10 Ghost Towns in Canada You're Not Supposed to Know About.

"10 Canadian Ghost Towns the Government Tried to Erase From History" Somewhere in northern British Columbia, there is a library where the books haven't been touched since 1982. The due-date cards are still filled out in pencil. The lights have never been turned off. Nobody has lived there in over forty years. That town is called Kitsault. And it's just one of ten places in Canada where a community was deliberately and methodically made to disappear. Over 300 Canadian communities have been abandoned since 1954. Some were demolished by corporations trying to bury legal liability before the lawsuits arrived. Some were literally crossed off official government maps so that former residents couldn't find their way back. One contributed ore to the Manhattan Project — and the people who carried that ore on their backs were never told what it would do to their bodies. Their community later became known as the village of widows. In this video, we cover all ten: 00:00 — Introduction: The Library That Never Closed 02:28 — Grosse-Île, Quebec: 7,480 People in Unmarked Graves 07:04 — Kitsault, BC: 90 Days to Pack Your Life 10:58 — Cassiar, BC: They Demolished It While People Were Still Leaving 14:27 — Uranium City, Saskatchewan: Announced on the Radio 18:30 — Port Radium, NWT: The Highway of the Atom 22:32 — Cape Scott, BC: A Promise That Was Never Kept 25:55 — Bankhead, Alberta: A Law That Closed the Door Forever 29:25 — The Newfoundland Outports: Vote Yourself Out or Nobody Gets Paid 33:18 — CFB Gagetown, New Brunswick: They Burned the Barns 36:51 — Ocean Falls, BC: The Town That Refuses to Die This is the real map of Canada. The one they didn't want you to find. —————————————————————————————— SOURCES & FURTHER READING Grosse-Île: ► Charbonneau, André. Grosse Île: A Record of Daily Events. Canadian Heritage, 1997. Kitsault: ► Vancouver Sun coverage of the 1983 closure (Library and Archives Canada) Cassiar: ► Cassiar Asbestos Corporation records, BC Archives ► Workers' Compensation Board of BC — asbestos-related disease records Uranium City: ► Eldorado Nuclear Limited corporate records, Library and Archives Canada ► Saskatchewan Archives — Northern Saskatchewan development records ► Dean Classen interview, CBC documentary archives Port Radium / Deline: ► Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission — Port Radium remediation records ► Berton, Pierre. "The Secret Trial: The Story of Port Radium." Referenced in Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland. ► CBC Fifth Estate — "The Village of Widows" (1998 documentary) ► Library and Archives Canada — Manhattan Project supply chain documentation ► Indian and Northern Affairs Canada — Formal acknowledgement, 2005 Cape Scott: ► BC Archives — Settlement correspondence, 1897–1916 ► Akrigg, G.P.V. and Helen B. Akrigg. British Columbia Chronicle. Discovery Press, 1977. ► Cape Scott: Land of Opportunity (settler correspondence, reproduced in BC Studies, Vol. 44) Bankhead: ► Banff Local History Collection, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies ► CPR Corporate Records — Bankhead Mine, Library and Archives Canada ► Sam Singh case: Calgary Herald archives, 1914–1917 Newfoundland Resettlement: ► Iverson, Noel and D. Ralph Matthews. Communities in Decline. ISER Books, Memorial University, 1968. ► Macdonald, David. Power Begins at the Cod's Head: The Resettlement of Newfoundland's Outport Communities. CBC Ideas transcript, 1999. ► Ireland's Eye resettlement documentation, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador CFB Gagetown: ► Library and Archives Canada — Department of National Defence, Gagetown acquisition records, 1952 ► New Brunswick Legislative Assembly — expropriation hearings transcripts ► Compensation records, Treasury Board of Canada, 1952–1960 Ocean Falls: ► BC Archives — Crown Zellerbach / Ocean Falls Limited corporate records ► Marchak, Patricia. Green Gold: The Forest Industry in British Columbia. UBC Press, 1983. General: ► Ghost Towns of the Pacific Northwest. Lone Pine Publishing, 2013. ► Statistics Canada — historical census records, 1901–1981 —————————————————————————————— If you know someone who grew up in any of these communities — share this with them. These stories deserve to be told. #Canada #GhostTowns #History #TrueHistory #ForgottenHistory #Documentary #CanadianHistory #Kitsault #PortRadium #Newfoundland