On a daily basis, it’s the civic government that affects our lives most directly, in terms of civic safety, in terms of trails, in terms of garbage collection, in terms of recycling. Like, on a daily level, we are more affected by our civic government than provincial or federal, and it’s all important.”
The festival will have environmental booths set up with a wide range of information from heat pumps to hybrids and EVs to green burial and credit unions (which don’t invest in fossil fuels unlike other Canadian banks).
There will be art activities such as t-shirt painting, face painting, and a selfie booth.
Wyatt expressed her excitement at the Kingston community’s dedication to making this event happen: “I have been so gratified by the enthusiasm for people to come out and do this. I think it’s only now that we’re, kind of, coming out of our COVID coma or something.”
“I’ve been so, so impressed. Almost everybody that I’ve asked has said ‘we will be there’, or ‘we would be there if we had enough volunteers’”, she added.
Among the many activities, performances, and booths, the festival will include a banner for visitors to add to, answering: ‘What could you not bear to lose because of climate breakdown?’ Wyatt shared that the aim of the festival is not to scare people into action but to focus on the hopeful side of climate action.
“People are inspired to act to protect the things they love, and I’m thinking about [how] my inspiration was the birth of my granddaughters, and now I’ve got another — I’ve got four now, one’s a boy. And so I want to protect the things that I love, and that has inspired me,” said Wyatt.
For more information and the full schedule of performances, visit the Earth Fest Kingston website.