Ontario has hundreds of ghost towns, though most are not the weathered-wooden-building kind you see in Western movies. Ontario ghost towns are foundations in the forest, overgrown clearings where roads used to meet, cemeteries with no community around them, and the occasional standing structure slowly losing its roof to time and neglect. They exist because Ontario's settlement history was full of optimism that the landscape did not always support.
Why Ontario Has Ghost Towns
Three forces created most of Ontario's ghost towns: resource extraction (mining and logging), failed agricultural colonization, and infrastructure projects that drowned communities.
Resource towns died when the resource ran out or prices dropped. The Near North is full of mining ghost towns from the Cobalt silver rush and subsequent gold rushes. Logging communities throughout the Ottawa Valley emptied when the timber was gone.
Agricultural communities failed because settlers were encouraged to farm land that could not sustain farming. The Canadian Shield across central Ontario has thin, acidic soil over granite bedrock. Government colonization roads like the Opeongo Road and the Addington Road brought hopeful families into this terrain in the 1850s-1870s. Most gave up within a generation. Their cleared fields are now second-growth forest, and their farmsteads are foundations and stone fences disappearing into the bush.
Drowned communities are the most dramatic category. The Lost Villages of the St. Lawrence, destroyed by the Seaway project in 1958, are the best known, but smaller dam projects elsewhere in the province also submerged communities and infrastructure.
Notable Ghost Towns
Balaclava (Ottawa Valley)
A former sawmill town on the Madawaska River, about 90 minutes west of Ottawa. Still has standing structures including the old mill foundation and general store. Partially on private property. The cemetery tells the story of the town's rise and fall through headstone dates. This is probably the most accessible and photogenic ghost town in the Ottawa Valley.
Burchell Lake (Near North)
A mining company town built in the 1960s near Thunder Bay, abandoned in the 1980s when the iron mine closed. Unlike most Ontario ghost towns, Burchell Lake has intact mid-century houses, a school, and infrastructure — a frozen snapshot of a 1960s community. It is remote (several hours from any major centre) and on mining company land.
Depot Harbour (Georgian Bay)
The ghost of J.R. Booth's Great Lakes port on Parry Island. Massive concrete foundations from grain elevators and dock structures remain. On Wasauksing First Nation land — permission required. The scale of the ruins is extraordinary for an Ontario ghost town.
The Lost Villages (Eastern Ontario)
Nine communities drowned by the St. Lawrence Seaway project in 1958. Foundations visible at low water. The Lost Villages Museum preserves relocated buildings and tells the story. This is less an exploration site and more a memorial landscape.
Foymount (Ottawa Valley)
A Cold War radar station community south of Petawawa. CFS Foymount operated 1952-1974. When the station closed, the community hollowed out. Radar building remnants on private property. The town still has a few residents but is a shadow of its Cold War peak.
Finding Ghost Towns
The most reliable method is comparing historical township maps (available through Archives Ontario) with current maps. Communities that appear on old maps but not current ones are your candidates. Cemetery locations are particularly useful — cemeteries persist long after the communities they served have vanished, and Ontario maintains a cemetery registry. If you find a cemetery in the middle of nowhere, there was once a community around it.
The Ghost Towns of Ontario website and the book "Ghost Towns of Ontario" by Ron Brown are both useful starting points, though Brown's coverage favours the more dramatic sites over the subtle forest-foundations type.