A real man. Harris purchased the already-built Benares estate in 1837 and settled there with his wife, Elizabeth Molony.
He did not build the house — it was raised around 1835 by Edgar Neave, who named it after Benares on the Ganges. Harris kept the name.
The Man
Harris is written as fundamentally good: a respected military officer who valued the local community and, through some prior connection to India, brought a genuine reverence with him rather than imposing something foreign on the place. His choice to keep the estate’s name was not random.
Peter Jones
Harris’s real documented collaborator on the Port Credit Harbour Company was Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby), chief of the Mississaugas of the Credit. That working relationship is real, it is on the record, and it matters — not least because Archdeacon Strachan spent his career opposing everything Jones stood for institutionally.
Still being written
How and when you actually meet the Captain, the layout of the estate, and Elizabeth Molony’s role in the household.