Country Canada Time zone EST (UTC−5) Province Ontario | Regional municipality Cochrane District Elevation 244 m | |
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Reesor is a ghost town located in Cochrane District, Ontario on the Trans-Canada Highway. It was named after Thomas Reesor (1867-1954), a Mennonite minister from Markham, Ontario, who sponsored and helped to settle new German-speaking Mennonite immigrants from the Soviet Union here around 1925.
Map of Reesor, ON, Canada
A school was built in 1927. By the fall of 1928, Reesor had 226 persons on 55 homesteads; in total 35 acres of timbered land had been cleared for farming.
By the 1930s, the town included a freight station, a store, lumber yard, blacksmith shop, garage, and pool hall. The Reesor United Mennonite Church began services in 1926; a building and cemetery were added in the mid-1930s on Lot 26, Conc. II, McGowan Township, about three miles north of the siding.
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. By the 1970s, all the businesses of Reesor had been closed.
Logging continued to play a role with remaining settlers of the region. In 1963, Reesor-Siding (2.8 km east of the Reesor community proper) was the site of the Reesor Siding Strike, one of the defining labour conflicts in Canadian history.
In 2007, a play was written about the Mennonite settlement in Reesor by Lauren Taylor and Erin Brandenburg.