Act now to save Quebec’s ghost towns before they disappear

They played a key role in province’s past and should be recognized, Julie Anne Pattee says,

At Kingsmere, a sprawling country estate nestled in the Gatineau hills near Ottawa, you’ll find crumbling arches from old European cathedrals and walls from ancient fortresses sitting under the maple trees.

The artifacts were collected by none other than our 10th prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King. He scattered ruins on his lawn and along trails that lead into the forest to give his estate the haunting, romantic atmosphere that was fashionable at the time.

The Mackenzie King Estate is a tea house and Canadian heritage site now. Visitors can gaze at remnants from Europe’s past while they sit on the majestic porch of one of the cottages and sip tea from china cups.

But just a bit farther down Highway 105, the landscape lies in ruin. Abandoned barns, forgotten railway stations and windswept farmhouses are sinking into the green rolling hills.

Venosta, about 70 kilometres north of Ottawa, is one of Quebec’s ghost towns. There are no cordoned-off areas to preserve what’s left of Venosta, nor are there tourist brochures to explain what happened here.

Irish families settled Venosta in the 1850s. The immigrants who were fleeing the Great Famine came over on “coffin ships,” so named because not many people survived the journey across the Atlantic. When the tired and sickly travellers arrived in Canada, the Quebec government gave some of them barren land to farm.

The lumber industry had already stripped a lot of trees from the Gatineau valley. But the earth itself rested on the rocky Canadian Shield. Parts of the land were challenging — if not impossible — to farm.

My great-grandfather’s family survived the trek across the ocean and tried to settle in Venosta. I’ve wandered through the nearby Martindale cemetery to find them, but they must be buried under a pile of stones in a field. I only know that my great-grandfather’s father died when my great-grandfather was 10 years old, and he was sent away from Venosta to become an indentured servant in Ottawa.

Some crops grow near Venosta now, and cows and sheep can graze in the fields that took generations to build. Small clapboard homes dot the dirt roads that spread out into the hills.

Venosta’s Roman Catholic Church, Our Lady of Sorrows, has rummage sales in the summer where the congregation sells second-hand clothes and knitted tea cozies by the side of the highway. But on the other side of the road, the boarded-up general store sits as a reminder of the community’s hardships, suffering and loss.

Ghost-town tourism is a trend these days. There are websites dedicated to Quebec ghost towns, and magazines like Maclean’s have written articles that direct the curious to abandoned places like Venosta. There’s nothing stopping tourists from bringing pieces of weathered wood home with them as souvenirs.

A few of Quebec’s ghost towns have been preserved. Val-Jalbert, in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, has been dubbed the bestpreserved ghost town in Canada. It’s a revenue-generating tourist attraction now. Grosse-Île, which served as a quarantine station for Irish fresh off the coffin ships, is also a historic site. But moss, weeds and thunderstorms are reclaiming towns like Venosta and Crystal Falls (55 kilometres northwest of St-Jérôme) and Gagnon (400 kilometres north of Baie-Comeau).

Quebec’s ghost towns tell an important part of our history and they deserve to be treated with respect. Moreover, many of the rural communities in the surrounding areas could use the boost in revenue that a historic site designation, and the resulting tourism, would bring. However, if Quebec’s heritage ministry doesn’t act soon, many of our ghost towns, and the last remaining traces of some of our ancestors, will disappear forever.

Quebec’s ghost towns tell an important part of our history and they deserve to be treated with respect.