Ontario Exploration started as a simple curiosity. Driving the back roads of the Ottawa Valley, passing overgrown foundations and rusting machinery half-hidden in the trees, it became clear that the province was full of places most people never notice. Places that once mattered enormously to the people who lived and worked there, now slowly being reclaimed by the forest.
This project is an attempt to document some of those places before they vanish entirely. Not every abandoned building is historically significant, and not every ghost town has a dramatic story behind its decline. But taken together, they form a portrait of Ontario that the tourism brochures tend to leave out: a province shaped as much by failure, hardship, and abandonment as by success and growth.
What We Do
We research and visit abandoned places across Ontario, from the well-documented ghost towns of the mining north to the forgotten homestead clearings of the Canadian Shield. We photograph what remains, dig into the history where records exist, and try to piece together the stories of places that have largely been forgotten.
Our coverage focuses on several areas:
- Abandoned structures — mills, factories, farmsteads, schools, churches, and homes left behind when communities moved on
- Ghost towns — former settlements that have been abandoned or reduced to a handful of residents
- Industrial heritage — the remains of the industries that built Ontario: lumber, mining, rail, and manufacturing
- Forgotten infrastructure — old highways, abandoned rail lines, decommissioned bridges, and other infrastructure left behind by progress
- Unusual destinations — odd roadside attractions, overlooked landmarks, and places that deserve more attention than they get
Our Approach
We are not urban explorers in the typical sense. We do not break into buildings, and we do not encourage trespassing. Many of the places we document can be observed and photographed from public roads, trails, and waterways. Where access requires permission, we seek it. Where a site is clearly dangerous or private, we say so.
We take the ethics of exploration seriously. Ontario's Trespass to Property Act is straightforward, and we believe that respecting property rights is not just a legal obligation but a practical one. Explorers who trespass and vandalize are the reason so many interesting sites get demolished or locked up. We would rather document a building from the road than contribute to its destruction.
Many of Ontario's forgotten places are accessible only by overgrown trails and old logging roads.
Regional Focus
While we cover all of Ontario, much of our work has focused on the Ottawa Valley and Eastern Ontario. These regions have an especially rich and visible history of resource extraction, settlement, and abandonment. The valley's lumber heritage left behind a remarkable landscape of ruins, from massive stone mill foundations to entire abandoned villages.
We are gradually expanding our coverage to include Georgian Bay, the Near North, and other parts of the province. If you know of a forgotten place that deserves documentation, we are always interested in hearing about it.
Preservation, Not Promotion
We are deliberate about what we share and how we share it. We do not publish precise GPS coordinates for sensitive sites. We do not share locations where increased foot traffic could cause harm to fragile structures or disturb private landowners. Some places are better left unfound by the general public, and we respect that.
Our goal is preservation through documentation. Photographs and written records may be all that remain of these places in another generation. If our work helps even a few people appreciate the history hiding in their own backyards, it will have been worthwhile.