Hollinger houses are the final instalment of our history feature of things in Timmins that are “there and gone”.
Local historian Karen Bachmann says some them are still there, with two streets of them remaining.
The houses were built by the Hollinger mine, beginning in 1919.
“Iconic red and green tarpaper houses,” she notes. “They needed something for the workforce because the mine had exploded. There were so many families and men coming in. There was a housing crisis in the community at the time and the Hollinger stepped up and said ‘we need to build some houses’ – 350 in total.”
Bachmann continues: “There are so many people from the community who remember living in them, whose grandmothers may still live in them. So a big part of the development of the Town of Timmins and they’re some of our things that are still here, but that are also gone.”
There’s one Hollinger house now on the grounds of the Timmins Museum. You can visit and see what it looked like inside.
