Founder Peter Kivetos, a native of Greece, opened the first La Belle Province on Sherbrooke Street East in 1970.

He took the name with permission from a restaurant on Saint Catherine Street where he had worked, which had burned down in the 1960s.

It is not strictly a franchise operation, in 1999 there were six different ownership groups, mostly relatives of Kivetos.

[2] In 2010, two restaurant owners were fined $22,000 for failure to pay the Goods and Services Tax and were charged an additional $45,000 for the amount that they owed.

[3] La Belle Province serves breakfast and lunch, including items such as poutine, club sandwiches, hamburgers, Montreal hot dogs,[4] smoked meat sandwiches, and souvlaki.