8 replies to this topic

[Number Six]

This is one of my favourite early images of Victoria (circa 1898-1902), looking west from Church Hill (approximately where the Courthouse steps are now).

The dirt road running horizontally along the bottom of the picture is Blandshard St. and the dirt road heading down the hill is Burdett where it runs into Humbolt and Douglas.

The little triangle of land with the tree on the left and the old Lamp mast is where the nice art deco BC Power Commission building now stands.

The little clump of homes set in the triangle just left of center is where the Executive House hotel sits and so the Marriott would be to the left.

The furniture factory, soap factory and cottages along Kanaka Row were removed when the mud flats were filled prior to construction of the Empress.

And of course the beautiful old Post Office (R.I.P) had just been completed and stood tall at the foot of Government St. The Parliament Buildings had also just been completed but are just out of the shot.

[Holden West]

What a fantastic photo.

It reminds me of the people that "restore" beautiful heritage Victorian houses--that the original context or surroundings these houses existed in were often barren, treeless, dirty and surrounded by dilapidated shacks. Victoria's heritage houses with their efficient heating, paved sidewalks and lush forested boulevards are only now becoming what their original owners hoped for.

That photo also reminds us that you cannot identify a past point in Victoria's history where things were ideal--we often have a nostalgia for a past that never existed. Would you honestly want to live on Church Hill? Upwind of a soap factory on a sewage-clogged mudflat?

And that as beautiful as those houses look, if we hadn't replaced them with new construction, Victoria would be little better than Ladysmith or Port Angeles or Gold River today.

[Number Six]

The photo also illustrates that change *will* happen and so you better manage it intelligently or you may not like the results you see when you pull your head out of the sand. The trick is to recognize the essence of what they did well and not lose sight of it as we move forward.

I would love to spend a day or two wandering the streets of old Victoria but it probably would be end up a case of it's a nice time to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

Emily Carr's description of the mud flats in "A Book of Small" is fantastic. Ironically, when the city finally put their foot down on dumping trash into the flats the townfolk began dumping it in the bog that the Cook St. Village now sits upon (also described wonderfully in Carr's book).

[zoomer]

Yes, awesome picture indeed. I love drooling over historic photos of Victoria. Would it not be the most amazing trip of your entire life if you could go back in time and walk the streets of downtown Victoria?!! [edit! After taking so long to write this, I see Number 6 said the same thing above!] What era would you pick?! I think I'd choose the 1870s to 1880s. Makes you think it would be cool if someone could capture downtown Victoria now with some sort of futuristic 3D IMAX interactive multi-sensory type of film technology, so generations in the future could "walk" around downtown Victoria 2006, and get a sense of not only the buildings, but the people, the fashion, the smells and ambiance.

I totally agree with you HW about idealizing our past. If you take a broader look beyond some of the individual buildings, in a lot of ways, the man made Victoria of our past was a pretty bleak and barren looking place. I'm sure Victorians of the past would be quite amused with our endless ponderings on the quality or lack thereof of the Wave.

I'm don't get the Gold River comparison though, it was built in the 1960's from scratch as company town, and was looked upon at the time as a great example in modern planning.

[Holden West]

I'd love to take a trip back to that era and walk down the street. As long as I wasn't Chinese, Native, Black, Japanese, female or any combination thereof!

I think zoomer found this Emily Carr quote:

"Victoria was like a lying-down cow, chewing. She had made
one enormous effort of upheaval. She had hoisted herself
from a Hudson's Bay Fort into a little town and there
she paused, chewing the cud of imported fodder, afraid
to crop the pastures of the new world for fear she might
lose the good flavour of the old to which she was so
deeply loyal. Her jaws went rolling on and on, long after
there was nothing left to chew."

