Queen's University was established on 16 October 1841 by a royal charter issued by Queen Victoria. The document was granted after years of effort by the Presbyterians of Upper Canada to found a college for the education of ministers in the growing colony, and for the instruction of youth in the "various branches in Science and Literature." Its founders modelled the new college on the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and Queen's, like them, was given a governing structure built around a Board of Trustees, a Principal, and a Senate. Classes began on 7 March 1842, when "Queen's College at Kingston" opened in a small wood-frame house on the edge of the city with two professors and 13 students.

Its rise to prominence began slowly. For its first 11 years the school had no home. It moved from house to house in Kingston, finally settling in Summerhill, a spacious limestone residence which still stands at the heart of the main campus. Financial support came at first from the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, the Canadian government, and private citizens. But this support was meagre and barely kept the college afloat. In 1867 and 1868 the college faced ruin when the government withdrew its funding and a commercial bank collapsed, a disaster which cost Queen's two-thirds of its endowment. Principal William Snodgrass and other dedicated officials narrowly rescued the college with a desperate fundraising campaign across Canada.

Yet Queen's future remained insecure. As late as the mid-1880s there was talk within university circles that Queen's should leave Kingston and merge with the University of Toronto as the only means of avoiding financial failure. However, Queen's senior officials were determined to stay and build on the roots the college had put down and the progress it had begun to achieve in Kingston. It had added the Faculty of Medicine in 1854 and took over the Kingston observatory in 1861. In 1869, Queen's became the first university west of the Maritimes to admit women to classes. By the mid-1870s enrolment had grown from 15 to more than 100 students.

But it was not until the principalship of the Rev. George Munro Grant (1877-1902) that Queen's achieved a position as one of Canada's premier universities. The first of Queen's Canadian-born principals, Grant was an idealistic and forceful man, determined to build the college into a national institution. He was deeply religious and nationalistic and worked to produce graduates who would build the growing country in a spirit of dedicated service rather than material gain. Under his leadership, Queen's grew rapidly in size and prestige. By the end of his 25-year term the college had more than tripled its size, gained a measure of financial security, and charted a course towards greater academic diversity. In 1893 Queen's established the Ontario School of Mining and Agriculture, forerunner of today's Faculty of Applied Science. A graduate studies program was launched in l889 and in the 1880s Queen�s pioneered correspondence education in North America.

Principal Grant died in 1902 and was succeeded by the Rev. Daniel Miner Gordon, a fellow Nova Scotian. No one could replace Grant entirely, but the college continued to grow under Gordon's direction. The most important development in Gordon's term came in 1912, when Queen's separated from the Presbyterian Church � a move which brought it more in touch with an increasingly secular age. It was then that the college officially changed its name to "Queen's University at Kingston." Gordon retired because of failing health in 1916, two years into World War I.

The war had a dramatic impact at Queen's. Students were thrown into military training. Grant Hall � an assembly and concert hall built in 1905 and named after the former Principal � was transformed into an army hospital. The enlistment of students, staff, and faculty caused enrolment to plummet, leaving Queen's, according to university historian Frederick Gibson, a skeleton hovering on the edge of bankruptcy. But the armistice in 1918 and a $1,000,000 fundraising drive led by the new Principal, Rev. Bruce Taylor, soon put the university back on a course of modest progress and innovation.�� Queen's introduced the first commerce courses in Canada in 1918. Old Richardson Stadium was built on Union Street in 1920; Douglas library went up in 1924; and Ban Righ � Queen's oldest existing student residence � was built in 1925. The early 1920s were also the golden age of Queen's football. Queen's defeated the Edmonton Eskimos in 1922 for the Grey Cup and went on to win two more cups in 1923 and 1924, including one by the lopsided score of 55-0.

The onset of the Depression in 1929 brought progress at Queen's to a virtual halt, despite the notorious thrift of its administration. Sir William Hamilton Fyfe, Principal from 1930, built a slender base at Queen's for music and the fine arts, but could do little else to advance Queen's in the straitened circumstances of the decade. He handed the reins of the university to Principal Robert Wallace in 1936.

