The daffodils are gone. The tulips, too. Pretty much all you see on the deserted grounds of Fantasy Garden World these days are weeds.
"Isn't it awful?" says Bill Vander Zalm, the former B.C. premier who once called a faux castle -- part of his sprawling biblical theme park -- home.
"At one time you could walk around this place and not see so much as a cigarette butt, let alone a weed. Now it's an overgrown mess. It's a disgrace."
Paint on the iconic windmill that hovers above the park's entrance is cracked and faded. But as symbols go, there isn't another in the province that better represents the spectacular rise and fall of the happy-go-lucky former Social Credit premier.
Mr. Vander Zalm resigned his office in 1991, when conflict-of-interest allegations surfaced in connection with his sale of the park to Taiwanese billionaire Tan Yu. Mr. Vander Zalm was charged with criminal breach of trust but was found not guilty a year later.
But by then his political career was over.
It was announced recently that the family of the late Tan Yu is selling the suburban Richmond property, which Mr. Vander Zalm bought for $1.7-million in 1984 and sold for $16-million in 1991. It would be worth millions more than that now.
Mr. Vander Zalm agreed to meet me at the park this week for a look around. We couldn't get inside because it was locked, but you could peek through enough fences to see that the beautiful gardens the Vander Zalms so painstakingly maintained for so many years have become an overgrown sanctuary to a flock of wild geese and other birds and animals.
Twenty years earlier, a biblical garden with scenes depicting the life of Jesus formed the centrepiece of the park. Much of it was constructed from 10 tonnes of rock from Israel and 10 large containers of water from the Sea of Galilee and the River Jordan that was provided by a businessman Mr. Vander Zalm had met.
Mr. Vander Zalm's wife, Lillian, ran the park. The couple had planned to build only a garden on the site that people could tour. But a garden by itself was not enough to sustain the place financially.
"You couldn't amortize the investment and keep a staff on with only the gardens because it's a very seasonal thing," Mr. Vander Zalm said. "So the decision was made, largely by Lillian, to build an entertainment facility modelled on a European village theme."
And so the park began to take shape. A brick courtyard housed shops and restaurants. The young women on staff wore European costumes. There was a children's farm area and a replica of Noah's Ark, complete with washrooms labelled "Billy" and "Lilly."
A miniature train toured the grounds. It wasn't uncommon for Mr. Vander Zalm, wearing an engineer's hat, to take advisers for rides on the train while discussing the most sensitive of political issues.
You could get married in a small chapel on the grounds. And hundreds of couples did, often asking the then-premier with the Hollywood looks to be in the wedding photo.
"This was Lillian's whole life," Mr. Vander Zalm said. "She loved living in the castle. She felt safe there."
Today, the moat outside the castle is rancid and filled with bottles, cans and boxes. The fantasy world that the Vander Zalms had created for themselves on a barren piece of land no longer resembles the enchanted kingdom they once lived in.
"I brought Lillian out here a year ago to pick up some statues from the biblical garden," Mr. Vander Zalm said. "When we sold the place we put in the deal that if the place was ever sold or the gardens were closed or neglected we could get the statues back for a dollar. But it was really hard for Lillian to see what had become of her beautiful gardens. Just devastating."
By the late 1980s, Fantasy Garden World became a target for dissent. The kitschy façade and the looming windmill made a perfect backdrop against which demonstrators could protest against the policies of the Dutch-born premier. And so the doctors came with their grievances and the nurses and the gay community. And businesses inside the park began to suffer and complain.
"One time, we had a protest and the people were walking over the flower beds and completely blocking the entrance to the park, so Lillian phoned the police," Mr. Vander Zalm recalled. "The RCMP came out and Lillian said, 'Can you do something about this?' And they said they could do nothing. That was the turning point."
Mr. Vander Zalm said that he and his wife knew then that they would have to start thinking about selling the gardens.
It wasn't long after that, Mr. Vander Zalm recalled, that a woman with a colourful hat cornered him out in the gardens one day. It was a Sunday.
"She was a strange lady," he says. "She approached me and said, 'I can sell this place for you.' I said, 'Well, you're going to have to talk to Lillian about that.' She found Lillian in the biblical garden. Lillian told her she wasn't interested in selling. The woman persisted and said she wanted some pictures and other information about the place but Lillian said no.
"Well, this lady went around to all the little shops and souvenir places picking up various things with images of Fantasy Gardens on it and she made a sales package out of it. She did an amazing job."
Her name was Faye Leung. The woman who would broker the sale and whose often bizarre utterances about it all would lead to Mr. Vander Zalm's demise.
"That led to my downfall," Mr. Vander Zalm said with a smile. "No question."
He is a month shy of 73 now, but looks 20 years younger. When we met he was dressed as snappily as ever: a crisp blue blazer, white shirt, yellow tie, black and white checkered pants and tasselled loafers. He was driving a high-end black Mercedes Benz. He said he now jointly runs a development company and has never been happier.
"This place represented some of the best times of my life," he said before hopping in his car to drive away. "But I believe in providence and that if you believe you're doing the right thing and you do it in good conscience then whatever happens is meant to be."
He looked around one last time at what once was his and Lillian's haven.
"It's just sad that it ended up like this."
Gary Mason