You do not have to drive far from Ottawa to find ghost towns. Within a few hours of the capital, the countryside is dotted with former communities that have been reduced to a few foundations, a cemetery, and a name on an old map. The combination of the Ottawa Valley's boom-and-bust lumber economy and the marginal agricultural land of the Canadian Shield created conditions that were perfect for establishing communities and terrible for sustaining them.
The Opeongo Road Communities
The most accessible ghost towns near Ottawa are along the old colonization roads that run northwest from the Ottawa River into the highlands. The Opeongo Road, now County Road 512, was the most ambitious of these projects. Surveyed in the 1850s, it was intended to open up the interior of Renfrew County for settlement.
Free land grants along the road attracted hundreds of families, many of them Irish immigrants who had arrived in Canada during the Great Famine. The land they were given was rocky and thin-soiled, better suited to growing trees than crops. Many families supplemented their farming with winter work in the lumber camps, but when the timber industry declined, the economic foundation of these communities collapsed.
Places like Brudenell, Rockingham, and Clontarf were once active villages with schools, churches, and general stores. Today they exist in various states of decline. Some are still inhabited crossroads with a handful of houses. Others have vanished almost entirely. Driving the Opeongo Line, you pass through long stretches of forest that were once cleared farmland, the old stone fences still visible among the trees.
Within a few hours of Ottawa, abandoned communities and former settlements dot the countryside.
Foymount
Foymount, about two hours west of Ottawa, is one of the most unusual ghost towns in the region. Originally a small farming community, it was transformed during the Cold War when the RCAF built a radar station there as part of the Pinetree Line. The station, CFS Foymount, operated from 1952 to 1974, and the military presence turned the village into a bustling community with modern amenities.
When the radar station closed, the village largely emptied out. The military buildings stood abandoned for decades, their Cold War-era radar domes and utilitarian architecture slowly deteriorating. Foymount sits near the highest point in the settled part of Ontario, and on a clear day the views from the former station site are remarkable. The village has attracted some new residents in recent years, but the abandoned military infrastructure remains its most distinctive feature.
The Lost Villages of the St. Lawrence
Further south, along the St. Lawrence River near Cornwall, a different kind of ghost town exists. When the St. Lawrence Seaway was constructed in the 1950s, several villages were deliberately flooded to create the shipping channel and power reservoir. Aultsville, Farran's Point, Dickinson's Landing, Wales, Moulinette, and Mille Roches were all destroyed.
These were not marginal communities. They were prosperous villages with histories stretching back to the Loyalist settlement of the late eighteenth century. Their destruction was controversial and remains a sore point in the region. The Lost Villages Museum near Long Sault preserves some of the relocated buildings, and at low water, foundations and artifacts from the flooded villages are occasionally visible.
Shield Edge Communities
The transition zone between the limestone plain of Eastern Ontario and the Canadian Shield is rich in abandoned communities. Towns like Denbigh, Plevna, and Cloyne sit on or near this edge, and the back roads around them pass through terrain that was once more populated than it is today.
The K&P Railway once connected many of these communities to Kingston and the south. When the railway was abandoned, the communities it served lost their connection to markets and services. Some survived the transition to road-based transportation. Others did not.
For those based in Ottawa looking for a day trip, the drive south toward Sharbot Lake and Frontenac County offers excellent opportunities to explore forgotten places. The landscape is beautiful, the history is rich, and the roads are quiet enough to stop and investigate without holding up traffic.