Qualla: Kapellen

Kapellen: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ken Bell, Public domain. On 4 October 1944, a Quebec infantry battalion called Les Fusiliers Mont-Royal moved into Kapellen and the German occupation ended. The villagers, who had endured forced labour drafts, Spanish flu, an interwar depression, and five years of Nazi rule, came out of their houses. The Fusiliers were French-speaking Canadians fighting their way across northern Belgium toward the great prize of Antwerp's port. Some of them spoke a kind of French the older Kapellen residents could just about follow. They handed out chocolate and cigarettes and moved on north. A monument to the fallen still stands in the village, and on the same date every year the small town remembers a liberation that arrived in Quebecois accents.

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Image: Ken Bell | Public domain

Kapellen: Hoboniaand Hoghescote

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Tbc assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0. Kapellen the municipality is younger than Kapellen the place. The first documentary trace of one of its neighbourhoods, Hoogboom, appears in a charter of 1267 under the name Hobonia. The current centre shows up a decade later as Hoghescote. The Zilverenhoek corner of town, only s...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Tbc assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Kapellen: What the Railway Brought

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Isabel Janaert, CC0. The railway changed everything. In 1853 the line from Antwerp to Rotterdam was pushed through the Campine, and on its opening in 1854 the first steam train pulled into Kapellen station. The journey to Antwerp suddenly became a matter of minutes. Wealthy Antwerp merchants, doctors...

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Image: Isabel Janaert | CC0

Kapellen: Two Wars, Two Recoveries

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smiley.toerist, CC BY-SA 4.0. Kapellen has been broken open by history more than once. During the Eighty Years' War, in the convulsions that followed the Fall of Antwerp in 1585, the parish was devastated. Ninety percent of the houses were destroyed and almost every important building burned. The Twelve Years...

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Image: Smiley.toerist | CC BY-SA 4.0

Kapellen: Where Mathieu van der Poel Grew Up

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Johan Bakker, CC BY-SA 3.0. For a town of its size, Kapellen has produced an outsized roster of public figures. The Bettens siblings, Sam and Gert, anchor the long-running Belgian rock band K's Choice. Mathieu van der Poel, one of the great cyclists of his generation, world champion in road, cyclocross and ...

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Image: Johan Bakker | CC BY-SA 3.0