Why the Amish Are Moving From America to Canada's Dying Towns

In 2017, Amish families bought Canadian farmland for $300 an acre — the cheapest ground offered to any Amish community in living memory. Seven years later, the settlement was gone. This is why. It started in 1953, when seven Amish families left Pike County, Ohio because the U.S. government was building a uranium enrichment plant next to their farms. They crossed into Ontario looking for cheap land and a government that would leave them alone. For decades, they found both. Then Ontario farmland went from $2,500 an acre to $33,700 an acre — and the Amish had to move again. This time east, nine hundred miles, into the shrinking counties of Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, where one province rewrote its education act to make an Amish settlement possible, one Swartzentruber church ended up split across an international border under a single bishop, and the cheapest farmland in Canada turned out to be worth nothing at all. The story of Amish migration into Canada is not really a border story. It's a story about the price of an acre — and about a single line in a school law. CHAPTERS 00:00 The settlement that vanished 01:05 The bomb plant that started it 04:20 When Ontario made their farming illegal 07:00 $33,700 an acre 09:40 The province that changed its law 13:40 The towns that were emptying out 15:40 One church, two countries, one bishop 18:30 $300 an acre — and why it failed 21:10 What actually decides where they go SOURCES Gabriel Arsenault, "Understanding Amish Migrations to New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Manitoba," Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities, Vol. 1, Issue 2 (Winter 2021) https://plainanabaptistjournal.org/article/ojs_id/7944 Jodey Nurse, "Regulating the Old Orders: The Ontario Milk Marketing Board and Old Order Mennonites and Amish," Journal of Mennonite Studies, Vol. 37 (2019) https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/2010 "Amish Population, 2025," Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/population-2025/ Amish population statistics index (all years), Young Center https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/ FCC Farmland Values Report, Farm Credit Canada https://www.fcc-fac.ca/en/knowledge/economics/farmland-values-report "1st Amish settlement west of Ontario prepares for Prairie winter in quiet Manitoba town," CBC News Manitoba https://www.cbc.ca/1.4937694 "Amish putting down new roots," Winnipeg Free Press https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/amish-putting-down-new-roots-455493443.html "Amish Moving To Fourth Canadian Province," Amish America https://amishamerica.com/amish-moving-to-fourth-canadian-province/ "The Amish In Manitoba," Amish America (includes the reader report that the families sold to Orthodox Mennonites and moved to Minnesota) https://amishamerica.com/amish-manitoba/ "Amish in Manitoba – A Closer Look," Amish America https://amishamerica.com/manitoba-amish-community/ Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities, Vol. 1 Issue 2 contents https://plainanabaptistjournal.org/ Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online (GAMEO) https://gameo.org Mennonite Archives of Ontario, University of Waterloo https://uwaterloo.ca/mennonite-archives-ontario/ Toronto Star Photograph Archive — Amish buggy and milk cans, Aylmer, October 1977 (Digital Archive Ontario) https://digitalarchiveontario.ca/objects/211085/ Figures reflect the most recent published counts available at time of production. If you're interested in the American half of that border church, the Amish of Fort Fairfield and Easton, Maine is the one to watch next. Subscribe for weekly documentaries on Amish and Old Order communities across North America. #Amish #AmishInCanada #OldOrder #Documentary