The World’s Largest Nuclear Plant Comes to Small-Town Ontario | The Walrus

Wesleyville, a once-thriving Ontario village near Port Hope, was emptied out by Ontario Hydro in the 1960s to build an oil-fired power plant that the 1970s oil crisis left unfinished and abandoned. Volunteers under the Friends of Wesleyville Village have since restored the church, schoolhouse and post office building for weddings, concerts and ghost tours, funded by community donations and Ontario Trillium Foundation grants, on land leased from Ontario Power Generation.

That restoration work is now complicated by the province's announcement earlier this year that Wesleyville will host the world's largest nuclear power generating station. A 2021 deal for Port Hope to buy the 1,300-acre site outright, protecting most of it for heritage and environmental value, was cancelled by provincial directive in 2022 citing 'emerging provincial land use initiatives,' and the restorers' lease with OPG runs out in 2037 — just as nuclear construction is expected to begin.

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