Now You Know The Rest Of The Story (Bay Of Quinte, Ontario)

A featured birdhouse designed in the likeness of the Massassauga Park Hotel, that was once a popular destination for area weekend picnickers, at Birdcity, Macaulay Mountain Conservation today. It was well within his legal right to keep the gate closed. It was his property, he asserted, and he needed to keep his cattle from getting out. His neighbour, on the other hand, needed the gate to remain open to allow visitors to access by land his grand hotel and park property that was located right on the water at Massassaga Point across from Point Anne. The feud between the two neighbours, farmer George Wallbridge and his neighbour, Shelley Anderson, owner of the Massassaga Point Hotel and Resort, a favourite destination for area weekend picnickers since the late 1870s, gradually soured into an ugly legal battle in the early 1930s. In the earlier decades when cruising on the Bay of Quinte used to be a popular leisurely activity on Sunday afternoons, the Massassaga resort lo

Billowing smoke and sputtering black soot generously showered the cheering group of spectators eagerly awaiting its arrival as it slowly and noisily lumbered into the local train station in the fall of 1856. To Belleville residents it was a much-anticipated event that would forever drastically alter the history of the community’s progress. The joyful news was first reported in the Oct. 31 edition of the Hastings Chronicle that year. "Belleville has at last been placed upon the great highway of the Province by the opening of the Grand Trunk Railway. The first regular trains from the East extending to Portland in Maine, through Montreal, and from Stratford, West, being 855 miles, made their first stop in our good Town, on Monday last, to the no small pleasure and gratification of the of a large number of our citizens." This was an event that laid the foundation for the enormous role railroading would eventually play in the lives of the people in the area. Local f

It happened one April night in 1917. Black smoke billowed out of the windows while orange flames danced along the building chasing its young inhabitants out into the dark night. An unnamed former student’s account of the night’s events and the fire that consumed the old Albert College that once stood on College Street in Belleville was published in the Intelligencer in 1964: “I’ll never forget that night,” she was quoted to have said. “The boys’ wild efforts to save Miss Jessie Tuite’s (our beloved elocution teacher) books which were frantically tossed out of her window – to be lost in a sea of mud below. The way they thrust Miss Madeline Young’s (another loved teacher) wardrobe into a suitcase along with a cup of honey and lemon cough syrup which ruined her evening gown. It was one of the loveliest I’d ever seen. How the cook sat on the steps bemoaning the fact, “I’ve lost my new hat…!” The evacuated students were led away to spend the night at Quinte Hotel, she nar

Belleville City Hall today No one was injured in the incident but the charred mess left inside the basement of the city’s most cherished landmark, built five years before Belleville became a city in 1878, presented a sombre scene following the fire that broke out inside the Belleville city hall on the morning of a workday on Dec 12, 1960. It was, noted the Intelligencer at the time, the third one to occur inside the building within a span of less than a decade in the 50s. One of the earlier incidents, was determined to have been caused by a lit cigarette carried in by pigeons into the building’s attic. Few years later another fire broke out again late at night. This time it was in the building’s stairwell and while noted to have been caused by, once again, a lit cigarette thrown into the open space in the stairwell, it was not established who the perpetrator was – bird or man. A.MacLean Haig was Belleville’s mayor at the time of the 1960 fire and J.R. Reynolds was th

The sight of red fluorescent signs on  the doors and fences of homes in the city neighbourhoods struck fear and panic in the hearts of those yet to experience the battle being fought indoors. Anxious mothers kept their children closer to home, adults warily kept their distance and city authorities did what they could to keep the public enemy - scarlet fever, the scourge of the day, at bay. Beginning in 1908, the city of Belleville operated an isolation unit of the local hospital at 164 Moira St. W. The building was former home of a person named Asa Yeomans. On the gate leading to the house was a sign that read Scarlet Fever and in later years, the house became popularly known as the Fever House. Area residents suffering from contagious diseases were brought to the building to be kept in isolation for as long as two weeks at a time. It was the only way the city health authorities thought they could keep the infection from becoming an epidemic at the time. A local resident, wh

Bay of Quinte Yacht Club members exploring the waters of the bay. Alexander  Cuthbert, who once put Belleville on the map in the sailing circle of the world in 1881 with his adventurous bid for the prestigious America’s Cup was a member of the club. For someone who began his adult life in the shoemaking business and with no known formal training in naval architecture, he seemed to have done just fine in carving himself a household name in the world of sailing in North America. In fact, his reputation as an outstanding nineteenth century Canadian yacht designer and the tales of his feats as an avid racer in the late 1800s still seem to evoke admiration and awe among sailing communities today. Of Alexander Cuthbert, the man who had the Bay of Quinte Yacht Club, originally established in 1876, issue a challenge for the title of the prestigious America’s Cup to the then title holder, the New York Yacht Club, Robert Townsend noted in his book Who Was Canada’s Greatest Yac