Wah Wong and the Parrot

The Chateau Victoria was built in 1974 on the former site of an old white mansion that housed a very old and wealthy parrot. 

Louis the Macaw:

When I stayed in the Chateau Victoria while working on my book Sensational Victoria, I came across this story about Louis. This celebrity parrot, single handedly held up development in the downtown core. Louis, who was profiled in Life Magazine and has a heritage award named after him, lived to the ripe old age of 115 on a diet of hard-boiled eggs, walnuts and brandy fed to him by a Chinese manservant, while he ruled the roost in a white mansion near the Empress Hotel.

As far as I can make out, Louis hatched in the early 1860s in South America. Seems he kicked around there for awhile before ending up in the possession of five-year-old Victoria Jane Wilson.

The Wilsons:

Jane’s mother Mary, the daughter of Alexander Munro, came from well-heeled fur trading stock. Her father, James Keith Wilson, manager of the Bank of BC, dabbled in real estate. Wilson bought a chunk of prime real estate at 730 Burdett Street, built the three-storey mansion, and because he was over protective of Jane to the point of paranoia, surrounded it with high walls.

As Jane grew older and more eccentric, she added 60-odd exotic birds to her collection, keeping them in an aviary that took up the top floor of the house. In 1911, Jane painfully shy, but pleasantly rich, decided that fresh air would benefit Louis, her favourite. She bought a Hupp Yeats electric car and took driving lessons. Unfortunately Louis disliked the noise of the outdoors and the smelly fumes, so the car stayed in the garage.

The Will:

Jane’s mother died in 1917, her father in 1934 and Jane lived on in the house until her own death in 1949. When the lawyers read the will they found that she was worth around $500,000 (about $6.2 million today), with an estate that included over 100 pairs of white gloves, the aviary and a car that had clocked up less than 50 miles and was found sealed inside the garage. While most of her money went to charity, she left Louie with a $200 a week stipend and appointed Wah Wong the Chinese gardener as trustee and parrot keeper.

According to the terms of the Will, the property could be sold, but not developed while the birds remained alive. In other words, the birds stayed on as tenants.

Louis and Wah Wong watched while the mansion changed hands several times, was divided up into apartments and left slowly to rot into a downtown eyesore. They managed to stave off its destruction for 17 years, but eventually got the boot when the developers won and bulldozed the mansion to make room for the 19-storey Chateau Victoria Hotel.

Wah Wong refused to give interviews, but according to newspaper reports, Louis lived with him until he died in 1967. Then, like his owner, Louis turned reclusive and lived out the rest of his life in obscurity until his own death in 1985.

Update:

Is the Chateau Victoria haunted? Of course. It’s #9 on Tourism Victoria’s Top 10 Most Haunted Places. According to the story, Victoria Jane used to hang out at the main bar. Guests remembered her because she was dressed in old fashioned clothes and would vanish in front of them. Sometimes Victoria rides up and down the elevator with them, stopping at each floor.

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