Ontario Abandoned Places will be rebranded as Ominous Abandoned Places

SS NO. 8 Fitzroy / Fitzroy Public School

Being Demolished Educational in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Oct 15 2022

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Recent status Being Demolished
Location # 19331

Hazards of SS NO. 8 Fitzroy / Fitzroy Public School

NOTE: SITE IS UNDERGOING DEMOLITION AS OF 2022

A small community surrounds this site, a few dogs that live in the houses around have seen us and started barking, as dogs do. Could alert their owners of trespassers so may be worth considering. It has since became a construction site and, unfortunately, the original structure is undergoing demolition.

There is glass surrounding broken windows/doors.

The roofs inside are deteriorating and is likely approaching collapse.

There are likely animals inside, as there seems to be some racoon feces in some of the rooms.

History of SS NO. 8 Fitzroy / Fitzroy Public School

This was the smallest and oldest operating public school in the Ottawa District School Board. It served the surrounding community for 168 years, before its closure. It closed its doors in September 2006 due to falling enrolment and has since been left vacant. The small number of students, not exceeding 40, created less than ideal learning environments for its pupils, such as combining four or five grades into one classroom.

The school began as School Section #8 (SS No. 8 Fitzroy), appropriately named such as the many other SS# schoolhouses in the area. The school began as a one-room log building built in 1837, later reconstructed to its current form - a 1919 reconstruction from the original one-room building in due to a fire from a wood stove that overtook the historic schoolhouse.


Any signs of play lie long forgotten. The basketball hoop is stained with rust, similar to the chains of the swing set that remain unused by the children it once entertained.

The back of the building is a portable, the back door attaching to the hallway leading to the rest of the school. So much has been left behind. A grey chair faces the wall, a small red ball next to it. Stains splatter the chair and dirty carpet. An overhead light hangs from it’s feeble wiring, the electricity long since shut off.

The end of the hallway is a small kitchen, the yellow paint once vibrant peels form the walls and scatters the ground, which also hosts Playboy magazines and cigarette butts, existing in stark contrast to the childlike innocence brought by the surrounding educational materials and chalkboards.

The basement is unassuming at best. The bathroom and its surrounding walls are kicked in, drywall covering the sinks and toilets. Outdoor light falls through a broken window, likely kicked in to gain entry, and the emergency exit door remains boarded up at the bottom of an exterior staircase leading down from the yard into the dank room. The only sign of any life of children is a small blue disc sled against the painted brick.

In the basement lies a boiler room adjacent to a small office, where a yellow jacket hangs forgotten above a desk of administrative paperwork and fire escape plans. Of course such work is necessary for the safety of instructional staff and students, though I found these left behind to be tragically ironic given the institution’s ancient history.

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1 year ago

My father used to work here the fire drill papers would be his fault as the alarm kept going if I remember him going there as a child and regularly resetting it