Casa Loma: Toronto's Fairy-Tale Castle and Its Owner, Sir Henry Pellatt

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Some call it Toronto’s very own fairy-tale castle; others consider it
a monument to shady stock deals and vulgar self-promotion. Whatever the
viewpoint, the 98-room, mock-Norman mansion called Casa Loma is
impossible to ignore, as is its outlandish creator, Sir Henry Pellatt.

In this well-balanced and highly readable account of both the castle
and the man, Bill Freeman takes us on a room-by-room tour of the massive
home, from the Great Hall with its 60-foot ceiling to the beautifully
appointed stable. His account of the man takes us from Pellatt’s early
days as a world-class athlete to his later years as a corpulent
wheeler–dealer and unabashed royalty groupie. Although Sir Henry was
accused of stock watering and misdirecting investment funds (he was
convicted for trying to bribe a newspaper), in an era of robber barons
his business dealings were strictly small-time. His dream fell apart
less than a decade after the last coat of paint dried on Casa Loma; he
went bankrupt and eventually died in a rented room in a house owned by
his former chauffeur. Pellatt’s final years are handled with
particular sensitivity.

Freeman’s text is supported with scores of fine photographs.
Occasionally, the text is repeated virtually word for word as if two
drafts of the same paragraph were accidentally included together in the
final product—a minor but annoying flaw in a book of otherwise high
quality.