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. killed 99 on the bridge between Mont-Saint-Hilaire and Belœil-Station 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 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.
Name The origins of the name Belœil have been a matter of debate between two competing theories. One theory argues that the city derives its name from the view from atop the
Mont Saint-Hilaire. According to this theory, in 1693, shortly before receiving the seigneurie from Frontenac, Joseph Hertel and his brother Jean-Baptiste climbed atop the Mont Saint-Hilaire, where, upon seeing the view, Jean-Baptiste Hertel exclaimed "Quel bel œil!", which, in seventeenth-century French, meant "What a beautiful view!". According to this theory, when he was later granted his seigneurie, Joseph Hertel, remembering the exclamation, chose to name it Belœil (beautiful view). The alternate theory states that the name derives from the
like-named town in
Belgium, with a wide variety of possible links between the two towns. While city government of Beloeil refuses to take a position in the debate on the origin of the name, local historian Pierre Lambert has demonstrated that the various proposed links between the Belgian and Quebec cities are very tenuous at best, whereas the "Bel Œil" theory was first put forward by the Campbell family, who (having purchased the seigneurie of Rouville in the nineteenth century) had access to the archives of Jean-Baptiste Hertel. As a result, Lambert argues for "beautiful view" as the probable origin of the name. ==Geography==