OLD-WORLD CHARM IN SHAWNIGAN
Couple’s Shawnigan home on site where Sir John A. MacDonald drove last spike of E&N Railway
Shawnigan is a long way from Scotland, but the property of Alan and Sandy Campbell might be taken for the Scottish Highlands, thanks to its green glade on the east side of the lake, gushing creek, hectare of lovingly tended grounds — and its name: Stonefold. “Because my husband is a Campbell, and we probably brought about 100 truckloads of stones onto the property to build a lot of walls and a creek bed here, we thought it was a fitting name … a stony farm in Scotland,” said Sandy, who is deeply connected to the property herself.
She grew up there and although she left at age 17 and built a life with Alan on a fourhectare hobby farm on Mount Baldy, two decades ago they returned to the 1920 family cottage and bought it from her parents.
“When we first moved here, our three kids thought we were absolutely crazy,” she said. “They couldn’t understand why their grandparents got a beautiful home in Mill Bay and we got this cruddy old piece of crap.”
Moving to a cramped 1,400-square-foot house on only one hectare, after having lived in a spacious 2,200-square-foot home on four times the property, seemed nutty to the youngsters.
“And our boys thought we’d thrown them in a dungeon when we showed them their room in the basement.
“But my mom and dad had had enough of this place. They wanted to sell and nobody in the family wanted it.”
Sandy loves the old-world character — “As a kid I never thought it was a small house” — and now that they’ve improved it tremendously, the spread is greatly admired by their siblings.
Downstairs, she and Alan have created a large laundry area, lots of storage and one of the bestused rooms in the house: a book-lined and whisky-stocked den with two giant armchairs, a humidor for cigars, a strong fan and maps of Scotland on the wall. While Alan’s roots stretch back to Scotland, both sets of his grandparents came to Cobble Hill at the turn of the century. Campbell Road was named for his family, which farmed 12 hectares there and had large orchards.
Alex and Sandy visited Scotland recently for a rhododendron event and whisky tour, combining two of their passions. “We are both into gardening in a big way, and Al is into propagating too,” said Sandy, adding that after buying the house, they dove into the garden.
Together, they have created terraces, patios, arbours and pergolas, and planted more than 600 rhododendrons — all of which have earned them accolades from serious gardeners near and far, and numerous requests to be featured on local tours. In 2015, they hosted a visit from several hundreds members of the International Convention of the American Rhododendron Society. It wasn’t an easy job creating their lush landscape. “We pulled out almost an acre of ivy when we first got started, and this year promises to be challenging again,” because snow has broken so many branches and crushed precious plants. “Oh well, it gives us a chance to go and choose more,” Sandy said. The house required hard work, too. One of the first things the new owners did was tear up all the old wall-to-wall carpet that her parents had added, to reveal original oak floors. They gutted the kitchen and redesigned the two bathrooms.
And they painted the dining-room ceiling, to the shock of Sandy’s dad, who had added tongue and groove ceilings throughout the house decades before.
“We did a lot of the work ourselves — all the trim, painting, wainscoting, tiling, crown moulding — and we moved a wall in one bedroom, now the computer room, to enlarge the ensuite.”
Sandy’s mother and father had updated the house decades before, giving it a 1970s look, but the Campbells have taken it back to a more original look of the 1920s and filled it with furniture from the era.
They love the fact they are preserving a home that has an interesting place in history.
Behind the house is a six-foot-high stone cairn where Sir John A. MacDonald drove the last spike of the E&N Railway in August of 1886. The cairn is located on the old Cliffside Station site of the E&N, at the top of Cliffside Road, Sandy said.
“We often find old relics from back then when digging in the garden: old dishes, china, glass and pots, ginger jars … because most of workers on the railroad were Chinese. After the railroad was built, they would get off the train here, come down a trail alongside our house and take a boat across the lake to go logging.”
Sandy admits that when she first moved to the site as a 12-yearold, from her parents’ large subdivision home at Glen Lake, it was a culture shock. “I felt I was in bondage. We were miles from anything. I could ride my bike for a couple of miles before ever seeing a car.”
But she came to love the property and house — even though she left at a young age, married Alan and had three kids by age 23. Busy years followed, running a hobby farm with chickens, geese and rabbits.
Clearly she still has loads of energy. Besides singing, dancing and doing theatre performances, she and Alan look after their huge garden. She gardens for other people, too.
“I know plants and soil, but I’ve never studied it at school. Al got right into it, too, and has belonged to all the rhodo societies up and down the Island. He is also on the board of Milner Gardens in Qualicum.”
Besides gardening, Alan loves whisky, especially the Speyside ones that are a little lighter and sweeter than others.
He has collected many varieties over the years and calls his den Laird’s Lug, which refers to a Scottish lord’s ear. It’s named for a secret over-the-fireplace listening hole used by a famous laird whenever he wanted to eavesdrop on his guests as they sipped and gossiped.
“It took me 12 years to figure out I was not a farmer,” joked Alan, who admits he initially wondered if he would feel hemmed in on this smaller property.
“But I love it here, and even though I can hear the neighbours, I can’t see them,” thanks to masses of rhodos, some of which have grown five or more metres tall.
“I like raising rhodos far better than animals,” he said. “When an animal gets ill, it’s a big worry, but if a plant becomes sick, it’s not a big problem.”
He concedes that keeping up the old house can be a lot of work, “because nothing is square or level and it has a lot of roughcut timbers that were not standard dimensions. So I’ve had to shim here and there.”
But he loves the history: “When you go to Scotland, you find homes where families have lived for 400 or 500 years. We’re doing that in a small way here,” he said with a chuckle.