But the spirits haunting this land belong not only to William Black.
In 1853 the property was purchased by George Browne Leith, and in 1855 he built the stately home — which included a large library, drawing room, dining room, and children’s room — as a summer villa. Several smaller attendant buildings, such as a carriage house and servants’ quarters, were also constructed on the property.[7]
Constructed of Gasport dolomite and limestone, the villa had a hip roof and French windows opening onto a large veranda.[8] Apart from the large, detailed diorama that stands as the centrepiece to the Hermitage and Gatehouse Museum and hints at the sheer magnitude of what once was, the ruins are all that are left of this once magnificent mansion.
That and perhaps yet another soul who could not bear to leave even after her death.
The youngest child of George Leith and his wife Eleanor Ferrier, Alma Dick-Lauder (1854–1942) purchased the property after her mother’s death. Alma was a bit of a loner, a writer with a penchant for the preservation of history with a focus on regional landmarks. She wrote articles for the Hamilton Spectator, which, ironically, focused on “delving among the ruins,” describing graveyards, mills, and churches that had been abandoned by time.[9]
In October 1934, a devastating fire destroyed most of her home. At the age of seventy-nine, she was not about to leave her home, even though very little of the building still stood. She erected a tent to live in the shadow of the standing stone structure. Eventually, a small home was built on that spot, and she remained there until she died in 1942 at the age of eighty-seven.
She had apparently wanted to be buried on the very grounds of the place she so loved, but she was buried in the St. John’s Anglican Church cemetery in Ancaster.[10] But that doesn’t seem to stop her from returning to the land and building she so cherished in life.
In Alma’s book Pen and Pencil Sketches of Wentworth Landmarks, published by The Spectator Printing Company, Ltd. in 1897, she writes that one “feels for houses that have known good days and handsome furniture, almost as if they felt their degradation themselves and shivered o’ nights in the cold and darkness.”[11]
Several times in the book she talks about waking the ghosts of old (of both people and animals), of being in old houses and having “ghosts seem to flit noiselessly”[12] before her, or, more poetically, describing a house as past the stage when even a friendly mouse would run over its old floor — and a ghost there might be, “perhaps in the winter dusk, coming from the radiant fire-lit drawing-room suddenly, a black, shadowless Pompey might be met climbing the stairs with noiseless feet, bearing an impalpable jug of hot water to a massa dead this fifty years and more!”[13]
One legend tells of an engineer, eager to study the remains of the building’s foundation, approaching the Hermitage in the middle of a bright day. However, instead of the ruins, he beheld a stately stone mansion drifting in and out of focus like some sort of mirage. As he approached even closer, the image faded, leaving the ruins, a mere shadow of the splendour that once stood there. Still unable to believe his eyes, he heard a sound behind him and turned. A few yards behind him stood an elderly woman, silently staring at him until she, too, vanished.
Given Alma’s affinity for old buildings and “delving among the ruins,” it is no wonder she couldn’t leave her residence when it burned down. Perhaps she chooses to stay there and offer a glimpse of it to strangers who might appreciate what she so loved.
I had been to the Hermitage before that moonless night I partook in the Ghost Walk — but in full light of day. Even in the heat of the afternoon sun, I could feel something special, something powerful about the place. Standing in the presence of what remains of a large and spectacular building can do that to a person.
But in the thick of night, listening to Ghost Guide George stand in what was once the summer kitchen of the home, recounting eerie tales, much colder shivers ran down my spine. Forget about the ghosts themselves. Just thinking about how the site has, over the years, attracted cultists, Satanists, and other practitioners of the dark arts — drawn by its sheer power, by the legend of ghosts that haunt it, to perform black magic sacrifices and rituals under the light of a full moon — gave me the creeps.
As the tour continued on a trail around the Hermitage and back down the path to where we began, the high, quavering cry of a coyote echoed through the night, punctuating the primitive fear already well in play.
Of course, part of my mind still wonders if it really was a coyote. After all, it might just as well have been the mournful wail of William Black, forever lamenting his unrequited love, or of Alma, who will never again see her regent mansion and estate in its former glory.
Chapter Seven
Auchmar House
There is an old, lonely Gothic mansion at the busy corner of Fennel Avenue and West 5th in Hamilton. Though the traffic is heavy through this neighbourhood, not much happens at Auchmar House. And though huge cranes jut out into the sky from the massive construction site across the street, part of the new $1.5 billion in upgrades to St. Joe’s psychiatric hospital, this mansion that was once a man’s dream is left behind like some distant shadow of a memory.
Hidden behind an overgrowth of trees, Auchmar sits vacant, worn by time and neglect, mocked by the huge economic development taking place while it decays
Of the thousands of people who pass the building daily, many might shake their heads at its state, not knowing the full and rich history of it and its occupants; but others who pass, those who might have learned a bit more about the house, long-shrouded in mystery, perhaps shudder at the thought of what spirits might be looking back at them out of the dark and dirty windows, crying out in voices unheard over the heavy sounds of traffic and construction.
And wonder what stories those spirits might share if only given the chance.
Built between 1852 and 1854 on land that Isaac Buchanan (1810–1883) purchased, Auchmar was constructed in the Carpenter Gothic style of architecture, which is defined on Wikipedia as “a North American style-designation for an application of Gothic Revival architectural detailing and picturesque massing applied to wooden structures built by house-carpenters.” Carpenter Gothic is a style that improvises upon features that were carved in stone in authentic Gothic architecture but with an emphasis on charm and quaintness.[1]
The name Auchmar was taken from the estate on Loch Lomond, Scotland, owned by Isaac Buchanan’s family.[2] Born in Glasgow in 1810, Buchanan became an apprentice to a firm of Glasgow merchants in 1825 and a junior partner in a Montreal wholesale business they opened. He moved to York (Toronto) to be closer to his Upper Canada clients and in 1834 bought the business with his brother Peter.[3]
Buchanan served in the local militia during the Upper Canada Rebellion, was elected to the Legislative Assembly for the city of Toronto, helped establish the Free Church of Scotland in Canada West, and helped set up the Board of Trade. He sat as a member of the Parliament of United Canada for Toronto between 1841 and 1843 and for Hamilton between 1857 and 1865. He was also a director in the Great Western Railway in 1857 and became a writer of some note on the subjects of currency and trade, supporting protectionist policies. Buchanan is generally credited as being a formative influence on John A. Macdonald’s national policy.[4],[5]
Buchanan’s political interests distracted him from his business interests and, although he resigned his seat in 1865, his business failed in 1867. He sold his beloved Auchmar estate in Hamilton and received a government appointment in 1879, which sustained him through his later years. Buchanan died in Hamilton in 1883.[6]
During the years Buchanan lived in Auchmar, the resplendent house was visited by such notable historic figures as Sir John A. Macdonald (Canada’s first prime minister), Sir Allan MacNab (of Dundurn Castle), Pope John Paul II (when he was Cardinal), Lord and Lady Dufferin, and the Prince of Wales, who later became King Henry VII.[7]
Buchanan was an advocate that the town of Hamilton should be built on top of and not under the hill. Though his original intention was to build a summer residence,