The Second World War followed hard on the heels of the Depression and thrust Queen's back into a world of military discipline and reduced expectations. Although the university did not suffer as it had in the previous war, it made few permanent advances � one notable exception being the establishment of the School of Nursing in 1941.

The end of the war in 1945 ushered in the greatest period of growth in Queen's history. Between 1945 and Wallace's retirement in 1951, it opened the School of Physical and Health Education and a new building for Mechanical Engineering. After fire swept through the old Students' Memorial Union in 1947, the university built a new student centre, known today as the John Deutsch University Centre.

In the 1950s, the pace of growth quickened, propelled by the expanding postwar economy and the first stirrings of the demographic boom that peaked in the 1960s. During the principalship of William Mackintosh (1951-1961) enrolment increased from just over 2000 students to more than 3000. The university embarked on an ambitious building program, constructing five student residences in less than ten years. In 1956, Agnes Etherington � widow of a former dean of medicine � donated her large Georgian-style house on University Avenue to Queen's for the "furthering of art and music" at the university. Named in her honour, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre has since grown into one of Canada's leading art galleries. Following the reorganization of legal education in Ontario in the mid-1950s, Queen's Faculty of Law opened in 1957 in the newly-built John A. Macdonald Hall. Other major additions to Queen's in the 1950s were the construction of Richardson Hall to house Queen's administrative offices, and Dunning Hall.

The terms of Principals James Corry (1961-1968) and John Deutsch (1968-1974) saw continued growth. With baby boomers knocking at the door and public funding flowing generously, Queen's � like most other Canadian universities � more than tripled its enrolment and greatly expanded its faculty, staff, and facilities. By the mid-1970s, the number of full-time students had reached 10,000. Among the new facilities were three more residences and separate buildings for the Departments of Mathematics, Physics, Biology and Psychology, and for the Social Sciences and the Humanities. The period also saw the establishment at Queen's of Schools of Music, Public Administration (now part of Policy Studies), Rehabilitation Therapy, and Urban and Regional Planning.

The biggest development was the establishment of the Faculty of Education in 1968 on land about a kilometre west of the university. This was the beginning of Queen's West Campus, which also holds several residences and Queen's football stadium, which was moved from the main campus in 1971.

Principal Deutsch put a brake on enrolment during his term (1968-1974) to safeguard the traditional personal character of education at Queen's. He believed that a full-time enrolment of about 10,000 would be large enough for Queen's to offer a wide range of programs while retaining its sense of community. During the 1990�s the appropriate balance was found at a slightly higher enrolment, reaching about 13,000 full-time students. This decision to restrict growth, as well as a sharp reduction in public funding to universities, made the decade between 1974 and 1984, in the words of Principal Ronald Watts (1974-1984), one of "constraint, consolidation, and constructive change." In 1978, work was finished on Botterell Hall, a nine-storey medical sciences and library building next to Kingston General Hospital. Several other buildings were expanded. And though the number of students leveled out, the number of applications soared, allowing Queen's to develop what are now the highest undergraduate admission standards in Canada. Queen's also worked successfully throughout the decade to improve graduate studies and research, increasing both the quantity and the quality of its graduate students.

Under the leadership of Principal David Smith (1984-1994), Queen's worked to maintain its high graduate and undergraduate standards. It sought as well to build on its roots as a place that welcomes students from all parts of Canadian society and from around the world. As part of a small construction boom, the university built a new building to house the School of Policy Studies (Robert Sutherland Hall) and a five-storey technology centre (Walter Light Hall). The most important project on campus in the early 1990s was the $48 million Stauffer Library at the corner of Union Street and University Avenue. A dramatic development off campus was the donation to Queen's in 1993 by alumnus Alfred Bader of England's historic Herstmonceux Estate, complete with a 15th-century moated castle, now known as the Bader International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle.

Principal Smith was succeeded by Dr. William Leggett, a former Vice-Principal at McGill University, who served as Principal of Queen�s from 1994 until 2004. Under Dr. Leggett's tenure, the construction boom continued. From 1998 to 2004 the University undertook the largest capital expansion and renovation phase to that point in its history. New facilities included: Chernoff Hall, the new home of the Department of Chemistry; Beamish-Munro Hall, built to house the Faculty of Applied Science�s Integrated Learning Centre; Goodes Hall, new home to the School of Business in the renovated and expanded Victoria School; and the Cancer Research Institute. Two new student residences on the lower campus, Leggett Hall and Watts Hall, opened in September 2003.

