The sole reminder of a long-vanished town – Abandoned Ontario jail a favourite among urban explorers

May 2018

The crumbling ruins of Camp Bison stand as the sole reminder of a long-vanished town.

Ontario has many ghost towns; towns that once bustled with people and activity but now are silent. The former Town of Burwash, south of Sudbury, is a favourite among Urban Explorers.

Burwash was originally founded in 1914 to house the workers from the Burwash Correctional Farm and their families. The town had around 1, 000 residents housed in 95 residential units and all the amenities of any other town, including a public school, a church, a post office, a barber shop, a tailor shop, a sawmill and a grocery store.

Prior to the construction of Highway 69, Burwash was accessible only by rail. A Canadian Northern Railway station was built nearby.

The Burwash Jail was a medium security jail and a working farm where inmates could grow their own crops.

In 1958, Camp Bison was opened at Burwash as a minimum security jail. A two-story E-shaped building housed up to 850 inmates in small cells with wooden doors instead of steel bars; the segregation wing being the only exception.

Canadian singer David Clayton-Thomas, formerly of the band Blood, Sweat and Tears, spent time at Camp Bison as a young offender.

Plans were made to transform the jail into a federal penitentiary, but this plan was abandoned in 1978 and the town and jail buildings were left empty.

Several other proposals for the property were put forth over the years, including converting it to a physical rehabilitation centre or a provincial park, but none came to fruition. The City of Sudbury leased a portion of the property for use as an Angora goat farm, but this idea was scrapped in one of the most infamous boondoggles in Sudbury’s history.

The property was broken up into several parcels, with the Department of National Defence taking around 3, 000 acres for use as a rifle range and training area.

Other segments were taken by the Ontario Ministries of Transportation and natural Resources and the Burwash Native Peoples Project for a logging business.

All housing, community and jail buildings were demolished except for the Camp Bison building and a few outbuildings around it.

Josh Reynolds, who purchased 200 acres of the Burwash property that includes the jail building in 2014, is now allowing official tours and even overnight stays in a renovated cell for those so inclined. Legal access can be arranged, however, through a local company called The Food Mission (http://thefoodmission.com/camp-bison).

The only other visitors to the crumbling ruins of Camp Bison are the numerous Urban Explorers who make the trek each year.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwash,_Ontario, http://jermalism.blogspot.ca/2013/02/abandonment-issues-burwash-industrial.html, https://www.ontariotravel.net/en/listing/Camp-Bison-Prison-Farm/202181, http://thefoodmission.com/camp-bison, https://www.ontariotravel.net/en/listing/Camp-Bison-Prison-Farm/202181, http://www.thesudburystar.com/2016/03/14/yet-another-burwash-episode, https://burwashindustrialfarm.weebly.com/history.html.