by Anny Scoones
At the lecture I learned about the terrible disaster on the Point Ellice Bridge (the Bay Street Bridge) on May 26, 1896. The bridge collapsed as a streetcar made its way across, loaded down with one hundred and forty-three vacationers heading up the Gorge to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. Fifty-five people were unable to escape and died.
Grand and wealthy homes once lined the waterway, owned by beer barons, coal industrialists, judges, and socialites. Swimming parties, teas, picnics, and regattas were held regularly. There were brass bands on barges, dugout-canoe races of the First Nations, boat races between the British and Canadian navies, and cruises up the Gorge for ten cents, which included tea and piano playing (the piano was towed!). Tourists and visitors arrived by streetcar, or paddlewheeler, or horse and buggy, and some walked along the forest trails and often camped for the night. There were outdoor movies, a bandshell, swimming races, lemonade stands, and a bathing house for recreational swimming. To create a beach feeling, a barge full of sand was towed up the Gorge. (Times haven’t really changed—the popular tourist beach in Waikiki in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the luxurious white beaches along Mexico’s east coast south of Cancun are both enhanced by man-made sandy beaches.)
There was an amusement park with high-diving displays, which some thought was a bit dangerous given the shallow waters of the Gorge, and indeed, a diving accident did occur. Swimming clubs held backstroke races and the competitors had to hold a candle in their teeth! Three-mile swimming marathons were held from the Inner Harbour up the Gorge and swimmers swam through the pollution of the time, which was described as swimming through “cigars.”
Nowadays, we are all afraid of E. coli and related germs, but we weren’t back then. I remember spending summers with Gran on Galiano Island and swimming all day in a lovely warm cove just below her cottage. The colourful, thriving sea life enchanted me and gave me my lifelong love of ocean ecology and biology. Years later, I realized why the cove was so warm and home to so many diverse species of sea life—it was where Gran’s septic pipe emptied into the sea. There were far fewer chemicals in the septic systems then.
I don’t know what type of pollution is in the Gorge today—perhaps it is cleaner than when the “cigars” were buoyant, or perhaps it contains more toxins, but we need to ask at some point, “What do we actually mean by clean?”
Many artifacts have been found in the Gorge from the days of long ago, sunk deep in the mud at low tide; old bottles, pottery, swimming tokens and the like have been retrieved through the sport of “mudlarking.” Today, mudlarking is replaced by those who stroll the beaches with metal detectors.
There is a dedicated group of people who call themselves The Gorge Waterway Initiative; their mission is to protect and restore health to the Gorge waterway. They give the Gorge a big clean-up every year, as well as monitoring stormwater drainage, and work to preserve bird and wildlife habitat. Their informative booklet notes that the little native oysters and the local herring population both need the Gorge to survive and thrive. The group also restores the shoreline.
A very interesting bicycle ride or walk up the Gorge begins at the west end of the Johnson Street Bridge. The flat, paved route takes you up the beginning of the Gorge along a newly developed part of town called Selkirk Water. What was an industrial area of old red-brick warehouses and factories is now a modern and pristine array of great glass-and-concrete condominiums with balconies and paving-stone courtyards and beautifully landscaped potted trees. It is difficult for me to decide which is lovelier, the crumbling warehouses with their yellowed windows and tangled mass of urban wild growth crawling over the old stone walls, or the modern, energy-efficient towers with their planned and immaculate green roofs and plug-in depots for electric cars.
Across the waterway and farther along toward the Bay Street Bridge, the city is still very much industrial. Heaps of recycled cars, barges loaded with gravel secured with thick ropes bobbing against huge, stolid wharves, and sparks streaking like fireworks from welders repairing huge brass propellers form the view behind the numerous pilings and docks across the dark water. I find this busy, rugged, working place intriguing, and strangely austere and lovely. I would rather look at a heap of recycled, crushed cars and men in overalls working on cranes than a car lot full of new and shiny vehicles and red balloons and men in little suits, with cell phones, smelling of sweet aftershave.
