Ghost Towns of Ontario: A Field Guide

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Like two previous books by Ron Brown, Toronto’s Lost Villages and
Vanished Villages, this book celebrates once-thriving Ontario
communities that are no longer with us. Some are honest-to-goodness
derelict communities with boarded-up storefronts and streets fading into
the weeds. Others, like Algoma Mills, are nothing more than a memory or
a quaint name on an old map.

The author loves them all. He is ebullient when describing these
communities in their glory days, but caustic when discussing greedy
developers or short-sighted politicians who have allowed heritage
buildings to be needlessly demolished. Like its two predecessors, this
volume contains a few minor production faults, such as dangling text or
the use of the wrong homonym (e.g., “peel” instead of “peal”),
but these deficiencies do not seriously affect the content.

Brown combines his passion for history with a raconteur’s knack for
telling a good tale. Most ghost towns featured in the book are
accompanied by either vintage or contemporary photos of the town. Unlike
Toronto’s lost villages, most of which were swallowed by sprawling
development, these rural Ontario hamlets tended to become “ghosted”
after the primary natural resource ran out or after the local railway
spur shut down. For would-be visitors, Brown provides exact government
map coordinates and road directions if possible (some communities can be
reached only by boat or railway). Sadly, little remains of some places
other than a few crumbling foundations and an occasional derelict car.
For those particular bygone burgs, Brown’s words will perhaps be the
final memorial.