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Published: September 28th 2010
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I've just returned from my latest northern adventure, and I don't think I've ever been as excited to write a blog post as I am for this one. The journey my Thunder Bay friends and I undertook today was not one related to my work, nor was it something on my list of things I wanted to do in Thunder Bay (until fairly recently anyways). By pure chance, I just happened to stumble upon the location of something quite special.
My
previous blog post used Oba and Hillsport as two examples of northern life in the absence of industry- both towns had "peaked" as railway hubs and, as the importance of the railroad began to shrink, so did the towns. What follows is an account of a visit to a place where this process has reached its logical conclusion: Burchell Lake.
Burchell Lake is a Ghost Town.
Some quick research indicates that the town of Burchell Lake was constructed solely to house the families of copper miners, and when the copper mine was no longer profitable, there was no need for the town to exist. The miners, the foremen and supervisors, their wives and children, the teachers and store clerks and police...
everyone in the town packed up and left. Located about an hour outside of Thunder Bay, I knew the instant I heard its story that I absolutely
had to visit this place... and I am lucky enough to have found a group of like-minded explorers who wanted to come along for the ride.
I have always been interested in (and have occasionally been able to practice) Urban Exploration. Urban Exploration (or UrbEx) is exactly what it sounds like: visiting abandoned buildings not to loot or vandalize, but simply to see what is there. Having grown up exploring the odd abandoned building in Oakville, you can imagine the allure that an entire abandoned town held.
The town is not exactly easy to find, but despite a minor navigation setback this works out very much to our advantage, as vandalism of the buildings has been kept to a minimum. The garage is the first building we stumble upon, and upon spotting it we can hardly contain our excitement. The rest of the town is not far beyond- small houses peek out from behind the trees and beg to be explored.
The houses are all nearly identical inside, with the
only noticeable difference being that some have basements. The interiors are all unexpectedly preserved- I'd read that Burchell was one of the least-disturbed ghost towns in Canada, but I was shocked at the lack of graffiti. There were hardly any signs of visitors since the closing of the town.
The pictures I've posted (taken by myself and my photographer roommate Dan) will likely explain better than I can, but the landscape was completely surreal. An overgrown street lined with overgrown dwellings. The pastel paints and sidings have mostly retained their colour, but in the 50-odd years since this place was inhabited the plants have definitely begun to retake the town. I am torn between whether I am more shocked at how well the houses have withstood 50 years without owners, or how quickly nature can rebound if we let it. Some of the houses are in fairly good shape, disregarding the broken windows and floor tiles, and some are in the midst of being collapsed by the birches that have taken root in the foundations. It is truly amazing how quickly everything would go to shit without us around to keep applying coats of paint.
A perfect example
of this is what we later deemed to be the local general store, although by now it is hardly discernible as anything but a rotting ruin. What was once the largest building in the town is now a heap of moss with the odd support still standing. We have to be careful as we walk into the remains, lest our feet fall through the rotting roof. Inside in the areas still standing, some items are still identifiable- the odd table or chair, or some hanging lamps which, oddly enough, have
all had their broken light bulbs replaced with carefully-placed wasp nests. I am not sure why this one building in particular fared so much worse than the rest, my initial guess would have been that its large size and lack of noticeable foundation contributed to its collapse but it does not take long to notice that even the parts that are still standing seem to be at a much more advanced stage of decay than the houses... a mystery we never did solve.
We continue our trip through the surrounding area, in what would have actually been a rather nice day of hiking through the woods even without the
The town 1
Dan's fancy-pants camera came in handy, I guess.... ghost town. The most interesting find of course, came last, just as we were getting ready to give up looking for it.
The school is one of the best-preserved and yet also the most surreal building we find. Writing remains on the chalkboards inside, one of the few examples of non-graffiti in the town (I saw 'non-graffiti' because technically, graffiti is defined as permanent alteration). Toilets and urinals are still intact, as are various other signs of the building's previous life. Papers still litter the floor in the classrooms, and Dan takes a school application as a souvenir.
Burchell Lake brings to mind a documentary (and subsequent TV show) called
Life After People, which examines natural reclamation in a very scientific matter. The most surprising thing that I took away from the program (which is based upon a book that I have been meaning to read for some time now) was how quickly our most familiar structures would be erased if we were not around to maintain them. Although this town is a perfect model of (sub-)urban decay, it is important to remember two things: 1) it is one of the best-preserved places of its kind in the country, maybe
The town 2
Also by Dan the world and 2) it has only been abandoned for 50 years. There are people still alive who grew up here, who went to the abandoned school we explored and who shopped at the store we found in ruins. Quite a humbling realization.
After a long day of adventuring, we finally head home as the sun sets. This visit was more than I could have hoped for, made exponentially better by the fact that I had a carload of enthusiastic co-adventurers. On the trip back, we begin to form plans for other excursions we wish to go on.
...And to think, some people back in Toronto wondered why I wanted to come up north.
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