An elite private school in Washington State. A crime lord’s home in England. The headquarters of a team of paranormal investigators. The mansions of Green Arrow and Lex Luthor. And of course, Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.
Hatley Castle, on the grounds of Royal Roads University in Colwood just outside Victoria, is one of B.C.’s most recognizable and popular filming locations. From the classic horror film The Changeling to series such as MacGyver and Smallville and the blockbuster X-Men and Deadpool franchises, the castle has played a key role in the evolution of the province’s film industry.
“Money doesn’t matter. Just build what I want.” Those were the instructions then-lieutenant-governor James Dunsmuir gave for the construction of his residence at Hatley Park. Architect Samuel Maclure designed the castle-like mansion, built with sandstone from Valdez and Saturna Islands, with a turret standing 82 feet high. The grounds, designed by the landscape firm Brett and Hall, feature a croquet court, sculpted terraces and staircases, as well as Japanese, Italian, and English-style gardens.
A coal baron and later premier of B.C., Dunsmuir lived in Hatley Park along with his wife Laura and 12 children—one of whom, Kathleen, financed and co-starred in Canada’s first talking motion picture, and the first to film at the castle.
A socialite and actor who spent time in London and Beverly Hills, Kathleen Dunsmuir gave $30,000 to producer Kenneth J. Bishop to finance The Crimson Paradise (1933), about a city slicker who moves to northern B.C. and falls in love. Hatley Castle, as well as Victoria’s Craigdarroch Castle, built by Kathleen’s paternal grandfather Robert Dunsmuir, were used as locations. The Crimson Paradise was a disaster, putting Bishop’s Commonwealth Productions out of business. Kathleen Dunsmuir was killed during the Second World War, when a bomb fell on the London nightclub where she and her son were celebrating his engagement.
After the deaths of the Dunsmuirs, Hatley Park was acquired by the Canadian government in 1940 and used as a naval training academy. Eventually it would become Royal Roads Military College, and in 1995, Royal Roads University.
One of the best known films from Canada’s tax shelter era, The Changeling (1979), starred George C. Scott as a widowed composer haunted by the ghost of a murdered child. Scott traces the crime to the doorstep of a powerful senator, played by Melvyn Douglas. Hatley Castle served as the senator’s mansion and the setting for Scott and Douglas’s final confrontation.
For three days, the Changeling crew filmed exteriors and interiors on the college grounds. According to an article in The Victoria Daily Times, “At the insistence of Scott and out of deference to the frail 77-year-old Douglas, director Peter Medak ordered a closed set.” Victoria locals appeared as extras, and Royal Roads’ bandmaster George Dunn played Douglas’s butler.
George C. Scott in The Changeling, 1980. Photo © Associated Film Distribution, courtesy of Everett Collection.
A decade later, Hatley served as the English home of a crime boss in part two of the MacGyver episode “Legend of the Holy Rose,” the second half of the season-five premiere. Richard Dean Anderson’s MacGyver scales the castle walls in search of an artifact. Weather marred the first day of shooting at the castle. “We were totally rained out,” assistant location manager Danny McWilliams told the Times-Colonist, “but the [college’s] administrator was very accommodating so we were able to shoot inside. It was quite a storm.”
As B.C.’s film industry ramped up in the early 1990s, so did filming at the Royal Roads campus. Hatley appeared as a swanky hotel in Knight Moves (1992), a chess-themed thriller starring Christopher Lambert and Diane Lane. It also served as the primary location for Masterminds (1997), in which an evil spy played by Patrick Stewart takes over an elite private school, holding the students hostage. “The minute we saw Hatley Castle, we knew this was it,” screenwriter Floyd Byars said. Masterminds wouldn’t be Stewart’s last appearance at Hatley.
In 1995, two television projects filmed at Hatley Park. Poltergeist: The Legacy used the castle as headquarters for the Luna Foundation, a group of paranormal investigators. Local actors including Martin Cummins and Kristin Lehman played team members. “Through the miracle of optical effects, we’ll be sticking [the castle] onto an island off San Francisco,” production manager Charles Lyall told the Times-Colonist.
But the Marvel TV movie Generation X, about a group of teenage mutants, would begin the castle’s most lasting contribution to popular culture. Generation X marked the first time Hatley appeared as the X-Mansion, the school set up by X-Men leader Charles Xavier to train “gifted youngsters” as superheroes. “We knew that we needed to get locations that were kind of over the top, and we’d heard about that Hatley Castle,” director Jack Sholder told SyFy. “Once we used it, a bunch of other people started using it.”
Hatley would go on to appear as the X-Mansion in X-Men 2: X-Men United and X-Men: The Last Stand, as well as Deadpool and Deadpool 2. In 2017, Ryan Reynolds filmed for a day on the campus, posing in costume on the castle’s lawn. “Dropped by X-Mansion. Looked closely for Beast’s lawn bombs before taking well deserved nap,” the Vancouver star wrote on Instagram.
On the DC side of the superhero world, Hatley Castle appeared as the family mansion of Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) on Smallville, as well as the family home of Arrow’s Oliver Queen (Steven Amell). Other films where Hatley Castle appears include This Boy’s Life, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro; The Reality of Love, starring Jason Priestley and Bradley Cooper; the Disney children’s film series Descendants; and The Clearing, starring Robert Redford and Willem Defoe.
In a way, Hatley Castle perfectly captures the paradoxes of B.C.’s evolving film industry. Built by a coal magnate and first put on screen by his daughter, the castle is instantly recognizable yet versatile enough to portray England, San Francisco, and Smallville. From the “quota quickies” of the 1930s to the tax shelter films of the ’70s and ’80s, up to today’s superhero dominance, Hatley Castle is a historic landmark on screen and off.
Top image courtesy of Adobe Stock. Read more Vancouver film stories.
