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Government ghost in Toronto
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 TORONTO, CANADA. Two independent reports of a ghostly figure, seen by staff members in the offices of Ontario’s lieutenant-governor, James Bartleman, made news on 30 August in the “Ottawa Sun”.
The first occurred at the beginning of the year, on 9 January, when Anthony Hylton, a planning co-ordinator in Bartleman’s Queen’s Park office, noticed a man in a dark suit leave the vice-regal washroom. He walked past a reception desk and into the historic Music Room (left).
Hylton assumed it was a colleague from the security detachment but when he called out to him and followed him into the Music Room he found it was empty. Another staff member also saw someone but a nearby receptionist did not.
A few months later, early on 23 May, cleaner Judy Lyng saw a man in a swallow-tail coat enter the same washroom. Part-time worker Lyng speaks very little English and had not heard about the earlier ghost sighting.
“I neither believe in ghosts nor do I not ‘believe in ghosts, but I know what I saw,” Hylton told reporter Christina Blizzard. He wasn't afraid of the ghost, which he described as being about six-foot-two-inches tall, and doesn’t believe supernatural beings can harm anyone.
“I saw something. Call it a ghost. Call it what you will,” said Hylton, who has worked in the lieutenant-governor’s office for nine years.
Lyng, on the other hand, was terrified by her experience and now refuses to enter the upstairs offices alone. She was able to name the man she saw from one of the many lieutenant-governors’ portraits hanging in the suite but Bartleman’s office did not want to identify him, for fear of causing distress to his descendants, but they did narrow it down to a group of portraits:
Former Premier Sir Oliver Mowat (1820-1903), who served as lieutenant-governor from 1897 until he died in office in 1903; the Hon Sir George Airey Kirkpatrick (1841-99), who served from 1892-97; the Hon. Sir John Morrison Gibson (1842-1929), lieutenant-governor from 1908-14; Lt.-Col. the Hon Sir John Strathearn Hendrie (1857-1923), lieutenant-governor from 1914-19; and the Hon Sir William Mortimer Clark (1836-1917), who served from 1903-08.
 The Ontario legislature was built on the grounds of an insane asylum and other reports have suggested that three ghostly women walk its corridors. Speaker Mike Brown said he has already talked to Bartleman about the ghosts and has heard other stories from security guards about the apparitions at Queen’s Park.
“Apparently, our security guys have some experiences of their own and I am going to be at Queen’s Park and I will ask Sergeant-at-Arms Dennis Clark and his staff about these out-of-world visitors,” Brown added.
Insp. Rick Boon, of the legislative security service, said he’d heard numerous stories of hauntings since he came to Queen’s Park.
The present occupier seems to be taking it all in his stride. “No self-respecting lieutenant-governor suite should be without a ghost," Bartleman joked when asked him about his other-world visitors.
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Posted on Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Category: Ghosts
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