The Ghost Towns and Hidden Treasures of Ontario’s Not So Wild Southwest

It is a little difficult to geographically define Ontario’s southwest. It lacks a distinctive desert or mountain range to set it apart. The best way to describe it is that region which lies west or south of the lofty cuestas of the Niagara Escarpment and which is bordered by three of Ontario’s Great Lakes namely Ontario, Erie and Huron.

Anyone setting out to explore the area will encounter a few ancient relics; those of a long vanished First Nations tribe, the earthworks of the earliest French explorers and forts built to repel invaders from below the border. Circular mounds near Iona date from the mysterious “Neutral” tribe (so named by the French as they were perceived to stay aloof from intertribal warfare) and depict the outline of a typical pallisaded village with its traditional long houses. Perhaps the “Neutrals” should have taken sides for they were ultimately eradicated by the Iroquois. And at Port Dover lies the outline of the winter cabin erected during the 17th century by French missionaries Dollier and Caisson.

What would a true “southwest” be without forts? While the region’s military heritage rests primarily at the reconstructed forts of Fort Erie, Fort George and Fort Malden, a pair of “ghost” forts also linger. Built near Turkey Point to defend the coast against Yankee invaders during the war of 1812, the remains of Fort Norfolk now lie beneath a popular golf course. Until 1813 the adjacent community of Charlotteville was the capital of the district. That honour today lies with the City of London. As with the fort of Charlotteville, no trace remains. In contrast, smack in the middle of the Niagara on the Lake golf course stand the ghosts of the area’s only genuine surviving fortification, Fort Mississauga. Its walls, tunnels and ramparts made it the most important of the Niagara River forts, and those ruins have been little altered.

These, however, are not the only “ghosts” in Ontario’s Southwest. Ghost towns too tell the tale of early industrial centres which thrived and then failed. The tiny community of Normandale, a short distance west of Port Dover, was for the first two decades of the 19th century Ontario’s iron manufacturing capital. Here Joseph Van Norman dragged peat and logs from the forests and bogs to a blast furnace by the shore of the lake and for as long as the supplies lasted, Normandale turned out iron products for the local population. But the bog ore and the lumber did not last and by the 1820s the bustling little town had nearly vanished. Today a former hotel, general store and a small handful of early homes are the sole survivors of that industrial era.

While heritage plaques tell the story of Normandale, no agency oversees its preservation. There are however other ghost towns which do in fact lie within the boundaries of parks or heritage agencies. A short distance southwest of St. Catharine’s lies the wonderfully named Balls Falls. It began life as Glen Elgin in 1806 when brothers John and Robert Ball built a grist mill on the lip of a 30 m high waterfall which tumbles over the brink of the Niagara Escarpment. At another set of falls upstream they added saw and woolen mills as well as a boarding house for the workers. Between the two mills, a string of cabins lined the river. But when the rails of the Great Western Railway passed the mill village by in 1857, Glen Elgin died. Today the walls of the woolen mill frame the tumbling waters of the upper falls while the old wooden grist mill, among Ontario’s oldest, is now a museum by the lower falls. A trail with interpretive plaques links the two sites. The ghost town today lies within the Balls Falls Conservation Area.