It features eight bedrooms on 5.4 acres of land; a two-storey indoor pool and spa, a guest house, geothermal heating and cooling and even a charming, if clichéd, secret passage behind a bookcase.
So when the founder of Phoenix International Life Sciences Inc. put the estate, called Oakleigh, up for sale three years ago for $6.9 million, he wasn't ready for the shock he got. There were no takers. Some people blame the asking price, saying it was set far too high and wasn't sufficiently reduced. Others note the location scared away buyers - owning a property off the Island of Montreal is frequently a commuting nightmare as traffic congestion rises.
Hooper finally sold his home earlier this month for $3.4 million - less than half the original asking price - resorting to a rare open auction with no minimum bid.
The auction of a luxury estate such as this was a first for Quebec and believed to be a first for Canada.
"We are being told repeatedly by the real-estate community that this is the first of its kind (in Canada)," says Stacy Kirk Reich, president of U.S.-based Grand Estates Auction Co., the firm that organized the sale. "There have been a lot of questions."
In 2010, Grand Estates sold 28 properties in the United States by absolute auction. The average price paid was $3.2 million U.S.
"Why the Canadian market has not yet embraced auctions? It's probably because of a lack of knowledge," she says. "This is a means of selling within a defined period of time for a price that the market is willing to bear."
But a market alternative like auctions is unlikely to replace traditional sales by brokers, says Don Campbell, president of the Vancouver-based Real Estate Investment Network.
"It's not going to catch fire here. It's too much of a risk to the vendor. In our country, it doesn't make sense for a vendor to go to auction."
And unlike the case in Hudson, most auctions in Canada have a reserve bid, or a minimum selling price, he says.
"I'm really and truly trying to figure out why you would want to sell it in an auction," he says of Hooper's sprawling estate about 145 kilometres east of Ottawa.
Unlike a traditional real estate transaction, where brokers for the buyer and seller split a commission, Grand Estates gets a buyer's premium of 10 per cent of the total sale price. The 10 per cent includes a commission for the referring broker, who in this case tried unsuccessfully to sell the home for a year. Before him, another broker also tried for a year to sell the mansion, which was inspired by the English country manors Hooper saw as a child while growing up in a modest home in England.
To register for the bidding, potential buyers needed a $100,000 cheque. The mansion attracted 23 bidders, while generating more than 500 inquiries and 200 showings. The eventual buyer was not disclosed.
Hooper, 70, and Diane Bradshaw, 65, decided to auction off the home after it failed to sell through traditional means. They were eager to sell the estate so they could travel the world.
The estate almost sold twice - to foreign buyers. Hooper says he had a signed promise to purchase with a U.S. resident, but that fell through. Another deal with a Chinese buyer was close to being inked when the purchaser realized it would take longer to immigrate to Canada than expected.
In the meantime, the house they built in 2000, following the sale of Hooper's shares in Phoenix, was becoming a liability.
Once a family of six, with two children each from previous marriages, the couple was now living alone in the huge home with their two mixed-breed rescue dogs, Tesla and Annie. The entertainment room that Hooper once used to woo potential company investors was no longer a necessity.
And after years of travelling for business, Hooper says he and Bradshaw want to buy a small home in the Montreal area and start their global trip with two plane tickets to Italy. "I've travelled the world before, but mostly saw hotels and airports," he says. "Now I'm 70, it's time to see the world. This gives us an assured sale."