One of the most significant changes at Queen's in the 1990s under Principal Leggett was the re-alignment of the Vice-Principal portfolios. In 1995, Principal Leggett announced three new portfolios: Vice-Principal (Academic), Vice-Principal (Operations and Finance) and Vice-Principal (Research). As well, the position of Dean of Student Affairs was created in 1995 to specifically serve the needs of the student population.

The University faced significant funding challenges through the late 1990s and early into the next decade, with severe cuts in base funding from the provincial government. The need for increased funding was partially addressed through the work of the Office of Advancement. The Campaign for Queen's was officially launched in October 2000 with an ambitious goal of $200 million for a range of priorities, from new facilities to faculty recruitment, student aid and curriculum enhancements. The closing celebration of the Campaign for Queen�s was held on May 10, 2003, the campaign having raised $261 million.

On July 1st 2004, Dr. Karen Hitchcock, a former President of the University of Albany, succeeded Principal Leggett, becoming the 18th Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Queen�s University. Principal Hitchcock arrived at Queen�s just as the Post-Secondary Review in Ontario, under the leadership of the Honourable Bob Rae, was beginning its work. The Rae Review � and its subsequent recommendations � had a profound impact province-wide and brought a sense of urgency to the critical need for investment in higher education. The Province responded to The Rae Review with significant new funding for universities in a multi-year framework.

Early in the fall of 2005, Dr. Hitchcock began a strategic positioning initiative to help articulate and define directions and goals for the University for the next decade and beyond. She engaged the Queen�s community and its broader constituencies in a discussion about the key challenges and opportunities facing the University. In December 2006, following approval by the Senate, the Board of Trustees approved Engaging the World: A Strategic Plan for Queen�s University. This was followed in 2007 by the beginning of work on the Queen�s Centre, a student life and athletics facility designed to more than double the capacity of Queen�s existing facilities. More recently, in anticipation of future space requirements, the University moved strategically to acquire lands near campus, including the Tett Centre, which will form the basis of a planned Arts Campus, including a concert hall, made possible by a generous donation from Alfred and Isabel Bader, and the former Prison for Women property, which provide space for future growth, and may include the University Archives. In the summer of 2008, a new facility, known as Innovation Park at Queen�s University, was officially opened and brings academic and industry researchers together to work in fields such as alternative energy and environmental technologies, with a focus on the bioeconomy and advanced materials research.

Principal Hitchcock resigned in April 2008 and was succeeded by Dr. Tom Williams, a specialist in educational administration and Professor Emeritus in the School of Policy Studies and the Faculty of Education. During his term of office as Principal, Dr. Williams concentrated on addressing the growing gap between university revenues and expenditures. He led Vice-Principals and Deans in developing a three-year budget strategy, involved the campus community in numerous discussions of these issues, and set up a series of Task Forces to deal with issues of cost control, revenue generation, communications, space, human resources and use of technology. In addition, in light of the risks which had been identified in the context of activities on Aberdeen Street, he led a debate which culminated in suspension of Homecoming for two years, with replacement activities centred around the Spring Reunion.

Principal Williams finished his term of office on August 31st, 2009 and was succeeded as Principal by Dr. Daniel Woolf, a noted historian who had attended Queen�s as both an undergraduate student and a postdoctoral fellow. Upon his arrival, Principal Woolf set in motion a number of significant administrative changes. The role of Provost was created. Based on a model in common usage in most other major universities, this model allows the Principal to focus on external relations, fundraising, and strategic planning, while leaving the day-to-day running of the University to the Provost. Recognizing the challenges inherent in constantly rising demands for admission to universities in Ontario, combined with relatively lower levels of government funding, Principal Woolf initiated in 2010 an Academic Planning process designed to ensure that future planning would be driven by academic priorities, but that academic and financial planning would proceed hand in hand. 2010 also saw the opening of the Queen�s Centre, designed to be a hub of campus social and athletic life, the beginning of construction of a new home for the School of Medicine, and the start of construction of an addition to Goodes Hall to promote further growth of the School of Business.