Uplands Properties for Sale on MLS

In the 1800's, the Hudson's Bay Company was in control of what was once the 465 acre Uplands Farm until it's sale and development at the turn of the 20th century into the large lot subdivision of super luxury homes it is today.  For those interested in the history of this development, one Larry McCann has written a book called Imagining Uplands that is well worth a read. 

One of the most famous residences in the Uplands is Riffington Manor, originally built for one Andrew WRight who was one of the original investors in the Uplands project back in the 1960's.  It is owned today by media magnate David Black. When first built it featured a Japanese garden, a cottage, and a modern glassed cabana by the seafront swimming pool. The billiard room is now a library, and the conservatory has been turned into sundecking, but there have been no real structural changes.

Riffington's 10 fireplaces have been retained, and the original central heating system has been updated. The swimming pool, built by an adjacent property owner and shared with Riffington, was bulk headed and tide controlled. A former Duke of Kent swam there when Andrew Wright Sr. owned Riffington, as it was the only one around with a pool of bracing, sun-warmed saltwater. And, since the time Wallace improved the design, Princess Margaret has also disported there. The diving board is the original one.

The Uplands' fortunes, after Riffington was built, took a less-than-steady course. During and after the Great War, development was slow, and the company got into financial difficulty.

Construction picked up during the Depression, paradoxically, when labor was cheap for house-building, yet by the end of the Second World War, more than 30 years after its creation, the subdivision was less than one-quarter filled with homes. Today, The Uplands is 95 per cent complete, with residences ranging from gabled Tudor revivals to low, rambling ranchers, all protected by rigid restrictions of one sort or another. Urban renewal is something the plush Uplands will never - hardly ever? - have to contemplate. It is, as the saying goes, safe as houses.

As far as anyone can foresee, in contrast to most other residential districts, high-quality renovation and renewal will go on indefinitely. The more affluent owners maintain their high standards of upkeep by employing private gardeners and live-in household staffs. Here one still sees the traditional Chinese manservant, in white, high-collared jacket and black pants, omnipresent, gracious, standing hands behind his back yet ready at an instant to open doors. The Uplands seems indeed to have assured itself of immortality.

Keeping a cow in Uplands

The seafront home of businessman and industrialist Harold Husband at 3150 Rutland is remarkable in itself- an Uplands mansion built in 1913 for Lieutenant-Governor T.W. Paterson as his private home - but off the shoreline are the quixotic relics of Paterson's determination to keep a cow come hell or high water. Extending seaward is a small causeway leading to a rocky islet, and on that rocky islet, ee-eye-ee-eye-o, is a shed that once sheltered his Jersey cow. Like clotheslines, cows were forbidden in the exclusive Uplands, so the unconventional Paterson deftly circumvented the rules by buying the rock outcropping from the Hudson's Bay Company, which then still owned offshore islands. There he stabled his cow. She ambled ashore in the daytime for pasturage, then went back home at night, over the footbridge

What is now the Uplands Golf Club and the Uplands Park were part of the grazing lands. Cattle Point is so named because cattle were landed there to fatten in the Uplands prior to slaughter in what was then called ro-Mile Point, but is more probably the site of the Royal Victoria 5 Yacht Club moorings on Beach Drive where, even today, cattle skulls and other relics of a slaughter house are seen in the water. First manager of the Uplands farms was Charles A. Bailey.