👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº9476
ACTIVE
Government House (Saskatchewan)
Government House (Saskatchewan) is a location reputed to be haunted in Saskatchewan, CA. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.
Where is Government House (Saskatchewan)?
- Location
- Saskatchewan, CA
- Type
- House / mansion
- Coordinates
- 50.454, -104.648
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is Government House (Saskatchewan) said to be haunted?
Government House was built between 1889 and 1891 on the plain west of Regina: a buff-brick Italianate mansion by Dominion architect Thomas Fuller, the man who designed Canada's Parliament Buildings, raised as the residence of the lieutenant governors of the North-West Territories and later of Saskatchewan. In 1945 the CCF government of T.C. Douglas closed it as a vice-regal home. It was not abandoned: it spent twelve years as a convalescent home for wounded veterans and almost twenty more as an adult-education centre before restoration turned it into a museum around 1980.
Its ghost has a name and a job. Staff call him Howie and identify him as Cheun Lee, a Chinese immigrant who cooked for lieutenant governors Munroe and McNab. In October 2015 executive director Carrie Ross told CKOM that staff "have heard his flip flops walking up the stairs", and commissionaire John Callan told Global News that Howie "doesn't seem to be a ghost that will jump out and scare the willies out of you. It's just he will move things." The house has since run its own ghost tours, advertised, carefully, as happenings "reported by previous employees and visitors".
What is the history of Government House (Saskatchewan)?
The first Government House on this ground was not this one. In 1883, when Regina became the capital of the North-West Territories, the federal Department of Public Works bolted together two prefabricated houses shipped from eastern Canada and set them on a government reserve about five kilometres west of the new town. It was meant to be temporary. Lieutenant Governor Edgar Dewdney had it enlarged the same year with a veranda, a conservatory and a bay window, and a lattice fence to separate the servants' quarters from the vice-regal side, but nobody pretended it looked like the seat of imperial authority.
The replacement did. Thomas Fuller, the Dominion architect who had designed Ottawa's Parliament Buildings and the New York State Capitol at Albany, signed off the floor plans in July 1888. Construction began in the spring of 1889 on fifty-three acres, with the Regina contractor William Henderson holding the job. Fuller had moved on from High Victorian Gothic: what he drew was a composite of late-Victorian styles, closest to the Italianate, with a squared dome on the peak and windows in Roman and segmental arches. The material is buff brick with limestone trim on a stone foundation — brick, not stone, which is what the photographs show.
In January 1890, with construction well advanced, Lieutenant Governor Joseph Royal walked through the shell and sent back a list of demands. He wanted fireplaces in the master bedroom and the billiard room, four more water closets to serve the fifteen bedrooms, a well, a wine cellar and a vegetable cellar in the basement, mosquito blinds on every window, and a bell in the dining room that rang in the kitchen. When it opened in 1891 it was the most advanced dwelling in the Territories: water pumped from a basement well to a tank in the attic and fed by gravity through the house, indoor flush toilets draining to a brick cesspool in the garden, a telephone line into Regina four kilometres away, and electric light supplied by the Regina Lighting Company. The house grew afterwards — a greenhouse in 1901, heating, electrical and water upgrades in 1907-08, a sunporch in 1921 and, in 1928, a two-storey wing holding the ballroom and further bedrooms.
Then it stopped being a home. The CCF government of T.C. Douglas, elected in 1944, closed Government House as a vice-regal residence in 1945, and Saskatchewan's lieutenant governors went without an official house for the next four decades. The building did not stand empty. It was leased to the federal Department of Veterans Affairs and run as a convalescent home for returning servicemen until 1957. In 1958 the province reopened it as Saskatchewan House, a centre for adult education, which it remained until 1977; the Saskatchewan Arts Board also kept offices in it from 1960 to 1970. For more than thirty years the rooms were full of patients, students and civil servants.
It was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1968 and a provincial heritage property in 1971, after the Saskatchewan House Committee — later the Government House Historical Society — began lobbying in 1969. Restoration ran from 1978 to 1980, and from the early 1980s the house worked as a museum presenting the era of Lieutenant Governor Amédée Forget, in office from 1898 to 1910. In 1984 the Office of the Lieutenant Governor returned to the north wing, where it remains. A barrier-free entrance with a lift was added in 1999; in 2005 Queen Elizabeth II opened the wing named after her; the Edwardian Gardens were completed in 2011.
