The Spy at the Baron’s Manor

Ask patrons at the Baron’s Manor Pub in Port Kells about the building’s history and there’s no shortage of stories—including a ghost in the attic. Its walls are covered with reproduced photographs from a hundred years ago, and the man who built the once-elegant sixteen-room home figures prominently among them. Carl von Mackensen, a former Prussian cavalry captain emigrated from Germany and built the house in 1910. Locals dubbed it “The Castle” because it had a turret on top and suits of armour in the hallways. The baron farmed chickens and appears to have been a popular member of the community, noted for hosting lavish Christmas parties. When war broke out, everything changed.

Baron’s Pub in Port Kells. Once the home of Baron von Mackensen—another German accused of being a spy who was sent to internment in Vernon and later deported back to Germany. Courtesy of Mark Forsythe

This pamphlet provided a not-so-subtle warning about just what people could photograph. Courtesy of Don Stewart

In the fall of 1914 the atmosphere was tense with rumours that the German light cruiser Leipzig was heading for BC waters after sinking a British freighter; newspapers reported a German flag flying in the interior community of Phoenix; and there were whispers that spies were at work among the population. In 1915 von Mackensen made the mistake of flying the German flag from his rooftop. Locals threatened to shoot it down, and soon he was shipped off to an internment camp in Vernon where he would spend the next four and a half years.

Stories about the baron persisted: a radio room in the turret had been used by the baron to send coded messages to the German Navy, he helped smuggle German nationals across the line into a neutral USA, and one report said he had secret plans to give property to favoured Germans after the war was won. All of von Mackensen’s assets were taken from him, and after the war he was deported back to Germany where he died in 1967.

The evidence used against him was lost in an office fire in the sixties, but the stories about the Port Kells spy won’t go away. As for that ghost...

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