Sir Henry Pellatt's Last Years and How He Died

Sir Henry Pellatt, the Toronto financier who built Casa Loma, died on March 8, 1939, in Mimico, on the western lakeshore of what is now Toronto, at the age of 80. The fullest public account of his life does not name a medical cause. What it records instead is a long decline: failing eyesight, debts he could never clear, an empty estate, and a final home in a single room at the house of his former chauffeur, a long way from the castle on the hill.

How Did Sir Henry Pellatt Die?

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on Pellatt, the most detailed published account of his life, gives the date and the place of his death, 8 March 1939 in Mimico, but no illness and no cause. Readers searching for a diagnosis will not find one in the standard record, and this magazine will not invent one.

What the record does set down is the shape of his last decade. By August 1932 his sight had failed so badly that he could no longer read. He moved through a series of apartments and ended in a room at his former chauffeur's home in Mimico. His last public appearance came in January 1939; the biography describes him at that point as a "shambles" of a man, and he died two months later. The honest answer to the question, then, is a short one: he died at 80, after years of failing sight and money troubles, and no public source consulted here names a specific cause.

Who Was Henry Pellatt Before the Castle?

He was born on January 6, 1859, in Kingston, the Limestone City, and his family moved to Toronto that same year, while he was still an infant. As a young man he was better known on the track than in the classroom. He won the dominion mile championship in 1878 and the American amateur mile the following year, and he enlisted as a rifleman in the Queen's Own Rifles in 1876. He left school to clerk in his father's brokerage, and when Edmund Boyd Osler left the partnership in 1882, Henry took his place in a firm renamed Pellatt and Pellatt.

His first fortune reputedly came from shares in the Canada North-West Land Company, but electricity made his name. In 1883 he joined the new Toronto Electric Light Company as its secretary, and by 1895 he was its president. In 1903 he became president of the Electrical Development Company of Ontario, formed to generate power at Niagara Falls; construction of its power station began in May 1906, and power began flowing that November. Silver followed. The Cobalt Lake Mining Company, which he headed, began shipping ore in January 1908 and brought him great wealth.

What Did the Queen's Own Rifles Mean to Him?

Almost everything that money could not buy. Pellatt became commanding officer of the Queen's Own Rifles in March 1901 and was knighted in 1905. In August 1910, to mark the regiment's 50th anniversary, he took it to England, largely at his own expense, for a month of manoeuvres alongside British troops. He gave up command in 1912, served as a temporary brigadier-general from July 1916, and received his final promotion, to major-general, in 1921. Even after his fall, a large gathering at his country estate in 1926 honoured his half-century with the regiment, and when he died, the Queen's Own Rifles' old commander was given a military funeral.

Why Did Pellatt Lose Casa Loma?

Because the money underneath it was borrowed. Pellatt had bought the lots on the escarpment in his wife's name between 1903 and 1905, and the family moved into the still unfinished house late in 1913. Estimates of what it cost him run as high as three and a half million dollars, and that same year a change in the city's assessment rules raised his taxes sixfold.

Two forces then wore him down. The first was public power. After the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario was created in 1906 under Adam Beck, Toronto voters approved a municipal electrical system in January 1908, a vote that, in the premier's own reading, ended the chances of Pellatt and his associates; his presidency of the Toronto Electric Light Company ended in 1919. The second was debt. His account with the small Home Bank of Canada stood at 2,191,732.81 dollars on November 30, 1915, and he later told the bank's officials that he had borrowed from nine institutions. Suburban land ventures delayed by the First World War left him carrying that financing for years longer than he had planned.

The Home Bank failed in August 1923, and late that year the Pellatts moved out of Casa Loma into an apartment. Lady Mary Pellatt, the first chief commissioner of Canada's Girl Guides, died on April 15, 1924, the day before the public inquiry into the bank's collapse opened. In June 1924 the contents of the castle began to be sold at auction. What happened to the building after that, including the 1930s ghost night that helped save it, is traced in this magazine's entry on the castle he built on Davenport Hill.

Where Did Pellatt Live After Leaving the Castle?

In smaller and smaller rooms. He retired from his brokerage in 1925 and left it to his son, Reginald. In 1927 he married Catharine Welland Merritt in St Catharines; she died in December 1929. His country retreat north of Toronto, a model farm he had begun in 1911 at Bales Lake and renamed Lake Marie after his first wife, lost its core in 1935, when it was sold to the Marylake Agricultural School and Farm Settlement Association. According to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, the city took over Casa Loma in 1933 to recover unpaid taxes and considered forcing him into bankruptcy.

In a January 1930 interview he insisted, "I don't look back much." His biographer notes that he did all the same: to his racing days, to the regiment, and to the excitement of building the castle.

Date	What happened
August 1923	The Home Bank of Canada fails
Late 1923	The Pellatts leave Casa Loma for an apartment
April 15, 1924	Lady Mary Pellatt dies
June 1924	The castle's contents go to auction
1925	Pellatt retires from Pellatt and Pellatt
March 12, 1927	He marries Catharine Welland Merritt
December 19, 1929	Catharine Pellatt dies
August 1932	Failing sight leaves him unable to read
1933	The city takes over Casa Loma for unpaid taxes
1935	The core of the Lake Marie estate is sold
January 1939	His last public appearance
March 8, 1939	He dies in Mimico, aged 80

Where Is Sir Henry Pellatt Buried?

At Forest Lawn, in the York Mills area of north Toronto, beside his first wife, after a military funeral at St James' Cathedral. There is a quiet irony in the place: in 1913 Pellatt was likely part of the group that bought into Forest Lawn Mausoleum, one more investment among dozens. Some obituaries touched on his financial carelessness. His son faced an empty estate, and among the few effects Pellatt left behind were the racing trophies he had won as a young man.

Why Does His Death Matter to Casa Loma's Ghost Lore?

Because the castle's legend grew in the space he left, not out of his death. Pellatt did not die at Casa Loma. He had been gone from it for more than fifteen years, and he died in a single room at his former chauffeur's home in Mimico, an old soldier who could no longer read. The haunted reputation of the house was built while it stood empty, by people telling stories about a building its owner could no longer afford. Read beside Spadina House on the same ridge, home to one family for more than a century, the two houses show how differently a grand Toronto address can end: one with a long, steady record, the other with a builder who outlived his fortune and died far from the rooms visitors still walk through.

Questions Readers Ask

When did Sir Henry Pellatt die?

He died on March 8, 1939, in Mimico, at the age of 80. His last public appearance had come two months earlier, in January 1939.

Did Sir Henry Pellatt die at Casa Loma?

No. The Pellatts left Casa Loma late in 1923, after the failure of the Home Bank of Canada. He died more than fifteen years later in a room at his former chauffeur's home in Mimico.

Was Sir Henry Pellatt poor when he died?

Yes, by any measure of his former wealth. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography records that his son faced an empty estate and that his few remaining effects included the racing trophies of his youth.

Entity note: Sir Henry Mill Pellatt Sir Henry Mill Pellatt was a Toronto stockbroker, electricity and mining promoter, and militia officer, born in Kingston on January 6, 1859, and died in Mimico on March 8, 1939. He was president of the Toronto Electric Light Company and of the Electrical Development Company of Ontario, commanding officer of the Queen's Own Rifles from 1901, knighted in 1905 and promoted major-general in 1921. He built Casa Loma, moved into it in 1913 and left it in 1923 after the failure of the Home Bank of Canada. He is buried at Forest Lawn in Toronto. His life is set out in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, volume XVI.