The Price of Coal : Roadtripping down the island!

I'm going back to Montreal in less than a week, to get some things, see my little family. And I haven't posted many pics of my stay here so far. So today we have Day Trip to Victoria With Fathah.

 Some maps to situate thee:

There I am on the far left, bottom corner!

Vancouver Island

Nanaimo is in the lower third

We drove down to Victoria, about 2 hours

(My mother and brother are in Vancouver, across from Nanaimo on the coast)

My intrepid Self

 

The main goal was Craigdarroch Castle, put up by one of our Founding Coal Barons (the kind who runs for office just to protect his industries). He died before living there, but his wife and zillion daughters lived there. Then it became a post WWI military hospital, and then a college.

In the mid '90s my mother and I took a touring trip about Vancouver Island. By the time we reached Craigdarroch Castle we had sore feet and were sick of seeing Old Crap so my mother drove up, I ran in and bought a postcard, and we left. So this visit's been long overdue.

 

You don't want to see too many photos, so first a couple general ones to give you the feel. It was all très Downton Abbey. Here's the mother's room for receiving visitors...

and the family's breakfast parlor.

I liked this sign about a student hangout room that "was briefly closed in 1943 when college administrators cited 'the unsatisfactory behaviour of some students from Ward 2.'" I imagine they were tossing bread rolls like Bertie Wooster's clubmates.

The bathroom, put in at one of the house's institutional periods.

It was all quite "I am not an animal!!" esque.

All over the house were two chimneyed fireplaces. See how there's a window in the middle, and columns to the right and left?

 

 I've seen small jewellery or small mementos made from real hair, but the ladies of the house made this full sized horror. It's like something from Madame Tussaud's. On par with other great Victorian atrocities like the Bishop's Bird Stump.

The ball room. ...Not quite what PBS would lead one to imagine.

Because I forgot all my Traveling Pals at home, Step-mommy graciously let me choose one of the stuffies used to keep Philea away from things she shouldn't chew. I picked out this Cross Dressing Night Club Act crab. I named him Homie cause I was homesick.

Here he checks out the views.

 

Towards our friends in the US...

 

The Pater points towards Nanaimo...

 

Downtown Victoria 

Playing for the folk in the ballroom.

Curved doors.

The little Victorians' room.

The lights pointing up were gas, the ones pointing down were electric--to show off one's hot technology.

A servant's room.

 

The castle is located in a neighborhood with our modern day robber barons. (I imagine they are since the houses there must be insanely expensive.)

 

(Let's see if we can find one for sale... ah here we go...)

After we went to the Victoria Art Gallery--I've always wanted to see some Emily Carr paintings. It was a nice little exhibit, but I was unimpressed with the rest of the gallery. While the narrative text for the Carr display was interesting, elsewhere in the gallery they were uninformative and uninteresting.

Carr painted a lot of Native communities along the island. She, like others, thought this was a crying figure on the pole. But actually his eyeballs have fallen out--his friends had to stick them back in at mealtime and hold them there so he could eat.

Skidegate Eagle--I think he'd have been on top of a crest pole like this. I bought a postcard reproduction for when I get my new place.

The gallery was first housed in an old mansion, which is still attached. It had a warmer formal dining room than Craigdarroch.

I was photographing the lovely wall-paper, which brought to my notice the best part of the dining room: The Girl With the Shit Eating Grin. Lovely.

If you're ever in Victoria, I don't especially recommend the gallery unless they're showing something you're interested in. ...Or if you like old Chinese art cause they have a ton of it (old weapons, statues, tea sets.) But Craigdarroch is worth a stop--the society has obviously spent a lot of time researching, sourcing, or reproducing the original decor.

And then you can muse about all the people who died pulling coal out of the ground to fund this little maison.