11 replies to this topic

[VicHockeyFan]

How Victorian are you? Find out here

By Jack Knox, Times Colonist May 23, 2010

Three signs that you are a Victorian:

- When walking past Darth Vader playing the violin, you don't look twice or give him money.

Read more: http://www.timescolo...l#ixzz0olClBEIx

[aastra]

- You get excited when you see a squirrel in your yard, but don't look twice when you see deer.

Methinks there's some serious revisionism going on with the deer issue. Deers were unheard of in the city until just a few years ago. It was very unusual to see one. Now they're everywhere.

[victorian fan]

You get excited when you see a squirrel in your yard

I see dozens of them everyday.
Deer, squirrel, rabbits.........there's a million of them.

[VicHockeyFan]

Methinks there's some serious revisionism going on with the deer issue. Deers were unheard of in the city until just a few years ago. It was very unusual to see one. Now they're everywhere.

I think Gordon Head, Cadboro Bay and Broadmead have had lots for at least 20 years.

[aastra]

Maybe so but in Victoria city you never ever saw one. I think I saw deer around UVic maybe one or two times back in my school daze. I'm sure local residents saw them more often than that because the deer were definitely there in the more woodsy areas, but they weren't on every corner like they are now.

I'd even suggest that deer are more common in the city today than they were in the near suburbs 20 years ago.

The introduced eastern gray squirrels didn't exist in Victoria back then. I was well into my twenties before I saw a squirrel in the city. In the beginning it was exciting but now it's commonplace, as victorian fan says. There are squirrels in every tree now.

Even raccoons are much more common in the city today than they were when I was younger. A raccoon in a neighbourhood tree was an event back in the 1980s. Today a pack of raccoons can dash by at seemingly any moment.

One thing I never see these days that I used to see everywhere in town when I was a kid are garter snakes.

As with the rabbit situation, it's quite amazing to me how quickly things can change.

[Ms. B. Havin]

Methinks there's some serious revisionism going on with the deer issue. Deers were unheard of in the city until just a few years ago. It was very unusual to see one. Now they're everywhere.

Thank-YOU! They were definitely NOT common a few years ago.

It never ceases to amaze me how Victorians take recent history as cast in iron/ carved in stone, but don't look beyond that recent tip-of-the-nose history.

What? We were sealers? Can't be!

Yep, you were sealers. And whalers. And every other sort of nasty - get over yourselves.

I wish I knew how this selective amnesia is nurtured - 'cause if I did, I'd have no compunctions about throttling it in its cradle.

[aastra]

Somewhere along the way (on this very board??) I recall encountering someone who didn't believe the old pictures of the Clarence Hotel were real because there's a different old building still standing in that very spot (corner of Yates and Douglas) today.

As if the present bank building was the very first thing (or even the very first significant thing) to ever be constructed there. The way things are now is the way they've always been. Change has never happened before.

[Bingo]

Methinks there's some serious revisionism going on with the deer issue. Deers were unheard of in the city until just a few years ago. It was very unusual to see one. Now they're everywhere.

I never saw deer in the city when I was a kid, but then again dogs were still allowed to run loose. Perhaps we need to let them loose again.

[VicHockeyFan]

The introduced eastern gray squirrels didn't exist in Victoria back then. I was well into my twenties before I saw a squirrel in the city. In the beginning it was exciting but now it's commonplace, as victorian fan says. There are squirrels in every tree now.

Ya, I never saw them 20 years ago, but they are indeed everywhere now, they travel via telephone cables near my mothers house.

Even raccoons are much more common in the city today than they were when I was younger. A raccoon in a neighbourhood tree was an event back in the 1980s. Today a pack of raccoons can dash by at seemingly any moment.

True too, I'd only ever see them very early in the morning during my paper route, but even then rarely.

One thing I never see these days that I used to see everywhere in town when I was a kid are garter snakes.

When we were kids we'd know where to find them, under any old board in a vacant field. Not sure if I'd know where to find them now, there are no vacant fields out where I grew up anymore. Maybe Mt. Doug Park. I bet you can find all kinds of wildlife out there. We used to go to the beach there and under every single large rock you'd roll over you'd find some decent-sized crabs. I wonder if that is still the case. Mt. Doug Park is such an amazing and underutilized place. From mountaintop to beach in four minutes flat on your three-speed, if you didn't wipe out.

[D.L.]

Funny thing is, the word "Victorian" at one time conotated progress and industry (in the late 19th century) and at another time conotated antiquatedness and tackyness (in the 1960s).

Right now I don't care how bad my spelling is.

[LJ]

From mountaintop to beach in four minutes flat on your three-speed, if you didn't wipe out.

How long from beach to mountaintop?

[VicHockeyFan]

How long from beach to mountaintop?

Mt. Tolmie could just barely be done without getting off the bike (10-spd) but I believe it was physically not possible to go up Mt. Doug without getting off our bikes near the switchback. So 15-20 minutes maybe.