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

The Marchmont Home on Yeoman Street still exists today but no longer resembles the original building which was home to the Home Childen. The building  has now been converted into an apartment building.  The noisy  blast of the ship’s horn announcing its imminent departure from the harbour tore into their hearts as they faced the reality of being wrenched from their beloved homeland. With a sudden lurch, the ship, laden with hundreds of young children in its underbelly, moved forward bound for what the tiny passengers were told as an unknown but "promising" land. For the next couple of weeks, they would endure horrifying living conditions in the steerage hold of the ship with only each other for comfort as they traveled together to their new country. These passengers were young children from the orphanages and streets in England who were sent to Canada in thousands between 1860s to mid-1920s in an attempt by the British Government to solve child poverty, rampa...

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...

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...

Canada's only centre for biological studies, an entomology lab where they studied bugs, was located at 228 Dundas Street in Belleville.  Once known as the Dominion Parasite Laboratory – what residents dubbed “the bug house” – its names have included Lakeview Manor and Water's Edge Retirement Living. Today, it is known as Bel Marine Retirement Home, which has recently closed its doors. Countless in variety and miniscule in appearance, they crawled about in cages covered with fine mesh wire, unmindful of the probing human eyes that gazed at them, studying them for hours on end. The eyes belonged to the men and women, dressed in white clinical uniform, staff of the world's largest entomological research centre that used to be located on Dundas Street in Belleville. The laboratory in Belleville was as an importing centre to handle beneficial insects brought from foreign countries as an important part of a study for pest and disease control. The institute was a branch...

In the beginning it was just the story of a father trying to make a living while raising his young family. Dawn to dusk solitary hard work operating a milk distributor business out of a simple barn brought success that saw his family business flourishing decades later. The late Frank Finley Reid was the man responsible for the birth of Reid's Dairy in Belleville. His granddaughter, Belleville resident Patricia Burley, tells the tale of the early days when her grandfather was just starting out in running the dairy business, which was founded in 1908. It was then called Sidney Dairy Farms. It operated out of a barn, which she recalled, he kept "as clean as a pin." The name of the dairy business was changed to Reid's dairy soon after. In 1910, Reid built the dairy on Parker Street in Belleville. "Those days he was operating the dairy farm all by himself. His children were too young at the time." Reid collected the milk from area farms each morning ...

The Riverboat House on Bridge St.West Belleville The strident sound of the fire alarm tore through the quiet night sending those inside a local hotel scrambling outside. It turned out to be a false alarm but even as relief washed over those present, the incident turned deadly for one man, a prominent citizen of Belleville. While attempting to run outside, he fell victim to a protruding bayonet and succumbed to his wound hours later. The following morning -- Dec. 20, 1837 -- brought news of the fire and the consequent fatal accident sustained by James McNabb. Elected to the assembly the year before, he was captain of the First Hastings, a local militia that was assembling in Belleville during the Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837. The report in The Chronicle and Gazette Dec. 20 1837, quoted by the late Betsy Dewar Boyce in her book, "The Rebels of Hastings," read, "We regret to hear that J. McNabb, Esquire, of Belleville, has suddenly met his death in the most hear...

Christmas Lights display at Jane Forrester Park, Belleville December 2016 Snow fell steadily the night of Christmas Eve in 1958. It was cold outside. Inside a home in Belleville's east-end, a woman trembled violently while her husband, unable to withstand the shock of the news, collapsed onto the kitchen floor. Their only son was dead, they were told. The nightmare of the car crash that killed their 19-year-old son, Billy, shook the late Don Foster and his wife, Rita, to the core of their being. They thought they would never be able to drag themselves out of the depths of their grief for their son. Sheer will brought them out slowly in the following months and, as the Christmas season approached, an idea was born. That year, the Fosters decided to start a special Christmas tradition in memory of their son to share with children and adults alike in the neighbourhood and the community. The first year was a humble beginning when Billy's father dressed up as Sant...

"It is enough to wear the patience of a preacher," wrote one exasperated farmer to the Weekly Intelligencer back in the 1880s. The writer, a resident of Prince Edward County, was referring to the lengthy waits locals, on both sides of the Bay of Quinte, had to endure for transportation across the water by the only means available at the time -slow moving ferries, which were, in the earlier days, operated by a horse walking the treadmill or using the sail. Steam ferries came in replacing the older carriers, somewhat lightening the misery of the travelers, especially farmers with their produce laden wagons. Nick and Helma Mika, authors of the book 'Mosaic of Belleville' referred to the market report of Dec. 29, 1876 in their book to emphasize Belleville's importance as an outlet for farmer's produce in the late nineteenth century. The report said: "The market today was the largest seen in Belleville for many years. Every available ground space ...