Happy Valley, Greater Sudbury, Ontario

Happy Valley is a ghost town in the Ontario city of Greater Sudbury.

The community of Happy Valley, originally known as Spruce Valley, was first inhabited in 1906 by workers from the nearby mine at Garson. In 1930, the Garson Mine shut down, and the workers were transferred to the mines at Falconbridge.

However, due to temperature inversions, the smelter at Falconbridge created severe pollution problems in Happy Valley, as emissions from the smelter would become trapped in the valley. For several years, the community reached a deal with Falconbridge that the smelter would not operate on days when a north wind was blowing. Eventually the company simply bought out the town, which was entirely abandoned in the late 1960s.

From 1973 to 2000, the Happy Valley site was part of the town of Nickel Centre, in the Regional Municipality of Sudbury. On January 1, 2001, the Regional Municipality was dissolved into the single-tier City of Greater Sudbury.