Not Actually A Castle

S. and I are up in Victoria for a brief pre-Christmas holiday vacation; mostly just lounging about. We’re sitting in Saint Cecilia as I write this, which I strongly recommend if you’re into coffee. They do great hand-brews. One of the non-lounge activities, though, was Craigdarroch Castle.

I say “not actually a castle” because the family that built it, the Dunsmuirs, did not actually call it a castle. I imagine being from Scotland they had higher standards for the term. You can see why locals picked up the habit, though.

It was cool enough (and surpassed expectations enough) so that I wanted to blog about it. I’m a sucker for museums which are built on top of old robber baron collections. This isn’t exactly that; Robert Dunsmuir wasn’t particularly into collecting art, and he died before Craigdarroch was finished. As far as I can tell, he was into collecting money and children. However, he liked nice things and Craigdarroch is a window into the way the extremely wealthy lived back in the 1890s.

The Castle Society also made the smart decision to preserve and display the rest of the history of the building. After Robert Dunsmuir’s wife Joan died, it was sold off — the rocky history of inheritances and lawsuits in the family is a whole different post. Since then, it’s been a military hospital, a college, a local governmental office, and a music conservatory. All this is part of a vibrant history, and the Society decided to restore those aspects as well.

So, for example, there are places where the linoleum floors put in for the college are still there and will remain. Most of the work so far has been centered on the Dunsmuir era, but as you descend from the fourth floor down through the servant quarters there are displays pertaining to the rest of the history, and outlined plans for more reconstruction. It’s a good decision to show the full history of the place.

Which is not to say that the original mansion isn’t the focus. The stained glass in particular is eye-catching. According to one of the docents, 75% of it is original; some pieces went missing after Joan’s death.

The Dunsmuir family faded in prominence fairly soon after Robert and Joan died. Their son James was likewise a robber baron and politician and the influence of the family was huge, but there weren’t more than three generations of fabulously rich Dunsmuirs. The gracenotes I found most interesting were a) Dola Dunsmuir’s long relationship with Tallulah Bankhead, and b) Kathleen Dunsmuir’s funding of the first Canadian talking motion picture. Alas, The Crimson Paradise is a lost picture.