CASTLES AND GARDENS

CASTLES AND GARDENS

Apparently it is a powerful human impulse to want to be a king of a castle. Some castles are small like a trailer on the road, or a shack in the woods, some castles are bigger like a dream house with a view and some are full-scale castles with turrets and trophies.

We did hear about a castle-to-be, still being dreamed of, on Salt Spring Island, and we visited two others in the Victoria area, that had been around for a while.

Robert Dunsmuir was born in 1825 in Scotland. In 1850 he and his wife Joan immigrated to Vancouver Island taking a contract with the Hudson Bay Company. After struggling for many years Robert to make a living in mining, he discovered a rich seam of coal near Nanaimo in 1869, and ultimately made his fortune becoming a very wealthy coal baron.
Craigdarroch Castle was built for him between 1887-1890 on a hill overlooking the City of Victoria (and also overlooking Alan and Emi’s apartment). It “announced to the world that Robert Dunsmuir was the richest and most important man in Western Canada.” Craigdarroch means “rocky, oak place” in Gaelic, an apt name, as the rocky hill on which it is built is part of the Garry Oak ecosystem.
Robert died before it had been completed and his entire estate valued at $15-20 million US$ in 1888 was left to Joan in spite of the oral promises he’d made to his 2 sons. (They also had 8 daughters by the way) This caused great family strife as the sons had both worked in the family business for years. They oversaw the completion of the building of the castle while their mother was in Europe and she moved into Craigdarroch in 1890 living there until her death in 1908. This castle was an example of a “bonanza castle, massive homes built for men who became wealthy because of the industrial transformation of North America.”
When Joan died she left her estate to her 5 surviving daughters and 3 of her grandchildren. In order to divide up the proceeds all the contents of the castle were sold in a 3day auction. Most of the property was divided up into 144 lots and sold, leaving the castle with grounds of about 2-acres. The names of those who had purchased a parcel of the land were put into a draw and the winner, a Mr. Cameron, won the castle. He used the castle as collateral for loans to finance his business ventures. Ten years later he lost the property when he failed to pay his $300,000 bank debt and the Castle became a public building in 1919.
Massive renovations were made and it was converted to a military hospital for WW1 veterans.
In 1921 Victoria College, an affiliate of McGill University, became the new tenants and there were more renovations. By 1946 the school had grown too large to be accommodated in the castle and the Victoria School Board moved in and was there till 1968, when it became an Historic House Museum.
The castle was then gradually restored to the way it had been when Joan Dunsmuir lived there.
It is now owned by the so-called Craigdarroch Castle Historical Museum Society and the Society has slowly managed to track down some of the pieces that were sold in the auction all those years ago, and return them to their original home.

I did find it fascinating to walk through this magnificent stone block building, which spoke of the extraordinary personal wealth and extravagance of a bygone time, and also of a life style that we can now only see in the movies.
The interior white oak paneling which had been pre-fabricated, as well as stairs, doors and window frames “were shipped from Chicago to Victoria in 5 railcars”, and that’s not to mention numerous other local and exotic woods used in the house. The Castle also has one of North America’s finest collections of Victorian stained and leaded glass windows.

Wealth and the thirst for stuff just take a different form today.

Hatley Park is “one of the finest examples of an Edwardian estate in Canada”. This magnificent 565-acre estate was designated a National Historic Site in 1995 and has old growth forests and Garry Oak meadows. It overlooks the Esquimalt Lagoon and the Juan de Fuca Strait and on a clear day the Olympic Mountains in Washington State can be on seen in the distance, a mystical sight. It is on traditional land of 1st Nations people who lived there for thousands of years.
James Dunsmuir, the oldest son of Robert and Joan, as a young man, was in charge of his father’s mining operations in Nanaimo. By about 1900 he had become the Premier of BC and a few years later became the lieutenant governor. In 1906 he retired from public office and was hoping for a quiet life far away from the public eye, after going through a nasty lawsuit over the Will of his father. However his wife Laura had very different ideas. She was an American woman accustomed to the social life of the wealthy. She apparently loved to hold large parties and needed grand spaces for entertaining. She persuaded James to purchase the Hatley estate and to build a castle. The formal gardens and Hatley castle were completed 3 years later and they moved into it in 1910 with their youngest daughter. Like Robert and Joan they had 8 daughters and 2 sons most of whom were grown up by this time.
James stocked the woods on his property with deer and the rivers with fish. He even built 3 fish ladders from the lagoon so that the salmon could come up to spawn. Wanting a life with more privacy he and his buddies would hunt and fish.
He had hoped his oldest son would eventually inherit and take over the running of Hatley estate, but he had wayward ways and was an alcoholic so that wouldn’t work for the old man. Could it have been his way of coping with family strife and escaping the stress of it all?
The younger son was very beloved and therefore being groomed for the role. Hopes were pinned on him to keep the property in the family. Tragically, as a very young man he signed up for the 1st World War and the Europe bound ship he was on was torpedoed. All on board were lost. Both parents were grief stricken but James, bitterly heartbroken, never fully recovered from this great loss. He died just a few years later.
Laura lived on in the castle for about another 15 years until she died.
By this time her daughters all had lives of their own and there was no one wanting to take over the running of this huge estate so once again all the contents were auctioned off.
Curious people came from far and wide to see what there was to be sold and valuable pieces went for very little.
In 1940, the estate was sold to the Federal Government, which established a naval base there. Later it became a military college and was renamed Royal Roads Military College. The college was closed in 1968 and the property leased for $1 a year to what is now the Royal Roads University, which “offers innovative applied and professional programs for people who wish to advance in the workplace.”

We spent a couple of enjoyable afternoons (one on our own and one with Al and Emi) wandering through the gardens and along the many trails that take one through the extensive wooded areas.
In the grand old days on James and Laura there were many Chinese people working in the gardens. Today the university is responsible for the expense of maintaining the property, hence only a dollar rental.
I preferred these gardens by far to the more famous Butchard Gardens, which are much more showy and varied and glorious in every season.
These gardens felt much more like real food for the soul gardens to me with, in some places, a sort of “Secret Garden” feel to them, a place where a child’s imagination could run free.
There are stone walkways and a covered pavilion draped with flowering wisteria in the Italian garden. In the 4 corners are the statues of four appropriately chosen Greek Goddesses.
The croquet lawn (Eric was especially taken by this – happy memories of Malham and Sunday afternoons in Pretoria) is surrounded by perennial gardens with Calla (or Arum, as I know them) lilies and Agapanthus. There are also Angels’ Trumpets (or Moonflowers, as I know them), white and yellow, and banana plants. Both of these must be taken into the greenhouse for the winter and all of the above made me think very fondly of my earliest home.
Many flowers and shrubs that grow happily here on the west coast would not survive the winters in Ontario, or grow much larger, such as the masses of huge rhododendrons.
There is a Japanese garden with soothing babbling brook, pagoda and water wheel, and a walled rose garden with its original sundial, dated 18 something.
I particularly appreciated a wild flower garden sporting an enormous 6ft. thistle (that had to go, I was told), a happy place for butterflies and other creatures.