Fighting the flu It’s flu shot time across the Capital Region. Page A5
NEWS: Wine auctions off limits for charities /A9 ARTS: Pasty Cline returns to the stage /A20 SPORTS: Speeding into the sports hall of fame /A22
SAANICHNEWS Friday, October 26, 2012
www.graymatters.ca
– John Adams Historian, founder of Ghostly Walks
Former owner with links to occult said to roam historic Saanich cottage
Sharon Tiffin/News staff
Historian and ghost story teller John Adams sits in the Fireside Grill on West Saanich Road. The restaurant is said to be haunted by the ghost of Katharine Maltwood, who appears in the hallway and private dining room that was once Maltwood’s studio.
Reporting
250 744 7034
“The people who ran the museum discovered right away that there were unusual things going on … feelings, presences, noises.”
ghost?
Natalie North
Connected to More®
Check us out on Twitter and Facebook and watch for breaking news at WWW.SAANICHNEWS.COM
Restaurant plays host to a watching
W
Gray Rothnie
hen visitors to the Fireside Grill meet for a meal, they might be meeting with more than they bargained for. The West Saanich Road restaurant is said to be haunted by its previous owner, Katharine Maltwood, an artist fascinated by the occult. Katharine, a sculptor, and her husband John, immigrated to Victoria in the 1930s and moved into a converted the tea house they dubbed “The Thatch.” “The house itself was a very intriguing one,” says historian and local ghost expert John Adams, the man behind the city’s year-round ghost tours. “It looked like an old, English
cottage, surrounded by a Garry oak forest. It would very much have been like an old English cottage in a sacred Druidic grove.” Katharine had already gained notoriety in England for having written a book titled The Temple of the Stars, which documented her theory of a 16-kilometre-wide Zodiac carved into the countryside in Glastonbury. She continued to create her own art in the home and when she and John died in the 1960s, Adams explains, they bequeathed the house and their large art collection to the University of Victoria on the understanding that their home would become a museum featuring their art.
“The people who ran the museum discovered right away that there were unusual things going on … feelings, presences, noises,” Adams says. “Unmistakably, the things that you would expect to be associated with hauntings.” By 1978, the university decided that the building wasn’t the right fit, moved the art collection to UVic’s Gordon Head campus and sold the house. While the process was legal, it was clearly out of step with the wishes of its donors, Adams says. The house then became the Chantecler restaurant, where small happenings at first – some that could be chalked up to faulty wiring, such
as the recurring sounding of the fire alarm – became commonplace. “One night (the owner) was answering an alarm and he had with him a Doberman pinscher, a dog who was normally quite fearless, but who got his hackles up and refused to put even one paw into the house.” Perhaps the doberman had seen the ghost of a pug dog, which notoriously roams the site to this day – a rather unusual spirit given that the Maltwoods didn’t own such a pet, Adams says. Cold spots – unexplained icy, cool air – on the stairway to the second floor, and sightings of Katharine as a shimmering, white silhouette inside what was once her studio, are among the most reported experiences that Adams attributes to paranormal activity in the home. Tim Petropolous, managing partner of Fireside Grill, is a skeptic. Petropolous has been at the location for 13 years and has yet to encounter the spirit of Katharine Maltwood or that of the ghost pug. Though he might not believe them, he’s heard all the stories. Some staff members, chiefly those who worked in the Chantecler, believe the building to be haunted, yet the alleged activity never deterred them from working in the location, Petropolous says. “It was more a happy ghost or a pleasant ghost, not a scary ghost,” Petropolous said. “She was like a caretaker – just overseeing what was happening.” PLEASE SEE: Victoria, ‘a very haunted city,’ Page A8
PERSONAL REAL ESTATE CORPORATION
Marketing Homes Since 1985 with Trust ... Service ... Integrity
RE/MAX Camosun
OPEN HOUSE • SUN OCT 28 • 2-4 PM
OPEN HOUSE • SAT OCT 27 • 1-4 PM
11186 Hedgerow Drive
3556 Cedar Hill Road
Gordon Head Cul-De-Sac: 6 Bedrooms
$499,999
$549,900
$779,900
MLS#315377
MLS#316095
MLS#310316
www.mcmullenhomes.ca
Thinking of selling? Call 250-881-8225