General

Canada’s largest abandoned home sits on the shores of Lake Temiskaming

Scrolling through YouTube one night during the pandemic, Texas entrepreneur Chris Fischer clicked on a video entitled “Largest Abandoned Mansion in Canada.” The video showed a YouTuber sneaking through a chain-link fence to explore the Grant mansion, a 65,000 sq. ft. behemoth on the shores of Lake Temiskaming, Ont., about an hour-and-a-half drive north of North Bay.

Sitting on 43 acres of land, the Grant mansion is said to be both the largest home in Canada and the largest abandoned home in Canada. The residence has been sitting empty since 2008, and it shows. The video Fischer was watching panned over water damaged ceilings, smashed heating systems, graffiti scribbled on the building’s circular walls, and countless windows veined with cracks. But what Fischer couldn’t get over was the structure.

“It was steel and concrete, and the whole thing’s sitting on bedrock,” he says. “My mind just started going crazy.”

Fischer was suddenly hooked on the idea of overhauling the place, imagining what he could do with a property like that. He pulled up other videos and dove deep into the history of the mansion. By the next morning, he was determined to track down the owners.

The original owner of the mansion was Peter Grant, a Canadian lumber magnate who ran Grant Forest Products. At the company’s peak in the early 2000s, it was North America’s third-largest producer of oriented strand board, an engineered wood (similar to plywood) used in the construction of walls, floors, and roofs. Grant Forest Products owned two mills in Ontario, employing 600 people, a third mill in Alberta, and two more in South Carolina.

At one point, Grant was said to be the 87th richest person in Canada. Fischer says he heard a rumour that Grant’s company was making $1 million a day. And what do you do with all that cash? Build the country’s biggest home.

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Grant started work on the mansion in 2005, buying the plot of land on Lake Temiskaming for $110,000. The mansion was intended to act as a residence, an office complex, and a space to showcase Grant Forest’s products. The mansion was supposed to have an art gallery, office space, elevators, a gym, a subterranean boathouse, a small golf course, three heated outdoor pools, and one sprawling bedroom for Grant. But the mansion was abandoned before it was finished. The 2008 financial crisis wiped Grant Forest Products out. By that point, Grant had spent $72 million on the mansion.

With $600 million in debt, Grant was forced to sell off the company’s mills as well as the mansion. In 2010, the mansion was listed for $25 million. Toronto investment firm Crown Capital swooped in and purchased the property. Rather than complete work on the mansion—Fischer estimates it was about 80 per cent done—the property sat untouched. Crown Capital’s only addition was a chain-linked fence with barbed wire and several security cameras.

The mansion remained untouched until February 2022, when, after a month and a half of trying to track down its owners, Fischer met with Crown Capital and brokered a deal. He’s now the official owner of Canada’s largest mansion. As part of the deal, Fischer says he can’t disclose how much he paid for the property, but he purchased it through a vendor take-back mortgage.

“We do that a lot here in the U.S.,” he says. “It’s just like owner financing. You’re paying installments to the owner instead of a bank.”

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Fischer grew up working at a fish processing plant in Alaska. It was remote, so he was forced to be resourceful with what he had. “I know a million and one ways to use a forklift,” he says. “I can use it to grade the yard, or I can use it for window cleaning.”

He took this scrappy attitude with him when he later transitioned into construction. Despite all his experience, he’s never quite tackled a project like the Grant mansion. But figuring out how to renovate the building is what makes it interesting, he says. In fact, Fischer thinks it’ll be so interesting, he’s decided to turn it into a TV show. He’s partnered with a couple of Canadian producers, and they’re currently pitching Mansion Impossible to different networks.

The show would follow Fischer and his family as they work to restore the Grant mansion. Fischer adds that part of the show would be about experiencing Northern Ontario by meeting with locals and visiting nearby businesses. He hopes to even go on an archeological dig in an old dump site—apparently a pastime he’s seen on YouTube.

He can’t go too in depth about his plan for the mansion without spoiling the show, but it will likely be a lodge-style facility with high-end amenities. He hopes the finished product will be something the local community is proud of—something that maybe even Peter Grant would be proud of.

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Fischer says he’d love the chance to meet Grant one day to ask him questions about the mansion, such as why he built three outdoor pools in Northern Ontario, why every room has a light sensor, and why he chose bulletproof glass for the windows. But most of all, Fischer wants to know why Grant built it where he did.

“He could have built that mansion anywhere,” Fischer says. “But the big story with Peter is that he was loyal to this town. He wanted to put his money back into it. ”

Considering Grant still lives in the area, maybe a meet-up would make for a good final episode.

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