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.

[12][13][14][15] 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.

[15][16][17][18] 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.

This second hamlet attracted upper-class vacationers from Montreal, who built summer homes along the Richelieu river with views of the mountain.

[21] 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.

[22][23] 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.

The city remained largely isolated from Montreal, except by train, owing to poorly organized road connections.

According to this theory, when he was later granted his seigneurie, Joseph Hertel, remembering the exclamation, chose to name it Belœil (beautiful view).

[9] 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.

Just across the Richelieu river, however, the isolated Mont Saint-Hilaire, which was known as Mount Belœil for most of the nineteenth century, dominates the regional landscape with its 414 metres (1,358 ft).

[28] Beloeil is part of a broader agglomeration of over forty thousand inhabitants, formed by four towns spread out on the sides of the Richelieu River.

It represents the northwestern portion of the agglomeration and is separated from Mont Saint-Hilaire (northeastern) and Otterburn Park (southeastern) only by the Richlieu river, while Bernard-Pilon street (Quebec Route 229) forms the limit between Beloeil and McMasterville (southwestern).

Most of the urban portion of the city as it exists today lies within the area delimited by Bernard-Pilon Street to the south, the Richelieu river to the east, Yvon-L'Heureux Boulevard to the west, and Quebec Autoroute 20 to the north.

[8][29] Historically, Belœil grew as two separate hamlets, one around the Saint-Mathieu-de-Belœil parish church and the other around the train station.

Although the inland growth of the town starting in the 1950s has linked the two hamlets into a single city, the historical neighborhoods still exist, as the Vieux-Belœil (English "Old Belœil"), around the Saint-Mathieu Church at the meeting of the Richelieu and Saint-Jean-Baptiste streets, and Belœil-Station by the railway and along the shores of the river further south, although much of the territory of Belœil-Station seceded in 1917 to form the municipality of McMasterville.

[30][33] The primary industries in terms of employment are the health care and social assistance (13.6%), retail trade (12.8%), manufacturing (9.9%), and construction (9.4%).

[33] In February 2005, Beloeil adopted a bylaw limiting the size of commerce on its territory to no more than 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2).

CIT de la Vallée du Richelieu offers a bus service linking Saint-Hyacinthe to Longueuil by way of Beloeil along route 116.

Among those who did pursue post-secondary education, 3,310 specialized in business, management and public administration, and 2,515 in architecture, engineering, and related trades.