BELLEVILLE


Meaning of BELLEVILLE in English

city, seat (1792) of Hastings county, southeastern Ontario, Canada, on the Bay of Quinte, an inlet of Lake Ontario, at the mouth of the Moira River. The site was first visited by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1615; it was settled after 1776 by Loyalists from the United States and named Meyers' Creek for John Meyers, an early gristmill operator. In 1816 the city was renamed Belleville in honour of Arabella Gore, wife of Francis Gore, lieutenant governor of Upper Canada. Reached by the railroad in 1855, it soon became an important terminal and service centre. Economic activities include dairying (especially cheese making), meat-packing, and the manufacture of cement, conveyor machinery, plastics, and electronic equipment. Belleville is also a vacation resort and the site of Albert College (founded in 1854), the Loyalist College of Applied Arts and Technology, and a school for the deaf. Both national transcontinental railroads and the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, which links Windsor, Toronto (113 miles west), and Montreal (232 miles east), serve the city. Inc. town, 1850; city, 1877. Pop. (1991) 37,243. city, seat (1814) of St. Clair county, southwestern Illinois, U.S., adjoining East St. Louis. Located on bluffs forming the eastern rim of a floodplain along the Mississippi River, it was founded in 1814 and given the French name for "beautiful town." Originally it was an agricultural centre, but by the mid-1850s, after the opening of coal mines in the vicinity and the resulting influx of German immigrants, its economy became diversified, with coal mining and manufacturing (beverages and cooking and heating equipment) as the main factors. Scott Air Force Base (1917) is just east. The National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows (1958) is located nearby. Belleville Area (junior) College was established in 1946. Inc. town, 1819; city, 1850. Pop. (1991 est.) 43,205.

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