07/30/04’s illustrious band:

Hatley Castle

Northwest Notes, Chapter 9

Brought to you by Hatley Castle.
[Sorry I left you hanging yesterday, but my mailbox coughed up a new album that needed listening to. Hey, even Media Sensations have hobbies, all right?]

Stop #3 on Saturday, July 10 was Hatley Castle. If Butchart Gardens is the Vegas of show gardens, Hatley Castle is the Buckingham Palace. Where the former wows the visitor with color and action, the latter impresses with stately elegance and sheer scope. Originally the home of the extremely wealthy Dunsmuir family, Hatley Castle evolved into a military training ground and is now part of Royal Roads University. Just to compare private homes for a minute, Sensational Acres -- house, garage, and grounds -- could have fit comfortably inside the first floor grand hall, with room to spare in the servants' wings. And there were two more floors above. And that was just the main house!

Anyway. The 600 or so acres at Hatley are maintained entirely by volunteers. One of them, our guide David Rutherford, spent several hours on his day off (like the previous two guides) showing us around. He walked us through the castle, even though it was closed for the weekend, to show us the artifacts and history of the Dunsmuir family. For some reason, this was much more interesting than the Azkaban history, possibly because David was simply showing it to us rather than preaching the Gospel According to Dunsmuir.

In fact, David spoke, from memory, about the property, buildings, plants, people, wildlife, history, and politics of the castle for about three hours straight. Three hours! He assured us that he was enjoying the tour as much as we were, since he seldom had a chance to walk the grounds any more. Clearly, the guy loved his job, and his pleasure earned him the title of Favorite Guide of the Week (with St. Joan running a close second).

The Hatley estate was incredible. In addition to having served as a location set for the filming of X-Men 2, which earned it high marks in this sci-fi buff's book, the Hatley grounds boasted an Edwardian garden, an Italianate garden, a Japanese expanse with a large pond/small lake and a fishing pagoda, a rose garden, a primeval forest, manicured lawns, a well-stocked pond/lake complete with fish ladders so the fish could swim upstream to spawn, enormous old trees, enormous young peacocks, a raccoon, and at least one garter snake. There are greenhouses and outbuildings and ocean views and grottoes and a waterwheel and some bonsai plantings and a croquet lawn, too. And the computer lab of Royal Roads University is housed in the old dairy building.

Whew! Breathless yet? We were, too. Could have stayed and wandered all day. But David had other things to get to, like his job as a regent of another college, so eventually we bid him farewell.

We were free for the rest of the day. We returned the trusty rented Grand Am at a terribly convenient location in downtown Victoria a block from the Crystal Garden Conservation Centre. We'd wanted to stop there earlier but didn't have enough time to justify the admission price. Saturday afternoon was a perfect time for ogling exotic tropical plants and animals. One of the first things we saw upon entering was a pair of flamingos, which caused me to burst briefly and flatly into song. Fortunately, I only know a few lines of this tune and quickly fell silent -- but not before slightly embarrassing G-Doc, who is not prone to sudden bursts of song himself.

The plants and the butterfly room were great, but my favorite part was being molested by one of the flamingos' friends, a puna ibis. Clearly the ibis was accustomed to visitors; it strode right up to G-Doc as we stood on the walkway admiring some fuchsias. G-Doc got out of the bird's way, but I stayed put. The ibis eyed me curiously, then began to investigate this obstacle in its path. Taptaptap went the long, curved bill on the top of my shoe. It tickled. Taptaptap on the shoelaces. Taptaptap on the other shoe. No luck. Not tasty. Taptaptap on the hem of my jeans. Taptaptap on my shin. Again, not a food source, but maybe good for something. The ibis grasped the cuff of my pants in its beak and began worrying the material this way and that, perhaps to see if it could be carried off and made into nesting material. Alas, another defeat; the material would not come loose. So with a final taptaptap on my shoe, the ibis gave me a disgusted look and returned to its pond.

According to St. Joan, the Crystal Garden, a lovely outpost of wilderness in the heart of the city is slated to be torn down soon and replaced with a multimedia centre of some kind. Why interact with real birds, butterflies, and plants when you could view reasonable facsimiles on a screen, right? Progress. Don't get Joan started on this topic, man. You'll get an earful.

Well, that was it for us. Nothing else at the conservatory could compare to being henpecked by an ibis, so we departed. We wound down our final evening in Canada in Chinatown, where I discovered that the Chinese-Canadian definition of "spicy" kung pao chicken differs markedly from the suburban Minnesotan version of same. But it was still good, and my sinuses remained crystal clear for the rest of the trip. And there was ice cream for dessert.

Next time: The Media Sensation's fame precedes her.

Today around the world: July 30 is System Administrator Appreciation Day here in the Colonies.

E-mail the Media Sensation: BandNameoftheDay@hotmail.com

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