Man’s mission brings forgotten places to life

BY TRACEY DUGUAY

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but for one Sudbury resident it’s just led to a great pastime.

For the past six years or so, Mike Lalonde, 35, has travelled across Greater Sudbury and other parts of Ontario in search of ghost towns and abandoned places. 

In some cases, the only signs of life he found were signs of death.

“You find some of these cemeteries that are literally out in the bush, they’re overgrown, forgotten,” Lalonde said.
“You get out there and you realize these are people that no one remembers.”

He feels a sense of accomplishment from being able to bring these forgotten souls into the forefront of people’s minds again by publishing their stories on www.ontarioabandonedplaces.com.

Lalonde created the website a few years ago and posts directions, background research and photos of each location he visits.

“It was a way of giving a memory back to them I guess,” he said.

His interest in the hobby started after he heard stories about Burwash, an old prison town located about 30 minutes south of Greater Sudbury.

He wanted to explore the old prison, tour through the cells and get a feel for the history of the place.
“When I got there, there was nothing left, just a couple of foundations, a few telephone poles. It was a big disappointment.”

Although his plans to explore Burwash didn’t pan out, Lalonde caught the exploration bug during this trip. When he returned home, he went to the library and found a book about the topic called Ghost Towns in Ontario. 

“I found out there are some areas as close as Capreol, which blew my mind because I didn’t know they were there.”
One such place is Happy Valley, an old abandoned settlement near Falconbridge.

The name is quite ironic given the history of the community. According to information on Lalonde’s website, pollution from a nearby smelter used to fall into the valley where the settlement was located and surround the town in a cloud of poison.

Smelter operations were halted on windy days so the toxins wouldn’t be carried into Happy Valley. The Falconbridge workers that lived in the town took the mining company to court over the issue but lost since the mine was there first.
Eventually, the mining company bought the settlement and the citizens traded their homes for new ones in Falconbridge or took cash and moved elsewhere. The last resident moved out in the late 1970s.

It’s the history behind each community, building or gravesite that drives Lalonde to keep exploring, along with a healthy dose of wanderlust and a love of a good summer road trip.

“As it says at the top of my web page, every town has a story.”

Unfortunately, Lalonde has hit a roadblock in his hobby because he’s visited most of the local spots and areas close to town.

“The problem is the farther you go, the more you have to travel and I can’t day trip anymore [because the areas are too far],” he said. “It’s become kind of stagnant. It’s at a standstill unless I get people to help me out.”

There are some spots left in Greater Sudbury he hasn’t seen but they fall on the “shadier” side of urban exploring (AE), or infiltration, as it’s also called.

While the sub-culture of AE touches on exploring legitimate abandoned spaces, like Lalonde does, it also crosses over to visiting areas that are clearly marked as prohibited spaces, and in some extreme cases, breaking into buildings.

A statement on a website dedicated to infiltration reads: “While it’s true that some aspects of the hobby happen to be illegal, it’s important not to confuse the words ‘illegal’ and ‘immoral.’ Laws against trespassing are like laws against being out after curfew: people get into trouble not for actually doing anything harmful, but simply because the powers that be are worried that they might.”

People involved in AE or infiltration take their pursuits to the roofs and basements of hospitals or churches, transit and utility tunnels, drains, catacombs, just about anywhere that looks “cool” to explore.

On the Urban Exploration Resource website (www.uer.ca ), visitors can search an extensive database of interesting, and at times, prohibited sites across Canada and the world. A few spots in Sudbury have made it to this database too.

As for Lalonde, he prefers to keep it on the tamer (and legal) side. He uses Northern Breweries as an example, which he has recently added to his website.

When he walked by the historic Lorne St. building, there was a window open. He stuck his camera inside and took photos of the interior of the building but didn’t trespass by going inside, even though it would have been easy to gain access.

“To me that’s crossing the line, and I don’t do that.”

Anyone who has information on abandoned ghost towns, graveyards or buildings to share with Lalonde, can contact him through his website at www.ontarioabandonedplaces.com.