Maynard Auction Catalogue

Abstract

In her will, the widowed Laura Dunsmuir instructed her trustees to sell Hatley Park. In 1937, the property was valued at approximately $260 000 and cost about $1 500 a month to maintain which none of her children could afford. Although her personal effects were left to her children, everything else was sold at a five-day auction in 1939. The auction conducted by “Maynard & Sons” was open to the public who paid twenty-five cents for admission and could take a round-trip on a special bus service from downtown costing forty-five cents. The twenty-five page auction catalogue lists 927 lots and with very few photographs of the interior of the Castle in existence, this document helps us imagine the Castle in its “glory days.”