History

The wife of the Headmaster of Albert College in Belleville, Mrs. Harriet Lyon Jacques, first proposed a hospital for the town in 1879. At the time, there was no hospital between Kingston and Toronto. Mrs. Jacques organized the women of Belleville into the Women’s Christian Association (W.C.A.) of Belleville, which held its inaugural meeting on November 18, 1879. By 1880, a Constitution was drawn up and a Charter was obtained to build “The Belleville Hospital and Home for the Friendless”. Community fund-raising, spearheaded by the WCA, provided the necessary funds to build the hospital. The cornerstone was laid on September 25, 1884 and a formal opening followed on July 20, 1886. The Belleville Hospital, run by the W.C.A., began with 8 beds and 3 nurses.

The hospital grew, with several additions to the original building. By 1948, it had 194 beds and a School of Nursing (which had been established in 1893) with 45 students. At this point, the hospital was too large and complex for the Women’s Christian Association to manage. They donated it as an outright gift to the City of Belleville.

In 1963, under the Belleville General Hospital Act, joint ownership between the City of Belleville and the County of Hastings was set up. The management, operation and maintenance of the hospital was entrusted to a newly-created Corporation called “The Board of Governors of the Belleville General Hospital”. This reorganization resulted in the decision to build a new hospital on the present site, retaining only the west wing of the old hospital, which is now named the W.C.A. Wing.

The new hospital consisted of the W.C.A. Wing, which had been expanded through the addition of the South Wing in 1909, then again with the addition of the West Wing in 1956, the Quinte Wing (completed in 1969) and the Hastings Block (completed in 1972). In 1994, an area was constructed for a CT Scanner, the purchase of which was funded by a community fund-raising campaign.

In 1983, ownership of the hospital in Bancroft was assumed by Belleville General Hospital.

The hospital became known as “Quinte Health Care Belleville General” upon the amalgamation of the hospitals in Bancroft, Belleville, Picton, and Trenton in November 1998. In 2022, the family of four hospitals was renamed Quinte Health.