Canada has a habit of building hotels with big dreams attached — a railway that never got finished, a paper mill that eventually went quiet, an airport that never became a hub. When those dreams collapsed, the hotels followed. A roundup by Islands collects eight of them, and together they read like a map of the country's boom-and-bust history.
The most photogenic is probably Hotel Kaleden in BC's Okanagan Valley. Built from 1910 with luxuries like indoor plumbing and electricity, it shut for good when the First World War broke out and now survives as a crumbling concrete shell — conveniently at the centre of Kaleden Hotel Park, so you can walk right up to it. In remote Ocean Falls, BC (boat or plane only), the 1947 Martin Inn was once among the province's largest hotels, expanded by 105 rooms in 1953, then abandoned by the mid-1980s after the local mill closed.
Railways explain several of the rest. Stewart, BC's 1910 Empress Hotel — commissioned by German financier Alvo von Alvensleben for a transcontinental line that laid only about 14 miles of track — later lived a second life as the North Star Hall dance venue; tours of the town can be arranged via the Stewart Museum (May to September). Minaki Lodge in Ontario opened in 1914 for Grand Trunk Pacific passengers and was dubbed "the Ritz of the North" by the Christian Science Monitor in 1985, but a fire destroyed the main lodge a month after its 2003 closure. The Highland Inn (1908) served Algonquin Provincial Park's rail-borne tourists until the Depression drained its clientele.
Two more recent ruins have a stranger feel. Le Château de l'Aéroport at Montréal–Mirabel was a 1977 airport hotel with a palm-filled atrium, indoor pool and themed dining — it closed in 2002 as the airport's passenger traffic fizzled, and views are from outside the fence only. Ontario's Wigamog Inn in Haliburton started life in 1903 as a $3-a-week boarding house on Lake Kashagawigamog, became a beloved family resort, closed in 2011, and was damaged by a 2025 fire. Staff reportedly found half-played board games and drained pools inside.
A note for would-be visitors: several of these sites are privately owned, and Wigamog and Minaki are explicitly trespassing risks without permission. Stick to exteriors and posted rules, and treat fragile structures with healthy caution — these buildings have been falling down for decades.
