Boris Hill
Boris Hill is (or was) a small Ontario town roughly two hundred fifty miles from Thunder Bay. Its population was approximately 200, mostly of Russian extraction. Settled mostly during the 1920s by immigrants from Russia, this town of farming families was known--by the very few people who had ever heard of it--as a place cut off from the rest of the world during much of winter. The nearest highway is over forty miles distant. Phone service is unreliable during heavy snowfalls.
In March 2006 the town had not been heard from in about four months. This fact caused no one any particular worry. Then, by accident, the truth was discovered--namely, that the New World Order, a radical offshoot of the American Snorist Party--had seized control of the town in December, 2005. Ontario's Provincial Police and the CBI converged on Boris Hill, engaging the then-unidentified perpetrators. Three officers were shot in the exchange of gunfire, including one killed. Four of at least fifteen perpetrators were killed before the last of them surrendered, but only after a tense standoff in which one man held three children hostage for nine hours.
All those captured were wearing some variation of military fatiques with the New World Order emblem--a stylized Snor-like eagle with a maple leaf--sewn on as a badge. A flag of the same symbol was flying from the post office, instead of the 'old blue sheet' and the Ontario banner.
Multiple charges of assault, murder, kidnapping, rape, theft, trespassing and arson (at least one home had been burned to the ground) were to be levelled against the survivors. The local Orthodox church had been desecrated--the victim of vandalism as well as the site of execution-style murders of at least three men.
Fifteen men, including Mikhail Medved, were charged with multiple counts of murder, kidnapping, arson, rape, extortion, and conspiracy. Some of those charged were not present at Boris Hill but helped those who were prepare. All fifteen were convicted, although not of every single charge, and have been sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Most are appealing their sentences.
The town of Boris Hill remains deserted, especially after fund-raising efforts to give the survivors a new home raised sufficient money to easily relocate all the people who dwelt there. Some had to be persuaded. Boris Hill itself remains a weird mecca for some kinds of tourists, as well as a place for squatters to hole up for winter. Graffiti mars the remaining buildings, while the houses and shops show signs of looting, presumably by souvenir collectors. Local legend insists the ghost town is haunted.
Since 2006 the trope of a small town invaded by fanatics has turned up in more and more novels, comic books, shorts stories, movies and t.v. shows.
