page_title: Beloeil, Quebec
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Beloeil, Quebec / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Railway accident at Beloeil, June 29, 1864. Français&#160;: Catastrophe ferroviaire à Belœil, le 29 juin 1864
context_page_description: Beloeil is an off-island suburb of Montreal, located in southwestern Quebec, Canada on the Richelieu River, 32 kilometres east of Montreal. According to the official Commission de toponymie du Québec, the name is written Belœil with an oe ligature; however, other sources avoid the ligature, including the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and the town's own official website.
  The population as of the Canada 2011 Census was 20,783. It is part of the Regional County Municipality of La Vallée-du-Richelieu, within the Administrative Region of Montérégie. It occupies the west shore of the Richelieu River in front of the Mont Saint-Hilaire. Along with the municipality of McMasterville to the immediate south of Beloeil, and the cities of Mont-Saint-Hilaire and Otterburn Park on the eastern bank of the Richelieu, Beloeil forms an unbroken urban area of over 50,796 inhabitants, which is part of Greater Montreal.
  Belœil was created as a village in 1903 and became a ville in 1914, but can trace its history through the parish of Saint-Mathieu-de-Belœil, established in 1772, and the seigneurie de Belœil, founded in 1694.
context_section_description: Although there has been evidence found of a prior indigenous peoples' presence along the Richelieu River, none of it has been found on the territory of Beloeil. Development of the region in the first several decades after the arrival of Europeans in the region was slow, owing to the geographic situation of the Richelieu, which made it a primary avenue of attack from New York toward New France.
  The recorded history of Belœil began on 18 January 1694 when Governor Louis de Buade de Frontenac granted Joseph Hertel a seigneurie along the shores of the Richelieu River, which Hertel called the Seigneurie de Belœil. Hertel, unwilling to abandon his military activities, such as the 1704 Raid on Deerfield, never developed the seigneurie, and sold it in 1711 to Charles le Moyne de Longueuil, Baron de Longueuil, whose seigneurie of Longueuil neighboured that of Belœil. Finally, after failed attempts in 1711 and 1723, permanent settlement began in 1725, with dwellers coming mostly from the island of Montreal or from seigneuries along the Saint Lawrence River near Montreal. The low level of development forced local inhabitants to rely on the mission at Fort Chambly, several hours to the south, for their religious needs, and the first mill did not open until the early 1760s.
  By 1768, however, the local population had grown to the point where a request to the Bishop of Quebec for the establishment of a mission was successful. In 1772, a presbytery-chapel was completed, and the registry of the parish of Saint-Mathieu-de-Belœil, was opened. The parish received its first resident priest the next year, then, in 1775, François Noiseux became local priest and, under his guidance and with his financing, the parish would build its first church from 1784 to 1787. The parish was canonically erected in 1832 and, after the first half of the nineteenth century saw the growth of a small hamlet around the church, became a parish municipality in 1855. The Saint-Mathieu Church burned and was rebuilt twice (in 1817 and 1895); the third one still stands.
  Meanwhile, on 28 December 1848, the portion of the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad linking Montreal to Saint-Hyacinthe opened, passing about two kilometres (1.2 mi) south of the church. A station was built, and a second hamlet, Belœil-Station, soon grew around it. This second hamlet attracted upper-class vacationers from Montreal, who built summer homes along the Richelieu river with views of the mountain. The railway bridge between Belœil-Station and Mont-Saint-Hilaire was, in 1864, the site of the worst train disaster in the history of Canada when a passenger train plunged off the open bridge into the Richelieu river, killing 99. In 1878, industrialization began in Belœil when the Hamilton Powder Company established an explosives factory a little to the south of Belœil-Station, in what would eventually become McMasterville.
  In 1903, the two hamlets (around the Church and Belœil-Station), dissatisfied with the aqueduct service in the parish municipality of Saint-Mathieu-de-Belœil, requested and were granted permission to become the village of Belœil, whose population reached nearly 700 inhabitants in 1911. By 1914, the village had grown further, sufficiently so to become the ville (city) of Belœil. Over these early years, the city developed its aqueduct and electricity networks. The city remained largely isolated from Montreal, except by train, owing to poorly organized road connections. The opening, in 1940, of the then-Route 9, today Quebec route 116, provided a first direct link to Montreal and, by the 1950s, the population had grown to nearly 6,000 inhabitants, and the two hamlets had grown into a single town. The construction, in 1964, of the Quebec Autoroute 20 freeway linking Montreal to Quebec and passing just north of Beloeil, the population of Beloeil tripled over the next three decades as it became part of the Montreal suburbs.
caption: On 29 June 1864, the worst train disaster in the history of Canada killed 99 on the bridge between Mont-Saint-Hilaire and Belœil-Station
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