Timeline: the documented record of Government House (Saskatchewan)
- 1883 The first Government House is assembled from two prefabricated buildings shipped from eastern Canada and enlarged the same year by Lieutenant Governor Edgar Dewdney. It was meant to be temporary.
- January 1890 With construction well advanced, Lieutenant Governor Joseph Royal inspects the new house and demands changes: fireplaces in the master bedroom and billiard room, four more water closets for its fifteen bedrooms, a wine cellar, mosquito blinds and a dining-room bell that rings in the kitchen.
- 1891 The buff-brick Italianate residence designed by Dominion architect Thomas Fuller is completed on fifty-three acres by contractor William Henderson, with running water, flush toilets, a telephone line and electric light.
- 1928 A two-storey wing containing the ballroom and further bedrooms is added, after a greenhouse in 1901 and a sunporch in 1921.
- 1945 The CCF government of T.C. Douglas closes Government House as a vice-regal residence. It is leased to the federal Department of Veterans Affairs and run as a convalescent home for returning servicemen until 1957.
- 1958 The province reopens the building as Saskatchewan House, a centre for adult education, a role it keeps until 1977; the Saskatchewan Arts Board also has offices there from 1960 to 1970.
- 19 June 1968 Government House is designated a National Historic Site of Canada as one of the few surviving territorial government buildings. Provincial heritage designation follows in 1971.
- 1978-1980 The house is restored and opens as a museum showing the era of Lieutenant Governor Amédée Forget. The Office of the Lieutenant Governor returns to the north wing in 1984.
- 2007 Pat Hancock includes Government House in Haunted Canada 3, a Scholastic collection of "true ghost stories" distributed through Canadian schools, putting the story in front of a generation of children.
- 2011 Regina author Judith Silverthorne publishes the children's novel Ghosts of Government House, which uses Howie and Cheun Lee by name. It is fiction, and it is often quoted as if it were not.
- 25 October 2015 Commissionaire John Callan, ten years on the staff, tells Global News that Howie "doesn't seem to be a ghost that will jump out and scare the willies out of you. It's just he will move things", and describes a tablecloth repeatedly found bundled at the far end of the room.
- 30 October 2015 Executive director Carrie Ross tells CKOM that the cook Cheun Lee "is the only individual that's noted that has passed away in Government House" and that staff "have heard his flip flops walking up the stairs". She says she arrived a sceptic and changed her mind after six years.
- 24 October 2023 The museum runs free Ghost Story Tours for one night, advertised in its own careful wording as "the spooky happenings in Government House as reported by previous employees and visitors", and not recommended for children under 12.
Is there a rational explanation for Government House (Saskatchewan)?
The house's ghost is unusual in that he has a name, a job and a payroll record — and that is exactly where the story starts to come apart.
Staff identify Howie as Cheun Lee, a Chinese immigrant who cooked for lieutenant governors Hugh Edwin Munroe and Archibald McNab. But the tellings do not agree on the most basic fact about him. Executive director Carrie Ross, speaking to CKOM in 2015, said Lee "is the only individual that's noted that has passed away in Government House" and tied him to McNab's tenure, which ended in 1945; popular retellings variously have him dying in 1945 or of pneumonia in 1938. A ghost whose death year moves by seven years between accounts is a folkloric character, not a documented one. The "only person to have died here" claim is also unverifiable by a visitor: the building spent twelve years, from 1945 to 1957, as a Veterans Affairs convalescent home for sick and wounded servicemen.
The phenomena themselves are the ordinary kind. Footsteps, a tablecloth found bundled on the floor, an antique music box that starts on its own. Government House is a brick building from 1891 with a 1928 ballroom wing, a 1999 entrance and a 2005 addition grafted onto it, all expanding and contracting through prairie winters; a spring-driven music box that, in Ross's own description, "doesn't always work" is a mechanism whose defining fault is releasing unpredictably. Ross also noted that certain electronics stop working in October and start again in November — October being the month when the house fills with Halloween programming and extra visitors, and when everyone is looking.