[Emily describes the above area:]

On the corner of Humboldt and Blanshard stood the Reformed
Episcopal Church; criss-cross from it was the White Horse
Saloon. A great brick drain ran under Blanshard Street,
gushing into the slough which rambled over the mud flats
and out to the sea. Above the flats on the Belville Street
side were Governor Douglas's and Doctor Helmcken's houses.
There was always plenty to be seen from the high sidewalk.
The Reformed Episcopal Sunday School was beside the
church. It was sure to be either going in or coming out
as we passed. There were splendid slides on either side
of its steps which must have spoiled heaps of boys' Sunday
pants. Below the schoolhouse was a jungle of sweet-briar
rose bushes and then came the mud, covered round the
edges with coarse marsh grass.

There were nearly always Indians camped on the Flats.
They drew their canoes up the slough. Some camped right
in their canoes with a canvas tent across the top, some
pitched tents on the higher ground. The smoke of their
camp fires curled up. Indians loved camping here because
for many, many years the mud flats were used as the town's
rubbish dump. Square blue carts backed to the edge of
Blanshard Street and spattered their loads overboard--old
clothes, old stoves, broken baby buggies, broken crockery
and beds. The Indians picked it all over, chose what they
could use, stowed it away in their canoes to take to
their houses. When the tide came up and flooded the slough
and flats the canoes slipped away, the Indians calling
to their dogs who lingered for a last pick among the
rubbish. Then they waded through the mud and caught up
with the canoes just before they reached the sea. You
got excited watching to see if they'd make it.

The last and very meanest pick of all the rubbish was
left to the screeching seagulls that swooped for the
dregs of refuse, rising triumphant as kings with new
crowns.

[Here's some more of Emily telling it like it is. Down with nostalgia!! :D ]

From our own gate to the James' Bay Bridge wild
rose bushes grew at the roadsides nearly all the way and
their perfume was delicious. Then we came to the mud
flats and our noses hurt with its dreadfulness when the
tide was out. We had no sooner got over that than there
was Chinatown with stuffy, foreign smells. Then came the
gas-works--this smell was said to be healthful but it
was not nice. Rock Bay Bridge had more low-tide smells,
which were made easier by a sawmill; the new sawdust
smelled so nice that you forgot your nose until the other
end of the bridge came. There sat a tannery from which
came, I thought, the worst smell of them all. There was
one still more dreadful--Parker's slaughter-house and
piggery--but that was two miles further on and we did
not have to pass it on the way to call on our friends.

[Number Six]

Here's a photo that shows the White Horse saloon across from the Church of our Lord (and the second Christ Church Cathedral at the top of the hill):

[Number Six]

I have a great description of that saloon / hotel from Cecil Clark's "The Best of Victoria Yesterday and Today":

"...the old White Horse Hotel on the north east corner of Humboldt and Blandshard. Started by Mason and Bell in 1865, in time it became a handy and secluded retreat for cabinet ministers wishing a moment of relaxation. Of course this was in a day before the Empress or the Union Club were thought of.

Matter of fact, some, so I'm told, got so relaxed that several days would pass before a messenger from the Parliament Buildings caught up with them.

Finally prohibition, in the latter years of the first war, closed the swinging doors of the White Horse, though it continued on as a rooming house known as Glen Court.

In 1959, along with the Angela on Burdett, the property was acquired by the Sisters of St. Ann, and the next year the 95-year old building was pulled down and the site became a parking lot."

...and will now become the Parkside 1/4-share development.

[renthefinn]

Wow, some real descriptions of the past, I didn't know much of Carr's writings, thanx for iforming me.

[Number Six]

I'd have a hard time choosing just one era to time travel back to.

The summer of 1858 would be interesting (to say the least) ... I'd like to experience what the 400 residents went through when the thousands of gold seekers decended on Victoria.

The 1860's would be great ... just to hear Amor de Cosmos and Douglas trade insults. Local politics was a blood sport back then ... and it makes very entertaining reading today.

Riding a streetcar from the outer docks to the "fountain" and sailing up the west coast of the Island on the Princess Maquinna are also high on my list so I'd have to drop in on the 1910's as well.

but as HW pointed out if you weren't a white, anglo-saxon male with money and/or connections you might have a lousy trip.