The History of
Parkhill

Dr. Neville Lindsay stepped off the first passenger train into Calgary in 1883. He built a medical practice, made money in the Klondike Gold Rush, and returned to Calgary during the pre-war boom with ambitions to match. In 1910 he bought a hillside property above the Elbow River along with a downtown church — planning to salvage the sandstone blocks for a 12-to-14-room mansion. Construction began in 1913. He had secured a million-dollar loan from New York.

Then the war started. The loan was cancelled. Lindsay spent his remaining years trying to recover and died broke in 1925. The city seized the unfinished sandstone shell for back taxes in 1936. Calgarians called it Deadman’s Castle. By 1938 it was parkland. Today, deep in the bush along the Elbow River pathway near Stanley Park, a few concrete and sandstone remnants are all that remain of the grandest house Calgary never finished building.