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Victoria Festivals and Destinations

FESTIVALS IN VICTORIA

Summer brings out the buskers and free entertainment in Victoria’s people-places - James Bay, Market Square and Beacon Hill Park in particular. Annual highlights, arranged chronologically, include:

TerrifVic Jazz Party , April (tel 953-2011). A showcase for about a dozen top international bands held in various venues over four days during the second week of the month.

Jazz Fest , June (tel 386-6121 for information). More than a hundred assorted lesser bands perform in Market Square and elsewhere over about ten days towards the end of the month.

ICA Folk Fest , June-July (tel 388-4728). Extravaganza of folk over eight days at the end of June and beginning of July: the main venues are the Inner Harbour and Market Square.

Victoria International Festival , July and August (tel 736-2119). Victoria’s largest general arts jamboree. Events take place at a wide variety of locations.

First People’s Festival , early August (tel 387-2134 or 384-3211). Celebration of the cultures of Canada’s aboriginal peoples, usually held in the second week of the month at the Royal BC Museum.

Classic Boat Festival, August 30-September 1 (tel 385-7766). Dozens of wooden antique boats on display in the Inner Harbour.

Fringe Festival , late August to mid-September (tel 383-2663). Avant-garde performances of all kinds held at seven different venues around central Victoria.

EXPLORE VICTORIA

Beacon Hill

The best park within walking distance of the town centre is Beacon Hill Park , south of the Inner Harbour and a few minutes’ walk up the road behind the museum. Victoria is sometimes known as the “City of Gardens”, and at the right times of the year this park shows why. Victoria’s biggest green space, it has lots of paths, ponds, big trees and quiet corners, and plenty of views over the Juan de Fuca Strait to the distant Olympic Mountains of Washington State (especially on its southern side). These pretty straits, incidentally, are the focus of some rather bad feeling between Victoria and its US neighbour, for the city has a (literally) dark secret: it dumps raw sewage into the strait, excusing itself by claiming it’s quickly broken up by the sea’s strong currents. Washington State isn’t so sure, and there have been plenty of arguments over the matter and, more to the point for city elders, economically damaging convention boycotts by US companies. Either way, it’s pretty bad PR for Victoria and totally at odds with its image. Gardens in the park are alternatively tended and wonderfully wild and unkempt, and were a favoured retreat of celebrated Victorian artist, Emily Carr. They also claim the world’s tallest totem pole (at around 40m), Mile Zero of the Trans-Canada Hwy, and - that ultimate emblem of Englishness - a cricket pitch. Some of the trees are massive old-growth timbers that you’d normally only see on the island’s west coast. Come here in spring and you’ll catch swaths of daffodils and blue camas flowers, the latter a floral monument to Victoria’s earliest aboriginal inhabitants, who cultivated the flower for its edible bulb. Some 30,000 other flowers are planted out annually.

Crystal Garden and Butchart Gardens

The heavily advertised Crystal Gardens , behind the bus terminal at 713 Douglas St (daily: July & Aug 8.30am-8pm; May-June & Sept-Oct 9am-6pm; Nov-April 10am-4.30pm; $7.50; tel 381-1213, www.bcpcc.com/crystal ), was designed on the model of London’s destroyed Crystal Palace and was billed on opening in 1925 as housing the “Largest Saltwater Swimming Pool in the British Empire”. Now much restored, the greenery-, monkey- and bird-filled greenhouse makes for an unaccountably popular tourist spot; only the exterior has any claims to architectural sophistication, and much of its effect is spoilt by the souvenir shops on its ground-floor arcade. Once the meeting place of the town’s tea-sipping elite, it still plays host to events such as the Jive and Ballroom Dance Club and the People Meeting People Dance. The daytime draws are the conservatory-type tearoom and tropical gardens. Inhumanely enclosed birds and monkeys, though, are liable to put you off your scones.

If you’re into things horticultural you’ll want to make a trek out to the heavily over-advertised but celebrated Butchart Gardens , 22km north of Victoria at 800 Benvenuto, Brentwood Bay on Hwy 17 towards the Swartz Bay ferry terminal (daily: mid-June to Aug 9am-10.30pm; first half of June & Sept 9am-9pm; rest of the year 9am-sunset; $16.50; tel 652-4422 or 652-5256 for recorded information, www.butchartgardens.com ). They’re also renowned amongst visitors and locals alike for the stunning firework displays that usually take place each Saturday evening in July and August. The gardens are also illuminated during the late-evening opening hours between mid-June and the end of September. To get here by public transport take bus #75 for “Central Sahnich” from downtown. Otherwise there are regular summer Shuttles (May-Oct daily hourly in the morning, half-hourly in the afternoon tel 388-5248) from the main bus terminal, where tickets ($24.50) are obtainable not from the main ticket office but from a separate Gray Lines desk: ticket prices include garden entrance and return bus journey. The gardens were started in 1904 by Mrs.Butchart wife of a mineowner and pioneer of Portland Cement in Canada and the US. The initial aim was to landscape one of her husband’s quarries - the gardens now cover fifty breathtaking acres, comprising rose, Japanese and Italian gardens and lots of decorative details. About half a million visitors a year tramp through the foliage, which includes over a million plants and seven hundred different species.

