Belleville

[ShonTron]

Belleville (pop 45,000) really is the start of Eastern Ontario, and in my opinion, is a very lovely town. Though driving by on the 401 or even riding on the VIA train, it would be hard to tell. By the 401, Belleville has a huge concentration of retail, including a large mall, plus several big box complexes spread out on both sides of the 401, then a long row of fast food and motels before entering the more charming older city.

The downtown is doing okay, with independant restaurants, bars, new and used bookstores, and even a fair trade cafe propping it up along with the banks, Shoppers Drug and Giant Tiger. The city hall is lovely, with a fairly busy farmer's market behind. The harbourfront is a bit isolated, further south.

If you think Toronto's EMS and Fire is enough, in Belleville, everything has "Support Our Troops", even the bus signs. The building next to it is the Belleville Intellegencer paper.

Further north on Front Street, the streetscape is less pretty. I hate the once-popular trend of covering Victorian and Edwardian facades with black metal siding.

United (Presby), Anglican and Catholic churches one block from downtown on a bit of a hill, giving their spires more prominance.

Some lovely houses and a public rose garden on the wealthier south-east side of town.

The VIA station is an original 1850s GTR station.

The area around the station looks a bit rough.

Waterfront and Bay Bridge.

Over the Bay Bridge to lovely picton and the Glenora Ferry.

 

[Hydrogen]

Great images. Thanks.

If you have any of Prince Edward County, please post them. Love that area.

 

[flar]

Thanks for posting, Eastern Ontario is a mystery to me, I've only driven past Belleville. Nice rows of buildings downtown, it looks very urban. The CIBC looks familiar, I think there's a very similar CIBC building in some other town.

 

[AnarchoSocialist]

Good series Sean. That is a pretty fair representation of the city.

Belleville (and most Eastern Ontario cities with the exception of Kingston) are remarkable for how perfectly stagnant they have been. Belleville today looks almost exactly like Belleville 20 years ago. It is a nice little town though. Very modest, and working class. Its location is sort of unfortunate in that in that travel an hour in just about any direction and you end up some place with more appeal to a casual visitor (Toronto, Sandbanks, Kingston).

The Train station itself is quite nice, though the area it is in make waiting for a train there a rather boring and uninteresting experience.

 

[JasonParis]

Wow, what a shame! At least what's under there is sort of being protected.

Nit-picking, but...

United (Presby)

...aren't the same thing. The 1925 merger didn't include all Presbyterian churches, so it is considered a separate denomination.

 

[ShonTron]

In this case it is - it's a United Church, but originally was a Presby (you could tell by the stone signage from construction). I just found it interesting how all three limestone churches all picked the same area to perch over the town.

Take that, nit-picker!

 

[Hipster Duck]

For me, quintessential "Eastern Ontario" always began in Port Hope. The towns of E. Ontario, in general, have more architectural floss than similar-sized cities in Southwestern Ontario and had more "city elements": a few rowhouses, tall factories, a really stately Victorian civic building like Market Hall in Peterborough (central Ontario never really existed for me), Victoria Hall in Cobourg, or that mini St. Pancras station city hall in Belleville that you've shown here.

It's a loose connection, but Eastern Ontario feels more at home among mill towns of the US Northeast: Pennsylvania and upstate NY, while SW Ontario is more aligned with the eastern Midwest: Michigan and Ohio.

 

[Long Island Mike]

Belleville,Ontario - interesting pix

ST: Good pictures of Belleville-I find that even the area near the RR station that looked a little rough around the edges did not look so bad after all. Southern Ontario has as a whole neat small cities with their compact downtowns-people never abandoned small urban areas the way people did in cases in the US. HD: Your overview is correct to me that E ONT is like NY and PA and SW ONT is like Michigan and Ohio is pretty much right on to me. An example that I will add is that WNY W of Rochester is basically midwestern in everything to physical appearance to language accent. From Syracuse on E NYS takes on a different look and becomes much more northeastern. In closing-good tour! LI MIKE

 

[MisterF]

Hipster Duck - I've noticed the same thing. Growing up in what you'd call Eastern Ontario (I'd call it Central Ontario), I find the historic architecture in Southwestern Ontario a bit underwhelming. Not to mention that a lot of the villages and towns have had all their commercial buildings converted to residential, while east of Toronto it's more often the opposite. Obviously there are exceptions - places like St. Mary's and Cambridge have amazing old architecture. East of Toronto the best historic architecture tends to be along the lakeshore between Bowmanville and Kingston. In other areas it's more hit and miss.

If you go farther east, east of Ottawa, there's a lot more Quebec influence. The towns there have larger downtowns, but they're not as concentrated and dense, and brick is a lot less common. Plus you'll see largely francophone communities surprisingly far from the border.

