The Delhi Belgian Club The Belgians of Delhi

Belgian families were part of the new belt from its early years. The historian Jonathan McQuarrie notes that many of the tenant farmers on Norfolk’s early tobacco plantations were immigrants from Belgium and Hungary.S3

According to the club’s own history, the Belgian Club grew out of a dramatic club formed in 1943, led by Gerard VandenBussche, a prominent Delhi man who then ran four farms. Belgians in and around Delhi started it to raise money during the war years.S9

The club then built a hall of its own. The foundation was poured on a cleared bush lot in 1946, shares were sold at $100 each, the building was in use for parties and meetings by 1947, and the Belgian Hall officially opened in 1948.S9

For the next seventy years it was a centre of Belgian life in Delhi: archery, feather bowling, pigeon racing, darts and cards, weddings and dances, and decades of concerts that made it part of southwestern Ontario’s music scene. Seating 640 in its main hall, it was the largest banquet hall in the area.S9 Club teams joined the town’s Harvest Festival too, with a parade float and a team in the tobacco hand-tying competition in 2008.S9

The club closed in 2017. The property was sold in December 2018, and the shareholders voted to dissolve the corporation in May 2019.S9

1. 1943A dramatic club is formed to raise money in the war years
2. 1948The Belgian Hall officially opens
3. 2017The club closes after nearly seventy years