Words Richard Mackie
This prime seaside property on Tsehum (Shoal) Harbour, comprising 180 acres in the 1860s, has had four owners since 1920, all of them from the British Isles.
The first two owners were Scottish immigrants, miller James Bryden and sheep farmer Adam Ross, and in 1920, Esther Tryon (1881-1958) of the Nottinghamshire landed gentry, bought the property. She was the daughter of Sir Henry and Lady Adela Bromley; her father was the fifth baronet Bromley. In 1904 her naval officer brother Arthur Bromley, stationed at Esquimalt, married Maye Dunsmuir, daughter of James Dunsmuir. Overnight, Esther Tryon found herself a sister-in-law to the Dunsmuirs, the family that built Craigdarroch and Hatley castles.
Esther Bromley met Charles Tryon while in Victoria for Arthur’s wedding, and married him a year later. Tryon came from a distinguished English family with substantial B.C. connections: his father was Admiral Robert Tryon, RN, and his mother, Henrietta Prevost, was the daughter of Admiral James Charles Prevost, RN – after whom Prevost Island in the Gulf Islands and Mt. Prevost in the Cowichan Valley were named.
A widow when she bought this property in 1920, Esther Tryon hired Victoria architect Hubert Savage to build a cottage overlooking Tsehum Harbour in 1932. In 1938 Esther sold the estate – then consisting of 96 acres – for $7,000 to Leslie Wentworth Gaze. Born in Australia, Leslie Gaze grew up in New Zealand and started his stage career in 1900 at the Lyric Theatre, London. For the next decade he performed extensively in light operas and musical comedies before becoming a silent film actor. His colleagues included Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Dame Nellie Melba, Enrico Caruso, and Arthur Hammerstein.
In 1914, Leslie Gaze married Alta Tomlinson, known as Bunny, and had two daughters, living in New Zealand and Australia before moving to Pasadena in 1923, where Leslie resumed his career as a baritone soloist. After the Wall Street crash, he became a successful stockbroker.
In 1938 Leslie and Bunny bought this Tryon Road property, which they named Mahara Woodlands – Mahara being a Maori word meaning “memory” or “recollection.” They enlarged Esther Tryon’s original cottage, adding a music and performance room, which has been described as one of the finest rooms in coastal British Columbia. It features a cutaway stage where family, friends and guests rehearsed songs and stage performances.
Daughter Gwen Gaze (1915-2010) was married out of this house in 1944 to Martin Straith of the well-known Victoria business, Straith’s Fine Clothing. In her Hollywood career, Gwen Gaze starred with John Wayne and William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy).
Bunny Gaze died in 1948, and a year later Leslie married Edna Barratt Boyes, well-known in repertory in New Zealand. In 1957, Leslie Gaze died while on a visit to New Zealand, and Edna sold Mahara Woodlands to Captain James Douglas Prentice and his wife Patricia for $22,500.
Born in Victoria in 1899, Prentice was the son of the rancher and politician, Hon. James Douglas Prentice (1861-1911), a cabinet minister in Premier McBride’s government. His mother, Mabel Galpin, was the daughter of a London publisher who owned the Gang Ranch in B.C.’s Cariboo region.
After an early education at University School in Victoria, in 1912 young J.D. Prentice (known as Douglas or Chummy) was sent to England to train as a naval cadet. He participated in the Battle of Jutland in 1916 and, in 1925, married Patricia Darby, a direct descendent of Admiral Sir Henry D’Esterre Darby (1749-1823), who commanded HMS Bellerophon at the Battle of the Nile in 1798.
During Depression-era austerity, Lieutenant-Commander Douglas Prentice retired from the Royal Navy in 1934 and he and Patricia and their two children managed the Gang Ranch until war broke out in 1939. Prentice was one of the most distinguished Canadian naval officers of the Second World War. In command of HMCS Chambly and HMCS Ottawa, he sank four German U-boats, for which he received the DSO (Distinguished Service Order) and DSC (Distinguished Service Cross).
In 1946, Captain and Mrs Prentice returned to B.C., and in 1957 bought Mahara Woodlands from Leslie and Nan Gaze. The Prentices gradually sold most of their 43 acres. In 1968 they offered for sale a five-acre lot, comprising a house and cottage, waterfront dock, and a four-acre field. My parents, George and Gillian Mackie, bought it. My parents had married in 1955 when they were both graduate students in Zoology at the University of Oxford, and a year later George accepted a job at the University of Alberta. A marine biologist, he was anxious to be nearer the ocean, and in 1968 he was hired at the University of Victoria. Our family moved to Tryon Road in the spring of 1969. In September 2024 we put the two remaining waterfront acres – all that remains of the original Mahara Woodlands estate of 180 acres – up for sale, and this fine old house is now ready to open a new chapter in its fascinating history.
