Ontario is one of the most developed provinces in Canada, yet drive any back road for long enough and you will find abandoned places. Crumbling farmhouses standing alone in overgrown fields. Concrete foundations poking through the underbrush where a sawmill once ran three shifts. Stone walls rising from the forest floor, remnants of settlements that thrived a century ago and vanished within a generation.
The province's abandoned places are not concentrated in one region or one era. They span the entire breadth of Ontario's history, from the earliest European settlement through to the industrial decline of the late twentieth century. Each one tells a different story, but they share a common thread: someone once invested everything they had in making a go of it, and eventually the land, the economy, or simple bad luck won out.
The Scale of Abandonment
It is difficult to estimate how many abandoned structures exist in Ontario. The province covers more than a million square kilometres, and outside the populated southern corridor, much of that land was settled and then abandoned during various boom-and-bust cycles. The timber industry alone created hundreds of temporary communities in the Ottawa Valley and across the Canadian Shield, most of which disappeared when the trees ran out.
Mining brought another wave of settlement and abandonment. Northern Ontario is dotted with ghost towns that sprang up around mineral discoveries and collapsed when the ore was exhausted or the price dropped. Towns like Burchell Lake, Nicholson, and Jackfish were once home to hundreds of families. Today they are empty, their buildings slowly falling in on themselves.
An abandoned structure slowly being reclaimed by the surrounding forest, a common sight on Ontario's back roads.
Agricultural Abandonment
Some of the most poignant abandoned places in Ontario are the old farmsteads of the Canadian Shield. In the nineteenth century, settlers pushed north into land that was often poorly suited to agriculture. The rocky, thin soil of the Shield could support a family garden but rarely produced enough for a commercial farm. Families hung on for years, sometimes generations, before finally giving up.
In Eastern Ontario, you can still find the stone fences that these settlers built, running through mature forest that has grown up since the fields were abandoned. Fruit trees still bloom in spring on properties where no house has stood for half a century. Root cellars collapse into themselves, their fieldstone walls slowly returning to the earth they were pulled from.
The Opeongo Road, one of Ontario's original colonization roads, was cut through the bush north of the Ottawa River in the 1850s to encourage settlement. Many of the families who took up land along it were gone within a decade, defeated by the soil and the isolation. The road itself is still there, now a quiet rural highway, but the settlements it was meant to serve are mostly gone.
Industrial Remains
Ontario's industrial abandonment is more recent and often more dramatic. The province was once home to a vast network of small manufacturers, processing plants, and resource extraction operations. As the economy shifted, many of these operations closed, leaving behind buildings that were too expensive to demolish and too contaminated to repurpose.
The industrial remnants of Eastern Ontario are particularly visible. Mill towns along the Rideau, Trent, and Ottawa rivers once powered the provincial economy. Their massive stone and brick buildings were built to last centuries. Many still stand, even as the towns around them have shrunk to a fraction of their former size.
Further north, the mining industry left behind a different kind of abandonment. Open pit mines filled with water, becoming turquoise lakes surrounded by barren tailings. Headframes and processing plants stand rusting in the boreal forest. Entire company towns were simply walked away from when the mine closed.
Finding Abandoned Places
The most rewarding way to find abandoned places in Ontario is simply to drive the back roads and pay attention. Topographic maps, both current and historical, are invaluable. Comparing a modern map with one from fifty or a hundred years ago will reveal dozens of former communities, roads, and structures that no longer exist.
County and township histories, many of which are available through local libraries and archives, often document communities that have since vanished. Old photographs can help identify what a site looked like in its prime, making it easier to interpret the ruins you find.
A word of caution: not every abandoned building is safe or legal to enter. Many are on private land, and Ontario's Trespass to Property Act is clear about the consequences of unauthorized entry. Structures that have been abandoned for decades are often structurally unsound. Floors collapse, roofs fall in, and the debris inside can be hazardous. We strongly recommend reading our safety guide before visiting any abandoned site.