Authors note: I am writing a novel, an historical fiction called ‘Bubna’. It is a story about one of the most eccentric and impactful women to have ever emigrated to Canada. She arrived in 1914, eventually settling in Kelowna BC to build the Hotel Eldorado on the shores of Lake Okanagan. It was an astonishing achievement one of many in her life, the first destination resort hotel built in the Okanagan Valley, deep in BC’s hinterland some four hundred kilometres from the west coast. Single, eccentric, a feminist and vastly wealthy, the Countess Bubna-Litic was not to be trifled with.

Listen if you prefer.

Or read.

“I’ve made up my mind Hamish” she had said to him one night over dinner. She had drank more wine than usual to work up the courage to tell him her crazy idea. They had been together for years now and had built one of Alberta’s great cattle ranches. The Countess had been correct. The First World War created an insatiable appetite for beef and her Alberta ranch was very successful.

It hadn’t been easy. The Countess was not ready for Alberta winters. Those who had tried to warn her off had been correct. She had sometimes despaired at the hardship, not just on herself and her men but on the animals. She recalled one terrible cold spell in the winter of 1916 when the temperatures dropped to unsurvivable levels. She had trekked through the snowdrifts with Hamish and the ranch hands trying to find the missing cattle. Four hundred and fifty two. She would never forget the number. Four hundred and fifty two head of cattle, frozen to death in the bitter cold. She new she was being tested but the Countess was not one to be easily defeated.

But this was not Hamish’s first turn with the Countess and he had learned long ago never to underestimate her.  He looked up,

“What’s that wee hen?”

“I want to build a magnificent hotel.”
 

“Don’t be daft”, the words out of his mouth before he could stop himself.  Hamish piped up knowing he was being too familiar with the Countess. “Forgive me Countess, one dram too many has loosened my lips a wee bit but lassie there’d be nae call for such a thing out here. People will stay in Calgary.”

“No Hamish, I don’t want to build a hotel in Alberta. I want to build it in British Columbia, a magnificent hotel that people from Calgary and Vancouver will travel to. It will be so grand and in such demand, they will  book their rooms months in advance.”

“Now listen to me, my bonnie friend, I truly admire ye and I love ye and your passion for living but this idea of which you speak, it is stark rabhaidh cuthach!”

“Hamish Macdonell, did you just call me mad!?”

“Ney lassie, I called you stark raving mad.”

They raised their glasses, toasted the madness of their forefathers and themselves. The final decision of where to build her hotel would be years in the making.

The Countess had long harboured an idea to build a hotel, one that people would travel to from far and wide. Some thought her to be frivilous with her money but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, she would take a long time gathering as much information as possible before she made any final decision.

The Countess had been told about a beautiful part of British Columbia. It was called the Shuswap and she travelled there in the summer of 1916, not knowing what they would find but wondering if it might be the perfect place to build her hotel.

It had been a hard journey through the Rockies, getting off the train at the railhead near Kamloops and spending some time on the Shuswap Lakes. Wherever the Countess went it seemed that word of her arrival had preceded her.  The site of a vivacious, single and quite unmarried English woman in the constant company of a rugged Scotsman was enough to send most tongues wagging. To find her in the hinterland of the Empire thousands of miles from the comforts of home and the life of privilege she had left behind, only made her more interesting. The Countess for her part found all the curiosity quite curious itself. What was so unusual about an English person, an aristocrat wealthy in her own right exploring the far reaches of the world?   Besides she proudly counted herself among the ‘mad dogs and Englishmen out in the midday sun’, a mocking phrase coined to describe the amazing resilience of the English travellers, now criss crossing the globe.

Hamish and the Countess explored Seymour Arm in the Shuswap, coming across one of the most remarkable homes every built in that part of BC. The Countess had learned about the Shuswap and Okanagan Valley through early advertisements in the Times of London heralding registered title to arable land for British Citizens. The breathless Times correspondent wrote of land ‘eminently suitable for agriculture, well adapted to the production of pears, plums, apples and all manner of small fruit’. The Seymour Arm Fruitlands Co. was just one of many land development companies to spring up. They advertised five acre lots for $125 and $100 for an acre of cleared arable land. The opportunity was enormous made all the better by the terms of payment: one fifth down, the balance to be paid in four equal annual payments. Plans for the town of Seymour were very ambitious including electricity and running water. For the unemployed immigrant the Seymour Arm Fruitlands Co. had an answer: Jobs for everyone, either building the townsite or working in the company sawmill.  At the time the young Countess was not considering migrating to British Columbia but as with thousands of others, the advertising had caught her attention and her imagination.  It was why so many years later that she wanted to see Seymour for herself. When she stepped off the boat at the head of Seymour Arm she was amazed at what she found. It was a small bustling beehive of energy, the Welsh, Scot, Irish and English accents bursting all around.

