Ardoon was not built in 1876. It was begun in the fall of 1872 and likely completed in 1873. Daily Colonist: December 12, 1872 p.2 Progress At Nanaimo - ... "Mr. Dunsmuir has in course of erection a large and beautiful dwelling house."Jim Wolf, 9/16/2017
Jim, thanks so much for this important information. I have corrected our records.Bruce Davies , 9/19/2017
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photograph
Artwork
Accession Number
M112Description
A photograph of the former Robert and Joan Dunsmuir house named Ardoon in Nanaimo, B.C., in the background a two-storey clapboard house with a pitched roof trimmed in filigree and Greek key embellishments, a brick chimney centered on the roof line, the long centre wooden staircase bordered on each side with four stepped concrete or wooden walls, a covered veranda across the front of the house, the bottom front of the house covered in ivy, a rock wall to the left of the stairs crossing the image to the left as far as a wrought-iron fence, the foreground dominated by medium-sized deciduous trees amid long but groomed grass, in the centre of the image a middle-aged woman (Hannah Bate) sitting in a chair wearing a dark coloured long-sleeved dress with a long lacy scarf tied around her neck and to her left a middle-aged man (Mark Bate) wearing a long dark coloured coat and pants, a vest over a white shirt, a tie, with one hand is resting on the back of the chair, the other holding a top hat, to his right the teenaged boy John Harvey Harrison wearing a peaked hat, jacket, and long pants.Narrative
In this photograph are former Nanaimo Mayor Mark Bate, his second wife Hannah Bate, and her son John Harvey Harrison in the front yard of the house named Ardoon. The house was built in 1872 in Nanaimo for Robert and Joan Dunsmuir, who gave it that name.1 The designer was David William Gordon of Nanaimo.2 The house sat on a hill above the little harbour at the south end of Commercial Inlet. Eventually the harbour was filled in. The house site now has a commercial building on it at the southwest corner of Albert and Wallace Streets.When Robert and Joan Dunsmuir moved to Victoria in 1883, they allowed their daughter Agnes, her husband James Harvey, and their children to move in. By the end of 1890 both Agnes and James had died of typhoid fever. The house was sold by Joan Dunsmuir to Mark Bate on November 25, 1890 (Nanaimo Free Press) and Mrs. Sarah Bate died in the house's parlour on May 4, 1897 (Vancouver Free Press). In her book, Mark Bate: Nanaimo's First Mayor (Victoria: Heritage House Publishing Co. Ltd., 2017) author Jan Peterson states that Mark Bate remarried Hannah Harrison in England and that he, Hannah, and her son from her previous marriage, 15 year-old John Harvey Harrison, were recorded in the Vancouver census as living in Vancouver in 1901 but within a few months had moved back to Nanaimo.
1. The Daily Colonist, December 12, 1872 p.2
2. Nanaimo Free Press, Monday, February 20, 1893.
