Canada
Val-Jalbert Ghost Town
A company town abandoned in 1927 where Québécois ghosts share a seventy-metre waterfall.
The company town of Val-Jalbert was abandoned in 1927 when the pulp mill closed, and the buildings were left standing. The church, the hotel, the general store, the workers' houses — all empty, all intact, all slowly being reclaimed by the forest. Beside them, Ouiatchouan Falls thunders 72 metres into the gorge.
Val-Jalbert is a remarkably complete early 20th-century company town on the shores of Lac Saint-Jean, Québec. When the pulp mill shut in 1927, the entire community left — and the buildings were simply abandoned. Today you can walk through empty workers' houses with their architecture frozen in the 1920s, peer into the shuttered general store, and climb to the convent overlooking the falls. Ouiatchouan Falls — taller than Niagara — thunders directly beside the main street, its spray misting the ghost town's rooftops. A cable car crosses above the falls, offering views of both the ghost town and Lac Saint-Jean.
Family
The ghost town, the waterfall, and the cable car combine into a half-day adventure that children find thrilling — it's history made atmospheric and slightly spooky in the best possible way.
Couple
Walking through an abandoned 1920s village beside a waterfall taller than Niagara — Val-Jalbert offers a romantic atmosphere that wavers between melancholy and awe.
- The entire company town — church, homes, hotel, general store — was abandoned in 1927 when the pulp mill closed, and left standing.
- Ouiatchouan Falls, at 72 metres, is taller than Niagara and thunders directly beside the ghost town's main street.
- You can walk through the empty workers' houses — furniture removed but architecture intact, frozen in the 1920s.
- A cable car crosses above the falls, offering views of the ghost town and Lac Saint-Jean from the gorge rim.
Tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean in the restored general store — the regional meat pie, deep-dish and dark.
Wild blueberry wine from the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region, sipped on the ghost town terrace.
Crêpes au bleuets from the on-site café — Lac-Saint-Jean takes its blueberries seriously.
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