Reesor is a
ghost town
Ghost Town(s) or Ghosttown may refer to:
* Ghost town, a town that has been abandoned
Film and television
* Ghost Town (1936 film), ''Ghost Town'' (1936 film), an American Western film by Harry L. Fraser
* Ghost Town (1956 film), ''Ghost Town'' ...
located in
Cochrane District
Cochrane District is a district and Census divisions of Canada, census division in Northeastern Ontario in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. It was created in 1921 from parts of Timiskaming District, Timiskami ...
,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, along
Highway 11 (
Trans-Canada Highway
The Trans-Canada Highway ( French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the Atlantic Ocean o ...
), named after its founder, Thomas Reesor.
History
Around 1925, Thomas Reesor (1867-1954), a
Mennonite
Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radic ...
minister from
Markham, Ontario
Markham () is a city in the Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada. It is approximately northeast of Downtown Toronto. In the 2021 Census, Markham had a population of 338,503, which ranked it the largest in York Region, fourth largest ...
, sponsored and helped to settle new German-speaking Mennonite immigrants from the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in the area which would become known as Reesor.
[Reesor, Thomas (1927). "Thomas Reesor's Reflections on the Reesor Settlement, 1927." ''Ontario Mennonite History'' (May 2008). Retrieved from http://www.mhso.org/publications/Ontmennohistory26-1.pdf.][Fretz, J.C. (1959). "Thomas Reesor." ''Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online'' (1959). Retrieved from http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/R4451ME.html][Author unknown (date unknown). "Thomas Reesor Family Fonds." Mennonite Archives of Ontario, Conrad Grebel University College. Retrieved from http://grebel.uwaterloo.ca/mao/manuscriptcollections/HM1.225.htm.]
In 1927, a school was built. By the fall of 1928, Reesor had 226 people living on 55 homesteads. A total of of timbered land had been cleared for farming.
[Epp, Frank C. (1982). ''Mennonites in Canada: 1920-1940. A People's Struggle for Survival''. (Toronto: Macmillan, 1982), 219-222, 221.]
By the 1930s, the town included a freight station, a store, a lumberyard, a blacksmith shop, a garage, and a pool hall. The Reesor United Mennonite Church had begun services in 1926; a building and cemetery were added in the mid-1930s on Lot 26, Conc. II, McGowan Township, about north of the siding.
[Author unknown (1959). "Reesor United Mennonite Church (Reesor, Ontario, Canada)." ''Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online'' (1959). Retrieved from http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/R44513ME.html.][Author unknown (date unknown). Ontario Ghost Towns. Reesor-Siding. Retrieved from http://www.ghosttownpix.com/ontario/towns/reesorside.html.]
Besides the Mennonites, the area was also home to a small number of French Canadians.
The transition from cutting pulpwood to agriculture proved to be very difficult in Reesor. By 1935, Reesor's population had slipped to 150. The settlement continued to decline through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, as better opportunities opened in southern Ontario. The Mennonite congregation finally dissolved on 5 January 1948.
[Reesor United Mennonite Church. The congregation's records are housed at the Mennonite Archives of Ontario. Retrieved from http://grebel.uwaterloo.ca/mao/archivesfonds/XIII-2.24.htm.]
Logging continued to play a role with remaining settlers of the region. In 1963, Reesor-Siding ( east of the Reesor community proper) was the site of the
Reesor Siding Strike, one of the defining labour conflicts in Canadian history.
[Reesor Siding Incident. Ontario Historical Plaques. Retrieved from http://www.ontarioplaques.com/Plaques_ABC/Plaque_Cochrane02.html.]
By the 1970s, all the businesses of Reesor had been closed.
In 2007, a play was written about the Mennonite settlement in Reesor by Lauren Taylor and Erin Brandenburg.
[Author unknown (2007). "Reesor, a play about a Mennonite town in Northern Ontario." ''Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia'' (2007). Retrieved from http://www.gameo.org/events/reesor.]
References
External links
* Ontario Ghost Towns:
*
Reesor*
{{authority control
Ghost towns in Northern Ontario
Communities in Cochrane District
Timber industry in Canada