Castles and Kings: Ontario Mansions and the People Who Lived in Them

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Readers intrigued by domestic architecture and local history will
eagerly dive into Brown’s newest work and surface, 59 houses later,
with a slight sense of disappointment.

Brown has made a specialty of peering into the nooks and crannies of
Ontario’s countryside, chronicling its ghost towns, forgotten train
stations, old mills, and other survivors from the past. In this book, he
takes a grand sweep across the province, covering mainly the central,
east, west, and south with a few excursions to the near north. He
strings together mansions and grand homes from the pre-1920s era like
beads in a necklace, giving each three to four pages consisting of a
thumbnail sketch and a photo.

The selection includes the expected—Casa Loma, Eaton Hall,
Dundurn—and a few surprises, such as the log castle at White Otter
Lake. Throughout, Brown struggles with the definition of “castle.”
If it has towers, turrets, arches, gothic dormers, secret passages,
and/or crenellations, it’s in. If someone once called it a castle,
it’s in. Being on a bluff or promontory helps. And big is definitely
good. Even with this self-granted latitude, at times there’s a sense
that Brown had trouble convincing himself that some houses should have
been included. It is not clear why he felt pressured to include homes
that don’t fit the traditional image of a castle. The result is
unfortunate—an impression of padding, of giving space to Victorian and
Georgian mansions that could have better been utilized to share more
details about the real castles. Disappointing? Perhaps just a touch, but
I wouldn’t have missed it for all the bathroom at Casa Loma.