That programming matters. The building's Halloween calendar has been built on Howie for years: the family event Bump in the Night, then the Victorian Supernatural Superstitions Tour, the Victorian Supernatural Séance and, in October 2023, free Ghost Story Tours. The museum's own wording is careful, and worth quoting for the caution in it: the tours offered "the spooky happenings in Government House as reported by previous employees and visitors" — reported, not established. The story has also been fed back to its own audience in print: Pat Hancock put Government House in Haunted Canada 3 (2007), a Scholastic collection sold through schools, and Judith Silverthorne's 2011 children's novel Ghosts of Government House uses Howie and Cheun Lee by name. Many visitors arrive already knowing what to listen for.
No instrumented investigation of the building has ever been published, and as of 2026 the museum's public website makes no claim that the house is haunted at all.
Can you visit Government House (Saskatchewan)?
Government House is at 4607 Dewdney Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan S4T 1B7, three blocks west of Lewvan Drive, and it is a working museum: telephone 306-787-5773, [email protected]. Admission is free. Donations are invited at suggested levels of $6 for adults, $5 for seniors over 65 and youth aged 12 to 18, $3 for children and students and $15 for families; the money goes to the Government House Historical Society for programmes, exhibits and collection care, and debit and credit are accepted.
Summer hours, from Victoria Day to Labour Day, are daily 9:00 to 17:00. Winter hours, from Labour Day to Victoria Day, are Tuesday to Sunday 9:00 to 16:00, closed Mondays. Walk-ins are welcome and guided indoor tours leave at the top of every hour. The interiors are restored to the period of Lieutenant Governor Amédée Forget, roughly 1898 to 1910, and the site also holds the J.E.N. Wiebe Interpretive Centre, the Queen Elizabeth II art gallery and the Edwardian Gardens.
Several Regina Transit routes stop in front of the building, and there is a visitor car park off Connaught Street where buses can drop groups at the sidewalk entrance. Food and drink, water included, are not allowed in the galleries; there is space for them in the lobby or outside in the gardens.
Access is unusually good. The house is fully wheelchair accessible indoors and outdoors year-round, with accessible parking, automatic doors and accessible stalls in all public washrooms; complimentary transport chairs and walkers can be requested at the Welcome Desk. Through the CNIB Foundation Saskatchewan the site runs the BlindSquare navigation app, guide dogs are welcome throughout, and sensory backpacks are available on loan thanks to Variety Saskatchewan. One winter caveat: only the main cement paths are cleared of snow.
Two things to expect. The north wing holds the working offices of the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan, so this is a functioning government building as well as a museum. And the ghost content is seasonal: Howie belongs to the October programme — Halloween events and, in some years, ghost story tours or a staged Victorian séance — not to the standard hourly tour. The 2023 ghost tours were free, first come first served, and not recommended for children under 12.
Sources consulted
- CKOM News, «Government House haunting continues as visitors take in Bump in the Night» — 650 CKOM, Saskatoon, 2015 newspaper archive
- Global News (byline: davidbxter), «Ghost stories of Regina» — Global News, 2015 newspaper archive
- Government House Saskatchewan, «New Government House (institutional history)» — Provincial Capital Commission, 2026 archive
- Michael Jackson, «Government House» — The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan, University of Regina, 2006 academic
- Parks Canada, «Government House National Historic Site of Canada — Statement of Significance» — Canadian Register of Historic Places, 2007 report
- Government House Saskatchewan, «Ghost Story Tours at Government House (archived event page)» — Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 2023 archive
- Pat Hancock, «Haunted Canada 3: More True Ghost Stories» — Scholastic Canada, 2007 book
- Judith Silverthorne, «Ghosts of Government House (juvenile fiction)» — Your Nickel's Worth Publishing, Regina, 2011 book
- Government House Saskatchewan, «Plan Your Visit — hours, admission, access and transport» — Official visitor information, 2026 archive
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-11 · How we verify our content
💬 Field testimonies (0)
No testimonies yet. Add the first.
Add your testimony
🔒 Log in to add a testimony