Mille Roches, Ontario

Mille Roches is an underwater ghost town in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of Ontario's Lost Villages, which were permanently flooded by the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1958.

Families and businesses in Mille Roches were moved to the new town of Long Sault before the seaway construction commenced.

Mille Roches was the birthplace of Levi Addison Ault, who moved to Cincinnati, Ohio as an adult and became a successful businessman and the city's commissioner of parks in the early 1900s. Ault also donated a large parcel of family-owned land on Sheek's Island, which became Ault Park.

Eastern Ontario was always a highway or corridor through which people moved, a corridor used by migration and conquest. Prior to European colonization, the Mohawks and Six Nations Iroquois settled and raided through the St. Lawrence valley. The French and British fought over the waterway, and after the American revolution, in 1812-14 it became a battleground between Americans and Canadians. It remained a home for refugees and migrants looking to escape authorities or find safe haven from overseas conflicts.

Early settlement is largely undocumented, though oral histories and early accounts suggest that settlers, traders and farmers existed in the area long before formal recognition.

The post-contact regional population was a mixture of French Canadian, Ojibwe and Mohawk residents. To this was added an influx of American English loyalists and refugees from the Thirteen Colonies (now the United States), French Canadian and Acadian migrants, and later, poor Scottish and Irish immigrants and refugees. These different groups mixed and integrated over time, with family names and histories reflecting a blending of different backgrounds that was typical of Eastern Ontario.

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