Vancouver Island Slow Trip - 13. Slowing Down in Victoria

Having driven nearly 2000 km over our first 11 days across this large and scenically diverse island in the North Pacific, we ensured that this would be a slow trip with 10 nights at the provincial capital of Victoria.

My Canadian friends all thought I was crazy -- or lazy -- as their Vancouver Island trips typical range from a 3-day weekend at Victoria to one full week of surfing at Tofino. But that would be missing hidden gems like Alert Bay or Quatsino, and we certainly didn't wish to dash through Victoria's charming Inner Harbour in a few hours.

But an extra long stay in Victoria meant no chance of affording the posh Empress Hotel, one of the grand hotels of late British Empire and now a Canadian National Historic Site. Instead we booked a 1-bedroom apartment on the waterfront, steps from historic Chinatown and walkable to the heart of downtown within 10 minutes.

Our sweet home for 10 nights was an elegantly decored and functional homebase with a well-equipped kitchen crucial for experimenting with the local seafood, and of course washer and dryer for an extended stay. In fact our landlady asked whether we'd be interested in booking an extended Work-from-Home stint during COVID, which sounded really tempting.

We arrived in the early evening to a balcony view of Victoria's Upper Harbour, majestic schooners and adorably diminutive Harbour Ferries docked next to our building. Across the water were the shipyards and dry docks of this working maritime city.

River otters frequented the floating docks below, and I cherished my daily, National Geographic-style episodes of otters dodging dive-bombing seagulls intent on defending their nests from the stealthy bandits.

Our favourite sight from the balcony was Victoria's 21st century landmark and one of the world's largest single-leaf drawbridges, the fourth reincarnation of the Johnson Street Bridge spanning the narrows between Downtown Victoria and the industrial waterfront of Esquimalt.

Numerous times a day an automated announcement would preceed the lifting of the bridge deck to facilitate clearance for a taller ship, and we'd be glued to our living room window like kids at a flight observation deck. It's a CAD$100 million piece of infrastructure necessitated by an ominous and possibly imminent danger that most visitors are blissfully unaware of.

Behind its sci-fi-esque aesthetics is an earthquake-resistant structure built specifically for the Big One, the next catastrophic earthquake from the nearby Cascadia Subduction Zone that tends to strike every 300 years ... and the last one struck 320 years ago on Jan 26, 1700 according to tsunami records as far away as Japan.

Taking advantage of our apartment's proximity, we strolled the bridge numerous times alongside the locals who should enjoy for the next 100 years a robust cross-harbour link, designed to withstand 8.5 magnitude tremors in support of the most seismically-threatened downtown core in Canada.

Just east of the bridge is Canada's oldest -- and seismically most vulnerable -- Chinatown that began when the first waves of Chinese immigrants arrived on the West Coast with the 1858 Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. This was a 2 minute walk from our apartment and became our default spot for take-out meals.

The prominent Tongjimen, or Gate of Harmonious Interest, epitomizes the gentrification that has reversed decades of decline and transformed Chinatown into a vibrant neighbourhood of hipster cafes and home decor shops, among Cantonese barbecue joints and venerable institutions like the 80-year-old eatery of Don Mee, to be reviewed in a future article on Victoria's cheap eats.

The neighbouring block features the pagoda-like roofline of the 110-year-old Victoria Chinese Public School, champion of social equality back in the era of segregating Chinese from Caucasian children in the public school system. Courses on Chinese language and traditional arts are still offered here, to locals of Chinese and non-Chinese descent.

Now gracing every tourism brochure, the seductively claustrophobic Fan Tan Alley has since traded its opium dens and gambling houses for upscale merchants for handmade gelato and exquisite umbrellas. We scored a foldable shelf imported from Thailand ... then had to creatively figure out how to bring it home.

Harry Potter-like addresses is just part of the charm. Chinatown (see map), Market Square (see map) and the Victoria Public Market (see map) were among our favourites for quirky, one-of-a-kind shopping at Victoria's very walkable downtown.

The downside of Victoria's heritage is the associated seismic susceptibility. Chinatown inherits its share of unreinforced brick rowhouses, the Empress Hotel sits precariously on reclaimed mudflats, and the pictured Parliament Buildings -- centre of power on Canada's West Coast -- has been identified as one of the country's most vulnerable structures. One must hope that seismic upgrades will be made in time, before Victoria suffers the same fate as Christchurch.

Oral accounts of the last Big One still survive among the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples of North Island, and one of the best places to hear their stories is at the Royal BC Museum, flanked by a traditional communal house erected by a Kwakwaka'wakw chief considered one of their nation's greatest carvers and continues to function as a venue for First Nations events.

Among every visitor's highlight is the jawdropping grandeur of the Totem Hall featuring some of the world's finest First Nations sculptures from Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth and other coastal BC traditions. Nested behind the forest of totem poles is an authentic Big House whose artistic rights still belong to the descendants of the late chief.

Crown jewels such as this majestic frontlet that once graced the ceremonial headgear of a Tsimshian chief are among the masterpieces showcased at the museum's First Peoples Gallery. This is the number one unmissable attraction in Victoria IMHO.

The National Historic Site of Craigdarroch Castle and the internationally-famous Butchart Gardens are among the popular sights that we opted to skip this time, having visited both 15 years ago. We would have visited Butchart Gardens had we arrived a couple weeks earlier at the height of autumn foliage season, and skipping Craigdarroch was simply a safety decision during COVID.

Not far from Craigdarroch is the local summit of Mount Tolmie with its unbeatable panorama of downtown Victoria. Partially obscured by the rainclouds in the background is the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Olympic National Park across the maritime border with America.

Floating just west of downtown, Fisherman's Wharf is a community of fishing trawlers and pleasure yatchs along with 30 colourful floathomes that share their backyard with the playful harbour seals that still frequent the pier despite bans on feeding them.

Whale watching tours and fishing charters operate alongside fish taco joints and commercial boats hawking frozen spot prawns and salmon that appeared "tourist-priced." Here's a secret from the locals -- walk south across the green space of Fisherman's Wharf Park and locate the seafood market and food truck of Finest At Sea (see map) for some excellent and impossibly cheap fish-and-chips. I'll have to add this to my review of Victoria's cheap eats.

The city's outstretched shorelines make for great strolls such as the 2.5 km Inner Harbour walk from Fisherman's Wharf towards Johnson Street Bridge along the waterfront. Another scenic walk is the pictured Dallas Road (see map) at the southern edge of the city, offering sweeping views of Olympic Peninsula the the American town of Port Angeles merely 30 km across the Salish Sea.

My own favourite was the Songhees Walkway (see map), a completely flat, 4 km seaside promemade stretching from the Johnson Street Bridge to West Bay Marina in Esquimalt ... and taking Bus 15 back to downtown for lunch. Plenty of benches along the route to rest and enjoy the sight of floatplanes taking off, but no washrooms until the end.

Midway through our walk one friendly local waved at us and pointed us to the sight of this "seal" ... which turned out to be a rather large river otter. Just another day of chilling at one of Canada's most spectacular cities.

So our lazy 10 days worked out very well: arrival, brewery-crawl day, museum day, Duncan-to-Cowichan-Bay day-trip, Westshore day-trip, Sooke day-trip, seaside walks day, and still a few more for Chinatown dimsum, Moss Street farmer's market and more shopping. This compact little city will take several articles for me to fully unpack.