Years ago, when Mum was visiting me, a nice man offered to paddle us down the Gorge in his canoe to the Inner Harbour to the annual Symphony Splash (“Victoria really knows how to have fun!” Mum said). We drifted quietly down the Gorge at dusk in his canoe, wrapped in blankets and drinking his homemade pear wine (he’d given us a gallon jug of it with two plastic glasses). The evening sky was a deep blue and the water was black and still as we made our way past the gulls silhouetted atop the pilings and the bobbing fishboats with a faint glow from the portholes at water level. That’s my memory of the Gorge. The symphony was wonderful and the green and pink fireworks that lit up the sky were exciting, but they masked the night sky—the stars and the skyline. The memorable event was slipping quietly down the dark, resting, lapping Gorge, sipping that pear wine and looking up at the great, silent mountains of industrial work under that vast blue night sky.
The industrial area soon merges into a pretty area of new and tasteful townhomes and cafés joined by walkways and small pocket parks. On the western side, clusters of colourful modular homes dot the waterfront, and interpretive nature and heritage signage provides you with a good education on local nature and history. There are small landscaped rest stops, benches, drinking fountains, and information kiosks with route maps. The signage points out ecological restoration projects and native species that you might see—it’s fun to take along binoculars on these excursions.
The Selkirk Trestle used to be a railway bridge. On one side of the trestle is a piece of the original wooden pipe that was part of the historic water system in Victoria when water was piped into town. Cafés, canoe clubs, small parks, and urban pathways line both sides of the Gorge.
Vic West
The quirky, historic neighbourhood of Vic West is easy to miss because it’s on top of the slope. Its rolling, grassy meadow of Banfield Park borders the Gorge, but if you make your way up through the park under the Garry oak trees, a delightful village and heritage neighbourhood await your visit.
In the park is a storage container painted by the local residents with broad brush strokes reading WELCOME TO VICTORIA WEST. There’s a modest community centre in the park with a children’s summer camp schedule posted on its outside bulletin board; children may attend pirate camps where they can “walk the plank,” or bug camps where they can play spider soccer, or space camps where they build their own alien egg—somebody at the community centre is very creative.
Across the street is a row of shops—a hemp store and a children’s consignment shop, often with pretty little sundresses hanging in the window. The hair salon doubles as an art gallery displaying beautiful pottery for sale in the window, and the barber’s sign in the door lists “free hot lather neck shaves” and military haircuts.
But the main centre of activity is at the Spiral Café with its oiled, planked floor and wooden tables, delicious lattes, and yellow wall covered with children’s art. The day I was there, the art, some of it looking like what Picasso was striving for, was strong and bold with titles such as Pink Lady and Lifting Up Bird. There was a rather abstract painting of the Golden Gate Bridge—abstract without the artist (a child) knowing it was abstract, with big bold orange swaths of colour—you just knew it was the massive bridge but it was simply rich shapes. On a cool Saturday afternoon, the café was cozy and warm; a tarnished glitter ball hung off a leafy plant beside an old battered white piano, which was played by a man with a grey ponytail singing about a long-lost love.
Everywhere you look in the Vic West neighbourhood, there are lush gardens. Outside the community centre are Oregon grape bushes with boughs bendin
g, full of plump, purple fruit—they are the largest Oregon grapes I have ever seen. The community centre’s public garden is full of herbs, strawberries, bee balm, and goji. Goji is considered a “superfood”—it’s in every health magazine I pick up. It’s a little red berry from Asia and is said to strengthen the legs and aid in fertility, among other things.
On the corner beside the community centre is another garden, a public garden full of fruit trees, flowers, fennel, and artichokes as big as my fist. You can walk amongst the growth on a little path, but be careful of the numerous and busy bees enjoying this jungle of flowers and food!
Just around the corner from the café, up on Fullerton Avenue, is the huge Salvation Army High Point Community Church. They have a community garden as well where the peas spill out onto the sidewalk; the church not only grows food in their raised beds but also harvests it and gives it to those in need. There are more community gardens behind the café too, where cucumber and trailing squash vines have escaped from the plots and trail along the sidewalk.