“C’mon Hamish there’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Who could you possibly know buried away out here Countess?” he replied, unable to hide his doubt.

“She’s an old friend from my days in the theatre and I’m rather sure she ended up here. She scandalized her family after a torrid affair with an actor friend and ended up with child. Her parents are Frederick and Sarah Carlisle and rather eccentric in their own right. Apparently they decided that it would be timely to emigrate to this new land of Canada and start again. So emigrate they did. Frederick became a celebrated artist and Sarah is the grand dame of the most magnificent manor house in the Shuswap. I can’t wait for you to meet Stephanie.”

They walked the impeccable straight roadways cut into the deep forest, all criss crossed and laid out as an as yet unbuilt town. After a few minutes a young woman came running out of a garden gate,

“Oh Irene, finally you are here, you are here.” Stephanie had always known The Countess as Irene Blair, her maiden name.

“I never thought the day would come. How are you? How was the trip from Calgary”. The two woman excitedly talked over one another, too excited to wait for any answers. The moment Stephanie could get the Countess out of earshot she whispered to her friend,

“And who is that gorgeous Scot you have with you?  I had no idea you were married. You told me you never would again after that beastly Austrian man you married in England.”

“Oh, I’m not married” Irene replied a mischievous twinkle in her eye, “Hamish has kept me warm through those insufferable Alberta winters but I could not do any of this without him. He is my great companion and a far sight better than any husband I might take.” Stephanie was struck how her friend’s eyes sparkled when she spoke.

“So show us your home. I’ve told Hamish so much about it.”

Stephanie opened the garden gates and ushered them in. A sweeping English garden rolled out before them with elevations and ponds and foot paths. Water lilies spread their blooms to the sun, lilacs rose into the bright blue skies and endless fragrant roses created a most beautiful English country garden,

“It is as though this is England” Irene exclaimed, “One would never have believed it. How big is the garden?’

“Well, if you count the maize at the bottom it’s about four acres. But let me show you the house. You must stay by the way, mother and father won’t hear of anything else.”

Stephanie showed them both through the home stopping to admire a beautiful grand piano in the drawing room and a full size slate billiard table in a large oak lined den. Hamish wondered if a fine cigar and a wee dram of whisky might be in order after dinner.

Frederick Carlisle came in the room. 

“Countess how wonderful to welcome you into our home. We remember you so fondly from your time together with Stephanie. That all seems a world away now, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed it does. I must say I’m taken aback by your magnificent home. How on earth did you get the grand piano and the full sized billiard table all the way up here?”

“It was mad. The very idea of getting a slate billiard table from England was madness from the beginning.” It was Sarah Carlisle. “I can assure you it was the subject of a number of conversations.”

“Well yes, Sarah was quite direct with me but I daresay now that the piano and billiard table are here, they do give us endless pleasure. We had them shipped through the Panama Canal. It opened just this year. What an extraordinary feat of engineering. They dug a canal through from the Atlantic to the Pacific right through the Isthmus of Panama. Good Lord! It will change the world. Cost a bomb mind.” 

Hamish was fascinated, “So you shipped them to Vancouver and then overland to Seymour?”

“Well from the coast we put them on a train to Kamloops, the Canadian Pacific Railway, and then from there they were barged up to the Shuswap.”

Frederick laughed, “It’s one thing I have come to admire about this young country. They don’t let a small thing like a mountain range get in the way of a good idea.”

The Countess quietly admired the Carlisle’s single mindedness, “They look magnificent in your home.”