 

[ShonTron]

East of Toronto the best historic architecture tends to be along the lakeshore between Bowmanville and Kingston. In other areas it's more hit and miss.

I agree. Colbourne is quite interesting, feels very New England, as does Picton. Brockville is charming, but Cornwall was a big disappointment, and probably qualifies as the ugliest town or city in Eastern Ontario. Very little to redeem itself either, not even a lovely courthouse or railway station or a nice riverfront. Sarnia even beats it.

Cambridge, like Peterborough, feels more like "Central" Ontario to me rather than Western Ontario.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Mister F,

You and I probably grew up in the same town: Peterborough. It's central Ontario, all right, but architecturally I always equated it with the eastern part of the province. Maybe it's the stateliness of George street as it is anchored between the towers of the YMCA and Market Hall. Maybe it's the size of some of the 100 year-old industrial complexes around town. Growing up there, I never thought about how impressive a sight the Quaker Oats factory is on the Otonabee river, for example. The GE complex is also humongous by any city's standards and the old Westclox factory (Times Square) up on the hill in E. City is pure New England.

More than any other city in Ontario, Peterborough gives off the vibe of having been very important at one time. The whole city feels like it peaked in 1904 and then stood frozen in time, but not in a decayed way.

 

[Edward Skira]

If you think Toronto's EMS and Fire is enough, in Belleville, everything has "Support Our Troops", even the bus signs. The building next to it is the Belleville Intellegencer paper.

Well they are really close to the airforce base where the dead soldiers are brought back from Afganistan. It certainly impacts them in a more direct way.

 

[MisterF]

I agree. Colbourne is quite interesting, feels very New England, as does Picton. Brockville is charming, but Cornwall was a big disappointment, and probably qualifies as the ugliest town or city in Eastern Ontario. Very little to redeem itself either, not even a lovely courthouse or railway station or a nice riverfront. Sarnia even beats it.

Yeah, Cornwall sucks. It reminds me of Oshawa actually, an industrial town that's gone nowhere in the last 40 years. I do like the riverfront though. There's a long park along the river, next to downtown along where the old Cornwall Canal was, with the bridge over river as a pretty dramatic backdrop. Apparently there's another shopping area called Le Village that I totally missed when I as there.

Mister F,

You and I probably grew up in the same town: Peterborough. It's central Ontario, all right, but architecturally I always equated it with the eastern part of the province. Maybe it's the stateliness of George street as it is anchored between the towers of the YMCA and Market Hall. Maybe it's the size of some of the 100 year-old industrial complexes around town. Growing up there, I never thought about how impressive a sight the Quaker Oats factory is on the Otonabee river, for example. The GE complex is also humongous by any city's standards and the old Westclox factory (Times Square) up on the hill in E. City is pure New England.

More than any other city in Ontario, Peterborough gives off the vibe of having been very important at one time. The whole city feels like it peaked in 1904 and then stood frozen in time, but not in a decayed way.

Yup, I grew up in Peterborough. Were you Alchemist on the old forum? Funny you mention Westclox, I went to King George across the street until grade 3. I still have friends who live in that neighbourhood. You're right, there's a lot of 1800s brick buildings downtown and in the old industrial areas. The good thing about GE and Quaker Oats is that they're both stable, and expanding in GE's case, so we won't be seeing Kitchener-style abandonment anytime soon. Probably the best thing Peterborough did was get Trent University back in the 60s - the students are a big part of why downtown is doing so well.

 

[Hipster Duck]

Yes, I was Alchemist on the old forum. I went to Prince of Wales just across the street from where GE looms and that factory was big enough to mark the outer limits of my biking territory until I was about 8 or 9.

I didn't know that GE was hiring. It seems like it's been downsizing for fifty years. Growing up, I used to make fun of Ptbo a lot - and there are still certain things like those low budget commercials on CHEX television that kind of embarass me - but it's a fun and extremely cheap city to live in. If I had a job there, I'd move in a heartbeat.

 

[ShonTron]

Yeah, Cornwall sucks. It reminds me of Oshawa actually, an industrial town that's gone nowhere in the last 40 years. I do like the riverfront though. There's a long park along the river, next to downtown along where the old Cornwall Canal was, with the bridge over river as a pretty dramatic backdrop. Apparently there's another shopping area called Le Village that I totally missed when I as there.

Le Village is a bit more charming than its awful downtown, as it has a Franco-Ontarien presence, but it's very small and not that interesting, unfortunately. I had the chance to explore the town when I was at a conference at the NavCan centre.

Sarnia was the closest thing to Cornwall I can think of, actually, but Sarnia's economy is doing better. Its downtown is marred by a early 1980s downtown shopping mall too, but it competed against the bigger Lambton Mall, and had Eaton's as its main tenant. Bayside Mall blows more than Cornwall Square, which is the only mall in town.