Another shop not to be missed is the antique store just up the road from the hub of shops and the Spiral Café. It is chock-a-block full of what I would call attic treasures—silver hairbrushes, cut-glass perfume bottles, red-velvet footstools, and bedroom sets that look as if they came right out of Jane Austen’s house. But their specialty is lamps and lampshades; from floor to ceiling are silk shades with fringes, great turbans, brass pole lamps, hand-painted porcelain oil lamps, crystal sconces, glittering chandeliers, and milk-glass reflectors. It is truly magical.
Of course the heritage homes with their old porches, solid wood doors, climbing roses, and stained-glass windows are a lovely sight. One of the girls who drive the horse carriages in James Bay told me that the stained-glass windows were shipped from England and packed in barrels of molasses for protection, but the lead from the windows soaked into the molasses and the residents got lead poisoning.
Vic West is a delightful addition to the Gorge excursion, an array of historic and eclectic businesses on quiet streets where everyone is welcome and where gardens thrive.
View Royal
The Gorge continues, eventually ending on Portage Inlet where the municipality of View Royal begins. This was one of the first settled areas of Victoria, rich in history with one of the most charming and scenic shorelines—many original fruit trees and little groves of wildflowers line the narrow lanes, and there are two original community halls, which volunteers lovingly care for.
View Royal sits on the Old Island Highway, an original stagecoach route that travelled from town out toward Sooke. There are three historic pubs (the Four Mile, the Six Mile and the Seventeen Mile) on this route; some say they are the oldest pubs in the region (although I have also heard that the pub on Mayne Island, the Springwater, is the oldest).
The quaint and traditional British Four Mile Pub is in View Royal—as they get farther away from town, the pubs become, well, a bit less refined (some people like their pubs that way!). The village pub in View Royal is surrounded by pretty gardens and hanging baskets, and inside it is full of old lanterns, stained-glass windows, heavy oak furniture, and a sturdy, solid bar. Earthenware crocks and antiques sit on stone mantels, and many of the patrons on Sunday afternoon look as if they might be there for a pint after a tramp with their walking sticks across windswept moors. It’s charming, and my friend even said that her Guinness tasted as good here as in Dublin. The pub’s brochure proudly states that its catering business in “Creative Ice Sculptures, Ice Punch Bowls and Extensive Decorations puts them a cut above the rest!”
A highlight of View Royal is the stone wall across the road from the pub, built by a traditional Italian stonemason as part of the infrastructure improvement project when the road had to be widened. This is the most beautiful mosaic wall I have ever seen! It’s a true piece of public art, made from a concrete base with slabs of vertical, pastel rectangular rocks and beach stones placed in wonderful swirling patterns that resemble beaches, sandbars, shells, tidal pools, and waves. “He would come to work in a little suit and tie with his lunch bucket, and chip away all day with his many chisels and hammers in the scorching heat as the traffic roared by, placing stones in intricate strategic places and tapping them into place,” a man in the pub told me over his pint of golden ale under an old print of a hunting scene.
Cole Island, Esquimalt
There’s a funny juxtaposition or irony to View Royal as well; along the main highway there is a replica of a wooden fort with great yellow letters advertising it as Fort Victoria, but behind the grand fort is a large, sprawling trailer park. There is nothing wrong with that, but I just cannot quite make the connection between the trailers and the fort!
View in the name View Royal comes from the spectacular waterfront vistas of Esquimalt Harbour. In the harbour is a small island the View Royal residents love to protect by watching it with binoculars and paddling over in their kayaks to make sure it has not been abused or vandalized. Cole Island is part of the Esquimalt Naval Sites National Historic Site and houses Esquimalt’s oldest buildings—wooden and brick structures built in 1858 to store gunpowder and shells; there is a little guard house as well. Age, sun, and sea salt have turned the red-brick walls a weather-washed pink, darker at the bottom where the calm water rises and ebbs, waiting for the naval boats to tie up and load their ammunition through the high arched entrances.
