Casa Loma looks like a medieval castle. It was built in the age of the light bulb, and with the money light bulbs made. The story of the house is the story of one man's electricity fortune, and of what happened to it when Ontario decided power should be public.
A fortune made in electricity
According to the castle's own history, Henry Pellatt founded the Toronto Electric Light Company in 1883. By the time he was thirty, the company enjoyed a monopoly on the supply of street lighting to the city of Toronto. In 1902 he and his partners won the rights to build the first Canadian hydro-generating plant at Niagara Falls.
He was a public figure as well as a businessman. He was knighted in 1905 for his military service with the Queen's Own Rifles, a connection he kept for fifty years: in 1926 his half-century of service was marked with a march past of 500 men.
The castle
Hear a stop from this walk
Grange Park and the Grange: The Gallery's First Home
In 1911, with a fortune the castle puts at $17 million, Pellatt drew up plans with the architect E.J. Lennox, who had designed Toronto's Old City Hall. The house took three years and $3.5 million to build. It opened as a family home just as the First World War began.
The fight he lost
The weakness in the plan was the monopoly itself. In the castle's own words, the one sure source of income from the monopoly of electrical power vanished when political decisions allowed for public ownership of electricity. In the early twentieth century Ontario built a public power system, and the private companies that had sold electricity to Toronto lost their hold.
The rest followed. Pellatt's company owed the Home Bank of Canada $1.7 million. During the war, Canadians put their money into war bonds, not homes. In 1924 the Pellatts left the castle for their farm in King Township. In 1933 the City of Toronto took ownership for $27,303.45 in back taxes.
Who owns it now
The castle became a public attraction. The Kiwanis Club of West Toronto ran it from 1937 until 2011, and the City of Toronto remains the sole owner. A house built on a private monopoly ended up in public hands, which is a fitting end for a fortune lost to public power. For the building itself, read Casa Loma: E.J. Lennox's Castle on the Hill.
How this fits a Roamer walk
No Roamer tour visits Casa Loma. It is a separate, ticketed visit on the hill north of downtown, at 1 Austin Terrace, best reached by subway to Dupont station and a short uphill walk; check the castle's own site for hours and prices. The nearest Roamer walk is the Kensington Market and Chinatown walk, eleven stops over about 1.8 kilometres from the Kiever Synagogue to the Art Gallery of Ontario, about 85 minutes at an easy pace. It is a different story, of houses turned into shops and a family house turned into a gallery, and it pairs well with Casa Loma on the same day. For every walk in the city, see the Toronto walking tours guide.
Ready to experience it?
Kensington Market and Chinatown: From House-Front Shops to Gehry's Glass
85 min · 1.8 km · easy
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