The Belleville Seminary Or What We Now Know As Albert College

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 narrated.

“But we didn’t miss a class. School as usual in improvised classrooms the next day. That was the end of the old school, I guess, and the start of the new one.”

According to an account of the night by W.E.L.Smith, author of the book Albert College, 1857-1957, the school principal of the day, Dr. E. N. Baker, was away visiting his son in Toronto.

“Word was received late at night by the son. He decided not to wake his sleeping father and waited until the morning. At breakfast, Dr. Baker, still unaware of the disaster, began to talk about the college.”

Smith’s account of the conversation between the father and the son went as follows:

“Oh, Dad, we’re sick of hearing about the college. It’s all you can think about or talk about. By the way, what would you do if it burned down?”

The principal thought for a moment, then answered: “I would go out and get a hundred subscriptions of a thousand dollars each. Then I would go to Belleville and double it.”

“Well, Dad, you can get going. Massey Hall burned down last night and I promised to get you up to go back on the first train if you wanted to.”

“Well, there’s not that much hurry. There are a couple of thousand dollars subscriptions I want to get before I go.”

Smith’s tale continued with the principal not leaving Toronto without first getting two thousand-dollar subscriptions, one each from a former principal, Dr. Carman and another friend. By the time he boarded the train back to Toronto it was 11:30 a.m.

The fire that night resulted in much structural damage to the revered institution that has been an important part of Belleville since it was first opened on July 17, 1857 by members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The educational centre, accommodating 150 residents with classrooms for 400, was intended to provide higher education under Christian influence for the young ones in their families.

Just seven years earlier Belleville had become a town. Albert Carman, who became the principal in 1858, wrote his observations of Belleville to his parents:

“Instead of the expanse of level land groves, I gaze upon marshy land covered with cedar…The buildings of the town are generally small and there are few of those magnificent blocks that grace other towns of its importance. Yet the inhabitants are enterprising and liberal…”

Smith, too, noted in his book a picture of Belleville in those days:

“The school began while forests were still being cleared in Hastings and Addington and Frontenac counties. Logs were still being run down the Moira River, the Salmon and the Napanee…”

The early days of the college continued through the following decades against the quaint background of the town provided in 1880 as observed by a writer for the Intelligencer:

“We do not believe there is another town or city in Canada where cows and pigs are allowed the free use of the streets and gardens as in Belleville…”

The institution’s original name was Belleville Seminary but that was changed to Albert College in 1866, the year the school received its university charter and became a University with the power to confer degrees. But when Cobourg’s Victoria College was chosen official university for the newly formed Methodist Church in 1884, Albert College became a private collegiate.

Six years after the fire in 1917, construction began on the building at 160 Dundas St. W in Belleville in 1923. The designer of the new school was Alfred Chapman who had also designed the Royal Ontario Museum, Knox College at the University of Toronto and Rosedale Presbyterian Church.

The old building was eventually demolished. A small section of the building that use to house the college gym remained after the demolition and in 1964 when the present College Hill United Church on 16 North Park St. was built and opened, the old gymnasium became the church hall. A plaque unveiled at the site in October 1982 continues to serve as a reminder of a page in the history of this community.