Ghost Towns In Ontario, Canada

The ghost towns in the Province of Ontario have always had a particular interest to me in that I had a personal association with a number of them. Below is a Wiki link listing the ghost towns of Ontario.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_in_Ontario

Not all of these places had post offices but it would make an interesting thread if we searched our collections to see if we have stamps, covers or postcards from any of these sites and placed them on here. There are a few that I can think of that are not all that old (e.g., Burchell Lake, Jackfish). I apologize for being Ontario centric here but it could serve as a stepping off spot to other provinces.

First one I looked up is not there....Alford Junction - for which I have some vintage documents. Few know even remotely where the place was.

Hi All

There is also a book out called "Ghost Towns of Muskoka" which, of course, is right up my alley. A good read about the small communities here and a lot of them did indeed have post offices.

In fact, without sounding like a snob, I helped the two authors
(Andrew Hind and Maria Da Silva) with a lot of information about those towns, and villages, that did have post offices.

Searching the internet for historical documents on the postal history for my area are few and far between. I can go days w/o seeing a single piece of information regarding postal history of this area and then all of a sudden hit the motherlode so to speak.

Tonight (1st Wednesday of each month) is our local stamp club meeting and, by coincidence, I am giving a talk tonight about some local area postal history. It doesn't rain but it pours <G>

Interesting thread.

Chimo

Bujutsu

Moonbird: just googled Alford Junction on my iPad as I sit here during the cocktail hour. What a great stepping-stone. Enjoyed the story on the link below:

http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/Ar...px?e=2865134

There will be a lot of places like this that won't be on the wiki list.

Must be tough having to work for a living ....

Kirk: laughing so hard I have tears in my eyes. Speaking of eyes - the iPad is great because you just use your fingers to expand text and images for old eyes.

I agree, cynical. I have been using mine primarily as an e-reader.

For the past couple years, I've been very upset about the quality of ink and printing in books and magazines. The inks are fuzzy and seem to bleed into the paper. I finally went to Walmart and bought a pair of those magnifiers and realized it wasn't the ink after all

Seriously, I've been fortunate to have great eyesight my whole life. Now, at age 46, things were getting fuzzy. The iPad solved that for me. I can make the font just a tad larger and I'm fine.

KS

Kirk: my wife gave me a cover for the ipad for Christmas which makes it easier to hold. I now keep it beside my bed for those nights when I wake up at 4am and can't get back to sleep. Nine times out ten the Rodster will have something on here at that hour that takes me off on a tangent via google.

Ball's Falls, Bummers Roost, and Sodom,
If nothing else, you guys are certainly colourful
with your town names.

Rod: do a search on the outport names of Newfoundland. They have some dillies. In fact, if memory serves me, I think Dildo is one.

Dildo, Nfld should market themselves better

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dildo,...and_Labrador

I've been to Dildo. Not nearly as interesting as it sounds

Goodness me, Captain Cook had a sense of humour,
that's a new one for me.

Jokes aside, for a Western Australian,
where it is generally brown and dry,
this part of Newfoundland looks beautiful.

Given that none have shown up (I really wanted to see a postmark/cancel from Balaclava, whether it be from Grey or Renfrew or even Bruce County, although I believe the latter's post office was called Glenlyon) I'm going to jump down to #11 on the list - Burchell Lake. I'm sorry about the image's small size but consider it a test for Kirk's store-bought glasses.



This short-lived community has an interesting history relating to the mining industry and is well-worth googling. I have been "on site" as they say in the vernacular, in fact, I got kicked off the site.

If anyone has a better image of this postmark I would appreciate it if they would put it on my "dead post office" (dpo) thread.

There's a conservation area at Ball's Falls my parents used to take us hiking when we were kids. Obviously it's not far from where I grew up. I had no idea there was a community there, past or present.

Here's a postmark from Franklin Ont, formerly located east of Lake Scugog, and another victim of being abandoned by the railroad. (I thought I'd already posted this here, but perhaps I myself am becoming a ghost town! or is there another ghost town thread on here? I don't think I'm that far gone!)

edit - Oh, thank the gods! I'm not loosing it. I was thinking of this thread about DPOs.
Whew! There's a load off. Now, if I could only find my computer!

https://goscf.com/t/11419&whichpage...ost%2Coffice