Dinner was served promptly at eight o’clock in the formal dining room, surrounded by landscape paintings of England and Italy and other European destinations. The two women had spent hours reminiscing about home and the years they had spent acting in London’s West End. By 1895 they had been celebrated and feted by every eligible bachelor and thought that life would always be this glorious, idolized by men, the talk of the town. Stephanie was also one of the few confidants who knew Irene’s real family story.

Irene’s mother, the Duchess Mary Caroline Mitchell had scandalously married the 3rd Duke of Sutherland after a decade long affair, outraging polite English society with her ‘brazen disregard for the acceptable rules of Court’. To make matters worse the Duchess had married the Duke of Sutherland just four months after the death of his first wife, disregarding the accepted rule requiring them to wait at least one year.  The lack of decorum outraged Queen Victoria but the marriage took place despite the express wishes of the monarch.  The breach of etiquette was not to be forgotten. The Queen banned the new Duchess of Sutherland from appearing at Court.

In 1893 the celebrated Irish playwright Oscar Wilde had premiered his newest play, ‘A Woman of No Importance’. The opening on April 29, 1893 was marked by an article in The Illustrated London News, alongside of which was a photograph of the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland. There could not have been a more obvious condemnation of the Dowager Duchess, who was in the judgement of English society of the day, no less than a tramp with whom the Duke had carried on a decades long affair. She was ‘the woman of no importance’.  That was Irene May Blair’s mother. Some years later and after bearing two children, one of whom was to become Countess Bubna-Litic, the duke died. The fight for his wealth between the Duchess and the Duke’s surviving children became an epic cause celebre for the paparazzi of the day and it included allegations that the Duchess had stolen documents during the very contentious fight over the Duke’s estate. At the time of his death the Duke had been one of England’s wealthiest men, holding 1.4 million acres of land. Fleet Street newspapers anointed Irene’s mother ‘The Jailhouse Duchess’ although that insult was no doubt soothed by the enormous settlement the Duchess was awarded in the trial. She became very wealthy.

“What brings you to the Shuswap, Countess. We are thrilled to host your visit but we know it is no small task to get here. Do you have some purpose in your travels?” It was Frederick Carlisle, asking a question they had all wondered.

“Well yes actually, I do have something in mind Frederick.” The Countess was hesitant to say very much. Hamish was the only one she had shared her idea to build a glorious hotel in British Columbia with, “I have an idea to build a grand hotel and I’m looking for the perfect location.”

Frederick laughed “Countess I had been told you are a woman of endless surprises and this is a real topper. My word that is ambitious. It will be wonderful.”

“Thank you Frederick, it’s refreshing to hear you be so positive. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been met with sceptics doubting any number of my ideas. Even after I built a very successful cattle ranch, something which was very difficult indeed, I am told by my friends in Alberta that it really was good luck! Good Lord! Luck had nothing to do with it. It infuriates me when I am not seen for what I am.”

Hamish looked up, “Don’t be gettin’ the Countess all riled up Frederick. Her anger is well placed but I’m not sure it’s very helpful along the way. Thus woman though, make no mistake is steely tough. Being told she can’t do it, just adds to her resolve.”

“Well look I fervently hope you build your hotel here in Seymour but I think you need to travel south to the Okanagan Valley. The lake is very big and the climate somewhat different, warmer and drier I would say. There’s a new town in the valley, called Kelowna and some say it’s well positioned to become quite prominent. That said you’ll need to make another trip out here and you may not want to do that.”

“Thank you Frederick, that is so helpful. I’ll heed your advice and we will visit this Okanagan valley of which you speak before I make any final decision about my hotel.”

“I remember your mother well Irene, how is she?” It was Stephanie wanting to turn the conversation away from all this talk of building things.

“She passed away a few years ago in 1912. That’s when I decided to leave England. Wherever I went people would whisper as I passed. My own marriage had ended in divorce and I had no appetite anymore to fight my way through layers of judgment and malicious gossip that dogged me to the day I left those shores.”

Stephanie nodded “I’ve had my own journey Irene, I think I understand what you mean. I miss a great deal from home but I don’t miss any of that nonsense. Besides it’s a new world here in Canada, a place where anyone can do what they want with some purpose and hard work. Even a woman.”

**If you have appetite for more story telling about The Countess, I published a ‘A Remarkable Woman’ in an earlier blog

http://www.tonywithacapitalt.ca