While travel is finally starting to resume worldwide, trips to Canada continue to be postponed with Public Safety Minister Bill Blair recently announcing that all borders will remain closed until the country attains a 75% vaccination rate. In the meantime, those missing the Great White North can embark upon a bit of armchair tourism by catching up on the many current shows shot there including “Home Before Dark,” “Firefly Lane,” and “Upload.” The latter, an Amazon Studios original created by Greg Daniels, the mastermind behind “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation,” takes place in 2033, a technologically advanced period in which an individual facing the end of life can choose to upload their consciousness to a virtual world rather than die traditionally. Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell), a hip and somewhat self-absorbed computer programmer who falls victim to a self-driving car accident at the tender age of 27, opts for the former by signing up to spend eternity at Lakeview, an idyllic virtual world at the top tier of the digital afterlife game – because even in the great beyond, money talks.
Part sci-fi mystery, part comedy, part drama, part harsh look at class divide, “Upload” has been well-received by audiences and critics alike. With charming performances, humorous storylines and plenty of heart, the series’ appeal is not surprising. And Nathan’s cybernated heaven isn’t too bad to look at, either! As customer service representative/virtual angel Nora Antony (Andy Allo) tells him shortly after his upload is complete, Lakeview is ”the only digital afterlife environment modeled on the grand Victorian hotels of the United States and Canada.”
Production designer Rachel O’Toole was tasked with creating the bucolic afterworld, stitching together several different far-flung locales to form the fictional oasis. The Mohonk Mountain House hotel, located at 1000 Mountain Rest Rd. in New York’s Hudson Valley, was pegged for all of Lakeview’s establishing shots. Interior resort scenes for the series’ pilot were shot a good 2,800 miles away at Pasadena’s famed Castle Green Hotel & Apartments. Following the filming of that episode, the production moved to Vancouver, where sets modeled after the Castle Green interiors were constructed on a soundstage. And most outdoor scenes involving Lakeview’s pristine grounds were lensed at the Cecil Green Park House, a historic mansion situated on the western edge of the University of British Columbia campus.
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Image Credit: Cecil Green Park House Located at 6251 Cecil Green Park Rd., the massive Tudor estate was initially built in 1912 as a private residence for local Vancouver lawyer Edward Pease Davis on a ten-acre plot of clifftop land overlooking the Strait of Georgia. Designed by architect Samuel Maclure, Davis dubbed his new dwelling “Kanakla,” which the Cecil Green Park website notes is “a West Coast native word meaning ‘house on the cliff.’”
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Image Credit: Cecil Green Park House At the time of its inception, the mansion lacked electricity, heat and running water, but still offered the ultimate in luxury with ornate wood paneling lining most walls, inlaid hardwood flooring throughout and a plethora of lavish built-ins.
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Image Credit: Cecil Green Park House The myriad living areas included a drawing room with a marble fireplace, a formal dining room with flame mahogany paneling, a reception room with an ornate Minstrel’s Gallery (that took a full year to carve!), a billiard room and a library where Davis stored his many law books, which, according to the Cecil Green Park House website, was “the largest privately held collection at the time.”
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Image Credit: Cecil Green Park House Outside, the lavish grounds consisted of a detached garage, multiple gardens, a sprawling terrace, a croquet lawn, and tennis, badminton and squash courts. Sadly, much of the land has since been lost to cliff erosion, though what remains is nothing if not stunning.
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Image Credit: Cecil Green Park House The estate remained in the Davis family through 1939. It subsequently went through a succession of different owners until ultimately being purchased by Texas Instruments founder/University of British Columbia alumn Cecil Howard Green and his wife, Ida, in 1967. The couple promptly donated the manse, as well as $200,000 towards its restoration, to UBC, which had expanded over the years to largely encircle the property. The residence was subsequently renamed the Cecil Green Park House in honor of its benefactor. Ida also later allocated funds in her will to go towards further restoration of the facility, a project that was completed in 1989 at a cost of $1.3 million.
Today, the grand site and all of its ornate living spaces are utilized as venues for weddings, special events and film shoots.
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The Cecil Green Park House first pops up as Lakeview in “Upload’s” second episode, “Five Stars,” in the scene in which Nathan wanders the virtual world’s acreage and runs into a young boy named Dylan (Rhys Slack). It goes on to appear numerous times throughout the remainder of season one. Though the Cecil Green Park grounds are featured extensively, the views shown of the mansion itself are extremely tight so as to convincingly cheat it as being part of the Mohonk Mountain House.
“Upload” is hardly the only production to film at Cecil Green Park. In fact, the property’s onscreen resume would make most aspiring actors green with envy! So prolific is its film career that to chronicle all of its appearances would be nearly impossible, but a list of some of its most memorable cameos follows.
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Image Credit: CBS Media Ventures Cecil Green Park House masquerades as the Candlewick Inn, where Trish Wellington (Katie Cassidy) and Henry Dunn (Christopher Gorham) check in for a week-long stay before their wedding on the ill-fated 2009 mystery series “Harper’s Island.”
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Television Studios The estate portrayed several different versions of heaven in the season six episode of “Supernatural” titled “The Man Who Would Be King.”
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Image Credit: USA Network Carlton Lassiter (Timothy Omundson) and Marlowe Viccellio (Kristy Swanson) get married there in the season seven episode of “Psych” titled “Deez Nups.”
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Image Credit: Netflix The Cecil Green Park House appears as the interior of the Church of the Dark Prince in the season one episode of “Lucifer” titled “#teamlucifer.” (Exteriors were filmed at 3340 Country Club Dr. in Los Angeles.) The estate’s Yorkeen Room also portrays the home of Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside) in the same episode.
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Image Credit: 20th Television The manse pops up as the residence of the Cigarette Smoking Man (William B. Davis) during seasons ten and eleven of “The X-Files.” In an ironic twist, William B. Davis also appears on “Upload” as fellow Lakeview resident David Choak. Even more ironic? “Upload” star Amell plays Agent Miller on “The X-Files,” who rescues Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) from the Cecil Green Park House at one point! For the two to shoot “Upload” at the property together must have felt like coming home!
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Image Credit: NBCUniversal Television In the season one episode of “Imposters” titled “Frog-Bikini-Eiffel Tower,” the mansion is featured as the Laneview Country Club, where Jules (Marianne Rendón) and Richard Evans (Parker Young) seek advice from a lawyer.
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. Television Studios It appears as the home of Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) in the pilot episode of “Riverdale.”
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Image Credit: Universal Pictures Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) buys the place for Ana (Dakota Johnson) in 2018’s “Fifty Shades Freed.”
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Image Credit: Netflix The 2020 mystery series “The Haunting of Bly Manor” opens and closes at the Cecil Green Park House.
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Image Credit: Apple TV+ And most recently, it popped up as the Catherine Woodruff Mansion in the season two premiere of “Home Before Dark” titled “Not Giving Up.” It is there that Hilde Lisko (Brooklynn Prince) and her friends crash a Sweet 16 party in order to surreptitiously gather information about a mystery they are trying to solve.