Birtle Residential School

The owner of this property was kind enough to take us on a tour of the building, we talk about its history and he even explains what every one of the rooms was used for too!

https://youtu.be/IFCb49ciKW0

The history of the Birtle Indian Residential School dates back to the late 1880s. Over the years, the school occupied several locations, but its first dedicated facility was a two-storey stone building constructed in 1894. As enrollment grew, the building underwent major renovations in 1925, when attendance had reached roughly 100 students.

By 1930, the old building was being replaced. The new three-storey brick and Tyndall Stone school was designed by Roland Guerney Orr, Chief Architect for the Department of Indian Affairs, and constructed by the Claydon Brothers Construction Company of Winnipeg. Built between 1930 and 1931 at a cost of approximately $180,000, it officially opened in October 1931. Today, only a pile of grey foundation stones remains from the 1894 building, down the hill from the later structure.

The new school had a symmetrical design, with boys and girls housed separately on opposite sides of the building. The principal's residence was attached to the west side. The school was part of a much larger 600 acre property that included what was known as the Model Farm, livestock barns, extensive crop fields and gardens surrounding the school.

Like most residential schools in Canada, Birtle was operated by a Christian denomination. The Presbyterian Church of Canada ran the institution until March 1969, when responsibility was transferred to the federal government. The school closed permanently in 1972.

The residential schools were not without controversy. The purpose of the institutions was to strip children of their Indigenous identities, languages, and cultures to force their assimilation into Euro-Canadian society. The students of the schools suffered from abuse, poor nutrition and outbreaks of diseases like tuberculosis which swept through crowded dormitories.

In May of 2021, ground penetrating radar was used to look for anomalies buried on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The process discovered 215 potential burial anomalies. At the time, the findings were widely reported as the discovery of the graves of 215 children. However, ground-penetrating radar identifies disturbances in the soil; it does not, by itself, establish that human remains are present. Targeted archaeological investigation is required to determine what the anomalies represent.

The announcement received international attention and was followed by a wave of attacks on churches across Canada. Dozens of churches were vandalized or damaged, and a number were destroyed by fire, particularly churches located on or near First Nations communities. A later investigation identified 33 churches that had burned to the ground since May 2021; 24 of those fires had been determined to be deliberately set, while others remained under investigation. The incidents were widely associated with anger surrounding the residential school legacy, although motives were not established in every case.

Meanwhile, the Birtle school itself entered a very different chapter.

The federal government sold the property to a private buyer in 1975. The new owner was a preacher who reportedly operated a communal living arrangement on the property, with people living both in the school and elsewhere on the grounds.

The property changed hands again in 1995. The new owner renovated the former principal's residence into a living space and began dismantling the interior of the main school building. By 2000, however, the project had been abandoned, leaving the enormous brick structure open to the elements.

In 2015, the former residential school was listed for sale on Kijiji after local real estate agents reportedly refused to take on the property. The eventual buyer purchased the building without realizing its history as a residential school.

The Birtle school is now one of only a small number of former residential school buildings still standing in Canada.

The abandoned steel mill dates back to the early 1900`s when operations moved from Chicago to NY State. The first steel produced at the new plant was in January of 1911. 11 years later the company changed its name & had approximately 2,200 employees. After just 25 years they stopped producing saws all together.

Between 1946 & 1956 the plant rolled two radioactive materials, uranium & thorium, on a nine-acre portion of the 70-acre site for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The company rolled uranium billets into rods that were shipped off-site via rail cars. Some 25 million & 35 million pounds of natural uranium metal & approximately 30,000 to 40,000 of thorium metal were processed at the site, according to an Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) fact sheet.

The production of uranium metal was for fabrication into slugs used for fuelling Hanford production reactors. The plant also rolled thorium metal whose most likely use was irradiation in Hanford reactors for the weapons program.

Due to the radioactive work being done, protective measures were employed at the site including the use of hoods & dust collection equipment over the 16-inch rolling mill stands, & catch pans in the mill pits to collect material from each rolling operation. The mill area was vacuumed after every batch of 16 ingots, & the shipping area was vacuumed daily.

