It鈥檚 heartening to see Craigflower Manor in good hands. An important piece of Vancouver Island history has a more secure future, thanks to the Victoria Highland Games Association.
The province took back control of the manor and the nearby Craigflower School in 2012 from The Land Conservancy of sa国际传媒 The debt-ridden conservancy was losing $150,000 a year on the two buildings, which it was trying to run as museums.
The games association, which has agreed to rent the manor for $35,000 a year, won鈥檛 try to run it as a profit-making venture with paid staff. Rather, it will depend on its 150 volunteers to maintain the site, and will hold special events to attract visitors who can tour the site for free.
鈥淲e are going to use the power of volunteers to bring the site alive,鈥� says Jim Maxwell, president of the association.
A historic site needs to be alive. An unoccupied building tends to deteriorate quickly, and its past is more easily forgotten when it is ignored.
The connection between Craigflower Manor and the Victoria Highland Games Association is not a stretch. The manor was completed in 1856 as the home and office of Kenneth McKenzie, overseer of Craigflower Farm for the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, a subsidiary of the Hudson鈥檚 Bay Company. McKenzie, his wife Agnes and their children (they eventually had eight) had come from Scotland, like many early immigrants to the Island. They would likely have attended the first Highland Games in Victoria 150 years ago.
The house was built as a Georgian Revival version of a Scottish manor house, at the request of Agnes McKenzie, and was constructed using the HBC post-and-beam method.
鈥淚t was a grand house for its time, second only to the Douglas mansion on the shores of James Bay,鈥� writes historian Maureen Duffus on her website.
Under the direction of Kenneth McKenzie, additional houses were built at Craigflower Farm, and an engine was set up to run a sawmill and grind grain. A lime kiln and brick works followed.
During the Crimean War, the Royal Navy began using Esquimalt Harbour as a supply base. McKenzie supplied meat and vegetables to the navy, and erected mills at Craigflower to supply flour to the navy鈥檚 bakers. He built a bakery that supplied huge amounts of bread, biscuits and crackers to the navy and other customers.
鈥淒uring this period, Craigflower became a social centre for naval and colonial officials,鈥� says the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 鈥渁nd the McKenzie girls were much courted by visiting officers. When Lady Jane Franklin visited Victoria in the spring of 1861, the season鈥檚 most colourful social event was the picnic in her honour at Craigflower.鈥�
McKenzie and the HBC parted ways in 1865, when the McKenzies moved to Lakehill, their farm near Christmas Hill.
The manor was used by the company as lodging until 1922, when it was turned into a community centre. It later became a hotel, before being sold to the provincial government in 1965. It underwent extensive restoration in 1967.
The Land Conservancy took over the Craigflower historic site in 2004. The manor was closed after a fire in 2009 caused about $200,000 damage, and in 2012, cash-strapped TLC gave up, turning the site back over to the province.
Few historic sites can generate enough funds to be self-supporting, and preservation shouldn鈥檛 depend on ticket sales. The Highland Games Association has taken a more practical approach by enlisting public-spirited volunteers to preserve an important spot in the region鈥檚 settlement history.
