The lost villages of Ontario
Mille Roches, Moulinette and Dickinson’s Landing are among the nine relocated communities
Little is as universally captivating as the notion of lost cities and civilizations. Atlantis. El Dorado. Easter Island. Angkor. As a poet said, the most haunting words are “what might have been.”
In eastern Ontario, the “Lost Villages” are named Mille Roches, Moulinette, Wales, Dickinson’s Landing, Farran’s Point, Aultsville, along with the hamlets of Maple Grove, Santa Cruz and Woodlands.
These places were not lost to war or plague or any other of the apocalypses that periodically befall humankind.
They were disposed of by design when the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project took precedence over their claim on the landscape.
On July 1, 1958, the lost villages — some of them centuries old — disappeared under the waters of the new, man-made Lake St. Lawrence. Their 6,500 residents were displaced to new towns named Ingleside and Long Sault.
For years, the murky water hid the old roads, foundations and other structures of the Lost Villages.
Ironically, the zebra mussels that came inland on the seagoing vessels the seaway was built to accommodate helped clear the water.
And from the sky, art photographer Louis Helbig spotted what remained. On his website are ghostly images of the villages.
“They lived and loved, worked and played, were born and buried; they were little different, in their time, from people in any other Canadian community,” Helbig has written.
“Save for the misfortune to be near the mighty Long Sault Rapids, a significant barrier between the ocean and the Great Lakes.”
A cofferdam was exploded on what was then called Dominion Day, 1958. The water rose over three days and nights. And what hadn’t been dismantled and moved in advance was lost.
Relentless, inexorable progress had been served.
Again. Jim Coyle