If you are traveling in Canada near Vancouver, be sure to visit Cortes Island. The island boasts a number of attractions, but none is as unusual as Wolf Bluff Castle.
Wolf Bluff is not your average castle. It is new enough that its age is measured in years, not decades or centuries. It is not crumbling or falling down—probably because it is made of cinder blocks. You can even meet the man who built it.
Karl Triller, owner and builder of Wolf Bluff Castle (known locally as King Karl’s Kastle), grew up in Hungary dreaming of castles. When he moved to Cortes Island, he decided to make his dream a reality. When Karl was building the castle wolves were abundant on the island, hence the name.
Karl designed and built the five-story, triple-turreted, eight-bedroom castle from the ground up. He even made all 13,000 cement blocks used to construct the castle and spent 12 years completing it.
In the past, Wolf Bluff Castle was a bed and breakfast, but age has forced Karl, a former professional chef, to stop preparing and serving guest meals. The castle’s modern full-service kitchen is available for self-catering during longer stays. It is also a base of operations for caterers serving events in the dining hall, a room with space to seat up to one hundred people.
What castle is complete without a dungeon? Karl’s dungeon is also a torture chamber and features homemade dummies in various states of torment with placards announcing their sins.
Karl himself, who does not charge admission but does ask for a donation, leads castle tours. Do you want to relive that childhood fantasy of being lord of all you survey or a damsel in a tower? It can happen – talk to Karl about staying the night in Cortes Island’s Wolf Bluff Castle.