The loggers who first cut down the trees on the waterfront lot at Atwater Landing in East Sooke over one hundred years ago had no idea that they were laying the foundation of a house that would one day become a legend. But in less than a century the property known as the Grouse Nest went from being a summer cottage and popular resort to an exclusive waterfront retreat whose denizens included the daughter of the Duchess of Mecklenburg, Hollywood titans like John Wayne, and a former Egyptian arms dealer who turned the residence into an exclusive hunting and fishing lodge for the rich and famous. Many questions about the Grouse Nest, however, remain unanswered. Which is perhaps why local historian Elida Peers calls it “the most mysterious house in the neighbourhood.”1
The Grouse Nest was originally built as a summer cottage near the turn of the last century by a successful financier from Victoria named George Gillespie. Although the Gillespies spent most of the year in Victoria at Highwood, their family residence on Moss Street, they enjoyed entertaining friends at the Grouse Nest every summer in Sooke. In 1910 their son Alexander took up residence at Glenairley, a Alexander was born in 1880 and became a respected land surveyor, mapping the province from Vancouver Island to the Alaska border.