Perhaps the aesthetic appeal of heritage structures is enhanced with age—they are at their most beautiful just before they give in, like a jar of fading tulips on a sunny windowsill—there’s a quiet peace about them, subtle and lovely, still enjoying the life around them, still hanging on but ready to go.
Funding by the federal government has been announced to preserve the old buildings on Cole Island, which is a delightful and welcome project.
At the Entrance to Esquimalt Harbour
CHAPTER EIGHT
Esquimalt
As you make your way up the Gorge and beyond Vic West, you will come to the municipality of Esquimalt. Esquimalt in the First Nations language means “place of shoaling waters.” This area was once a traditional First Nations village and a rich source of shellfish, most likely because of the shoaling, or shallow, water.
If ever a place had a mistaken image or identity, it is Esquimalt. Of all our neighbourhoods in and around Victoria, Esquimalt is the most surprising because of what one assumes. Esquimalt is home to the Canadian Forces dockyards and naval base. Great yellow cranes in the shipyard can be seen across the water from James Bay and many other neighbourhoods. Part of it, Naden (the name of the base), is accessible to the public and you can take tours by foot or by a shuttle bus. Esquimalt village is simply a stretch of stores that includes two Tim Hortons, a bingo hall, a consignment shop, a small strip mall, a pawn shop (I hear it is one of the best in town), and several pubs and other businesses. But behind the main street and naval base is a wonderful surprise!
There are quaint neighbourhoods of modest little homes with lovely front gardens on quiet streets that lead down to a beautiful park called Saxe Point. It runs along the sea, not overly manicured, but with wild semi-woodland trails full of salmonberry bushes, arbutus trees, and Oregon grape, interspersed with little sandy coves with rowboats tied by frayed yellow ropes to washed-up logs.
Toward Victoria is Macaulay Point, a huge, breezy bluff, dramatic and windswept, with a meadow-like landscape that looks out over the grey-green sea dotted with boats, ferries, and cruise ships. Lovely, neat, cedar split-rail fences guide you along gravel pathways and also protect areas of native plants that the town is trying to encourage.
At the municipal hall you can pick up a thick but neat package of maps and brochures of different strolls and walks through Esquimalt. The pamphlets are wonderfully illustrated with historic photographs, and the map routes are easy to follow. There’s a walk through the Gorge area, the West Bay community (where the houseboats tie up and the mayor has her floating physiotherapy clinic), and othe
r lovely walks that include parks, public art (be sure to see the First Nations mural on the side of the municipal hall), gardens, memorials, footpaths, beaches, heritage and First Nations features, art deco and Tudor revival architecture, and quiet lanes.
One of the most interesting walks is through Old Esquimalt, which begins at the Lampson Street School. The school was originally a four-room brick building built in 1903. The walk through this historic area takes you up through Cairn Park to the highest point in Esquimalt at 232.25 feet. The trail ambles through the Garry oak meadows between great black rock faces and patches of bluebells and fawn lilies. At the top is a stone cairn with a tarnished, circular plaque that points out numerous viewpoints and sites around the region, including First Nations reserves, the shipyards, old railway routes, and elements of the local topography.
The landscapes in and around Victoria offer such a variety of perspectives. Your perspective changes dramatically depending on where you are looking from. Paddling a kayak along the seashore or up the Gorge, riding a bicycle path through a rose garden, and hiking up a rock face offer quite different views—you notice (or miss) different features of the cultural and natural landscape and the people in it, depending on your mode of transportation. But that’s the beauty of Victoria—it begs you to explore all of its neighbourhoods by all means of movement.
On the walk down from Cairn Park you can travel along the “oldest planned road in the west,” Old Esquimalt Road, constructed by sailors in 1852. On this particular walk, the feeling I absorbed seemed much more important than what there was to learn. Sometimes, what you see and learn on a walking tour is not as important as that mysterious ambience you experience just by being surrounded by an area’s features. You can study the information before or after, but if you just walk and observe and enjoy the area, you might find that that is enough. Of all the walking that I do, this area is one of the most memorable, not because of the facts, but because of its feeling.