Dunmora : a story of a heritage manor house on Vancouver Island

Step back in time and listen to the walls talking as the writer describes a totally different world through almost ten decades in the life of Dunmora, a heritage manor house on the Saanich Peninsula of Vancouver Island. The reader will relish learning about the different owners and the many visitors that came to the house through the years. Numerous anecdotes of neighbours and faithful Chinese staff will be enjoyed as will the plethora of archival and modern photographs of this beautiful home and estate overlooking the Saanich Inlet. A fascinating, undiscovered gem of history makes for a good read. Dunmora tells an intriguing story of a heritage house on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, built in 1922 by the May family who enjoyed a simple, pastoral existence on the peninsula in the days when wealthy families hired faithful Chinese servants, gardeners and nannies. Spanning the years from the 1920s and 30s, through World War II, the turbulent 60s, 70s and 80s and into the Millennium, the book includes tales of the famous visitors who came to Dunmora such as the Lord Mayor of London during WWII; Flt.Lt. Alex Gardner-Medwin who used the house as a base for conducting bombing drills over the Saanich inlet; friend Cecil Meares (adventurer and dog handler for the Robert Falcon Scott Expedition to the South Pole); and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his wife Margaret and other Ministers who came for meetings held there during the 1970s when the house was owned by Donald Cormie of the Principal Group notoriety. Dunmora also hosted celebrities such as Jack Nicholson, David Foster, Gordie Howe, Elizabeth Manley, and Jimmy Patterson. Hollywood came to Dunmora and movies were shot there. The reader is taken on a journey of family ups and downs through six ownerships with much of Greater Victoria’s history is also intertwined into the evolution of the house. That evolution through subsequent ownership has enabled the legacy of family love foreseen by the original owners to be maintained and carried into the future. Today, restored to its former glory, Dunmora is valued as “the grandest early twentieth-century estate home in Central Saanich on Vancouver Island.” Its story is well worth telling.