Fact-based journalism that sparks the Canadian conversation
How a historic village found itself in the path of a massive energy project—twice
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Ontario is filled with ghost towns, abandoned farming villages, workers’ camps, and rural hamlets. Most emptied out slowly, over years of decline. Others had their futures stamped out for them. Only the fortunate are resurrected, preserved, and remembered. Some, like Wesleyville, have never stopped resisting their own destruction.
Ten kilometres west of Port Hope, along Lakeshore Road, Wesleyville used to be a busy settlement. A century ago, it had a church, a one-room schoolhouse, a tavern, and dozens of residents splayed out over a thousand acres. The village was supported by a thriving agricultural industry (with families planting buckwheat, raising livestock, and tending to vast orchards) and hosted summer tourists at its resort.
In the postwar years, the village was identified as a potential site to host a multi-million-dollar oil-fired power plant. Over the 1960s, Ontario Hydro—the public utility that controlled energy production and distribution in the province until the late ’90s—began purchasing homes around Wesleyville to demolish, one at a time. By the end of the decade, most of the families that lived there had moved.
The project got underway just in time for the oil crisis of the ’70s. War in the Middle East decreased supply and increased prices. As a result, construction on the plant was never completed, and it was abandoned. For decades, the site sat dormant, and the few buildings left—the church on Lakeshore Road, the schoolhouse—gathered dust.
Then, in 2009, community members came together to create a group called the Friends of Wesleyville Village, with the aim of restoring local buildings. “We want to celebrate the rural culture that started here with First Nations people and then developed with settlers into a self-sufficient farming community,” says Sue Stickley, the current chair.
Today, Wesleyville is alive again. The group began with the church, which had become home to a bat colony in the near half century since it was last used. They held barn dances and other events to raise funds to clear out the tonnes of accumulated bat guano in the attic. After that, volunteers went to work on the roof and the interior. By 2012, they had repaired the striking red-brick building.
In 2017, repairs began on the schoolhouse and the unique Y-shaped building that was home to the post office. The spaces now host weddings and concerts featuring local artists. Every Halloween, a popular ghost tour sees children yelping in frightful delight as they walk the trails around the village. This summer, seasonal employees put together an escape room in the schoolhouse, which requires a little knowledge of historic Wesleyville to crack and ends with an opportunity to ring the school bell. The work has been funded by community donations and grants from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. The village sees dozens of tourists every year.
But now, history is at risk of repeating itself in Wesleyville.
