r/Freaktography

I was out exploring Solsgirth, Manitoba this summer. It's a near-ghost town between Birtle and Shoal Lake where only a few families are left. I stopped at the old Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, and the story turned out to be way better than I expected.

It wasn't built as a church. It was Burdette School No. 163, a one-room country school whose district was organized in 1882. When the school closed in 1958, the building was moved into Solsgirth and converted into a Ukrainian Catholic mission church served from Rossburn.

The domes were handmade by Mike Swistun, a local carpenter. In 1923 he toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, billed as "The Strongest Man in the World," then came home to farm and build churches.

The last service was June 16, 2002. St. Stephen's Anglican, about 100 m away, held its final service four months later, and that was the end of organized worship in the village. Both churches were supposed to go to the Prairie Mountain Regional Museum in Shoal Lake (St. Stephen's sold for $1), but neither move happened. Holy Ghost was later sold privately.

One mystery I couldn't solve: the memorial plaque says 1950–2002, but Burdette School didn't close until December 1958. Did the congregation meet somewhere else for most of the 1950s? If anyone has family from the Solsgirth/Rossburn area and knows, I'd love to hear it.

I filmed the visit and wrote up the full history if anyone's interested:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQ1KCK7l6s

Full write-up with sources: https://freaktography.com/solsgirth-manitoba-ghost-town/

Solsgirth is a near-ghost town just off the Yellowhead Highway in western Manitoba. As of 2021, only three households were left in the village.

St. Stephen's exists because of a church feud. In 1905, some parishioners wanted to move the original St. James Church down from its hilltop site overlooking the Birdtail Valley into the village. The rest of the congregation pushed back hard. The compromise was a second church. The Birtle Masonic Lodge laid the cornerstone of St. Stephen's on July 23, 1906, and the village ended up with two Anglican churches a few kilometres apart.

St. Stephen's held services for 96 years. On Thanksgiving Sunday, October 13, 2002, about 50 people attended the final service. The bishop read a declaration secularizing the building, and the altar ornaments were carried to the back of the church to mark that it was no longer consecrated. Afterward, everyone went outside to dedicate a memorial cairn to the pioneers who built it.

The church was then sold for $1 to the Prairie Mountain Regional Museum in Shoal Lake, which planned to move it to their grounds. That move never happened, and it's still sitting on its original lot today. Right next door is the former Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, a converted schoolhouse with handmade domes, which closed four months earlier.

🎥 Video tour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQ1KCK7l6s

📸 More photos and the full history: https://freaktography.com/solsgirth-manitoba-ghost-town/

I explored an abandoned farm school that has been left behind for years — and inside, I found something I never expected.
The Fairbridge Farm School opened in 1938 and operated until 1974, bringing British child migrants to Australia to live, work and train in farming. Around 1,000 children passed through the farm during its 36 years of operation, with the site eventually becoming a significant part of the history of Australia's child migration schemes.
But behind the intended story of opportunity and a new life, the school also has a much darker history. Former residents have spoken about physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and evidence of abuse and neglect at the institution has since come to light. These experiences are an important part of understanding the history of the site and the people who lived there.
Today, the abandoned site remains a fascinating time capsule, with forgotten dorm rooms, deteriorating buildings and traces of the children and staff who once lived and worked here.
As I explored deeper into the property, I also discovered a hidden car that I definitely wasn't expecting to find.

Solsgirth, Manitoba, didn't start where it stands today. It began about 10 km north as a place called Toddburn, until the railway changed its route and the whole town picked up and followed it.

Settlers built St. Stephen's Anglican Church here in 1906. Decades later, Ukrainian Catholic families moved an old one-room schoolhouse into the village and turned it into Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church, with onion domes hand-crafted by a local carpenter.

For 50 years, two faiths worshipped a stone's throw apart. Then, in 2002, both churches held their final services in the same year.

Today they still stand side by side, quietly holding the story of the people who built this place.

Watch the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQ1KCK7l6s