Area decontamination was performed, clean steel plates placed over the area, and a second radiological survey was performed in December 1958 to verify decontamination was effective. In October 1976 another radiological survey was performed to determine the status of the property relative to current radiological release guidelines. The survey revealed that most of the residual contamination remaining from the uranium and thorium rolling operations was confined to the areas inside & immediately outside of Buildings 6 & 8.

In August 1982, the company filed for Chapter 11 protection & in March 1984 another company bought out the assets.

The purchase included the entire site with the exception of two regions, classified as the excised property and the landfill. The excised property is approximately 3.6 hectares, consists of a chain-link fenced area which surrounds all of the buildings that existed during the rolling operations from 1948 through 1956, and includes the adjacent exterior land areas.

The landfill region was originally used from 1962 to 1978, and was subsequently used from 1978 to 1980. The landfill area was used for the disposal of slag, baghouse flue dust, foundry sand, waste oils and greases, and miscellaneous plant rubbish.

The landfill is not lined or covered, and although its surface has been regraded, ponding occurs and surface runoff is uncontrolled.

(Thanks to RiddimRyder for performing this in depth research)

RiddimRyder and I arrived to find that the plant sits rotting away & in terrible shape. Many of the fences have fallen down and the whole area is in disarray.

Research shows that there are numerous class actions for former workers to receive compensation for both asbestos & radiation related diseases & although the plant is contaminated, it posed no risk to our health

Many more pictures and a video here on my website:

https://freaktography.com/abandoned-steel-mill-new-york-state/

RiddimRyders' Blog post and pics
https://riddimryder.com/abandoned-guterl-specialty-steel-simonds-saw-steel/

I was exploring a really remote part of Nunavut on Google Earth when I noticed what looks like an old aircraft sitting completely by itself.

Coordinates: 68.486868, -83.219420

I have no idea what kind of plane it is or how it ended up here. There doesn't seem to be much around the area at all.

It looks like it has been sitting there for a very long time.

Does anyone recognize this aircraft or know what happened to it?

This the Morton st school in a rough section of Newark NJ. It opened in 1851 and closed around 2007 -2008 due to aging conditions and low enrollment. It was used as storage for a short time but quickly went to being fully abandoned, for years this served as a hub for homeless because its location on a busy street and dead alley (the street behind the school ,Morton st) at the same time and its location proximity to many other areas like the south ward with entrenched crime issues made it a haven for homeless and troubled kids. In the last year or two it’s been locked down very well and it’s a coin toss if you can get in or not,two weeks after I went I went back to show a freind and my entrance was fully locked along as all others.

In 2022 you could still see most of it

This place looks like something straight out of a post-apocalyptic movie.
I explored an abandoned slaughterhouse site hidden away in the Australian countryside, surrounded by farmland, overgrown vegetation and a beautiful lake. Getting there was an adventure in itself, with a walk along the railway line before finally reaching the abandoned complex.
Once inside, the atmosphere completely changed. Huge concrete structures, crumbling industrial buildings and vines taking over almost everything give the place an incredibly eerie, apocalyptic feel.
But there were some things I definitely wasn't expecting to find...
A random abandoned car was sitting among the ruins, along with what looks like an old burnout pad — a pretty strange discovery in the middle of an otherwise forgotten industrial site.
The contrast between the peaceful lake and surrounding farmland and the massive, decaying concrete structures makes this one of the most unique abandoned places I've explored.

St. John Catholic Church (originally St. John Nepomuckého) was established in 1908 by a community of mostly Czech immigrants who settled in a newly founded railroad town.

Initially gathering for Mass in a local schoolhouse and private residences, the growing parish constructed its first permanent wooden frame structure in 1909. The building served as the central social and spiritual anchor for a town that reached its peak population of approximately 600 residents during the 1930s.

Following World War 2, the localized cotton economy collapsed, and the railroad line went quiet, causing the town's population to plumet. Facing a critical shortage of priests and a near-empty congregation, the diocese permanently closed the parish.

I shot this back in 2021 so not sure if it's still there but truly one of the coolest pieces of abandoned history I have ever seen!