Empress Hotel

town is usually desperate when one of its key attractions is a hotel, but in the case of Victoria the Empress Hotel , 721 Government St (tel 384-8111), is so physically overbearing and plays such a part in the town’s tourist appeal that it demands some sort of attention. You’re unlikely to be staying here - rooms are very expensive - but it’s worth wandering through the huge lobbies and palatial dining areas for a glimpse of well-restored colonial splendour. In a couple of lounges there’s a fairly limp “Smart Casual” dress code - no dirty jeans, running shoes, short shorts or backpacks - but elsewhere you can wander at will. If you want take tea , which is why most casual visitors are here, enter the Tea Lounge by the hotel’s side entrance (the right, or south side): there you can enjoy scones, biscuits, cakes and, of course, tea over six courses costing a whopping $42 but you have to abide by the dress code. In other lounges like the Bengal you can ask for just tea and scones. At the last count the hotel was serving 800 full teas a day in summer and 1.6 million cups of tea a year.

The hotel’s Crystal Lounge and its lovely Tiffany-glass dome forms the most opulent part of the hotel on view, but the marginally less ornate entrance lounge is the place for the charade of afternoon tea, and indulging can be a bit of a laugh. There’s also a reasonable bar and restaurant downstairs, Kipling’s , and the attractive Bengal Lounge , compete with tiger-skin over the fireplace, where you can have a curry and all the trimmings for about $15. For a splurge, try the London clubland surroundings - chesterfields and aspidistras - and the champagne-and-chocolate-cake special ($8.50) on offer in the lounge to the left of the entrance lobby. For an even bigger treat, take dinner amidst the Edwardian splendour of the Empress Dining Room . As one would expect, meals here are expensive, but the service and food are both top of the line.

Helmcken House

Helmcken House (daily 10am-5pm; $4) stands strangely isolated in Thunderbird Park directly adjacent to the museum, a predictable heritage offering that showcases the home, furnishings and embroidery talents of the Helmcken family. Built in 1852, it is the oldest standing home on the island. Dr John Helmcken was Fort Victoria’s doctor and local political bigwig, and his house is a typical monument to stolid Victoria values. Upstairs it also contains various attic treasures and some of the good doctor’s fearsome-looking medical tools. It’s probably only of interest, however, if you’ve so far managed to avoid any of the Northwest’s many hundreds of similar houses. If you do visit, pick up the free guided tapes and listen to “voices from history” (actors and actresses) that give a more personalized slant to the building: listen, for example, to “Aunt Dolly” as she tells why she left the good doctor’s room untouched as a shrine after his death. Just behind the house there’s another old white-wood building, the St Anne’s Pioneer Schoolhouse ($2), originally purchased by a Bishop Demers for four sisters of the Order of St Ann, who in 1858 took it upon themselves to leave their Québec home to come and teach in Victoria. Built between 1843 and 1858, it’s believed to be one of the oldest, if not the oldest, buildings in Victoria; $2 buys you a peek at the old-fashioned interior and period fittings.

Old Town

The oldest part of Victoria focuses on Bastion Square , original site of Fort Victoria, from which it’s a short walk to Market Square, a nice piece of old-town rejuvenation, and the main downtown shopping streets. Bastion Square’s former saloons, brothels and warehouses have been spruced up to become offices, cafes and galleries. The modest Maritime Museum at 28 Bastion Square (daily 9.30am-4.30pm; $5; tel 385-4222, www.mmbc.bc.ca ) is of interest mainly for the lovely chocolate-and-vanilla-coloured building in which it’s housed, the former provincial courthouse. Displays embrace old charts, uniforms, ships’ bells, period photographs, lots of models and a new BC Ferries section on the second floor. On the top floor is the restored vice-admiralty courtroom, once the main seat of justice for the entire province. Note the old open elevator built to reach it, commissioned by Chief Justice Davie in 1901, supposedly because he was too fat to manage the stairs. Just to the north lies the attractive Market Square , the old heart of Victoria but now a collection of some 65 speciality shops and cafes around a central courtyard (bounded by Store, Pandora and Johnson sts). This area erupted in 1858 following the gold rush, providing houses, saloons, opium dens, stores and various salacious entertainments for thousands of chancers and would-be immigrants. On the Pandora side of the area was a ravine, marked by the current sunken courtyard, beyond which lay Chinatown (now centred slightly further north on Fisgard) the American west coast’s oldest. Here, among other things, 23 factories processed 90,000 pounds of opium a year for what was then a legitimate trade and - until the twentieth century - one of BC’s biggest industries. As for the downtown shopping streets , it’s worth looking out for E.A. Morris, a wonderful old cigar and tobacco shop next to Murchie’s coffee shop at 1110 Government St, and Roger’s Chocolates, 913 Government St, whose whopping Victoria creams (among other things) are regularly dispatched to Buckingham Palace for royal consumption.

Outlying Attractions

Outside the Inner Harbour Victoria has a scattering of minor attractions that don’t fit into any logical tour of the city - and at any rate are only short-stop diversions. Most have a pioneer slant, though if you want old buildings the best is Craigdarroch Castle , nestled on a hilltop in Rockland, one of Victoria’s more prestigious easterly neighborhoods, at 1050 Joan Crescent (daily: mid-June to early Sept 9am-7pm; early Sept to mid-June 10am-4.30pm; $8; tel 592-5323, www.craigdarrochcastle.com ; bus #11 or #14-University from downtown). It was built by Robert Dunsmuir, a caricature Victorian politician, strike-breaker, robber baron and coal tycoon - the sort of man who could change a community’s name on a whim (Ladysmith near Nanaimo) - and who was forced to put up this gaunt Gothic pastiche to lure his wife away from Scotland. Only the best was good enough, from the marble, granite and sandstone of the superstructure to the intricately handworked panels of the ceilings over the main hall and staircase. Unfortunately for him the dastardly Dunsmuir never enjoyed his creation - he died before it was finished. There’s the usual clutter of Victoriana and period detail, in particular some impressive woodwork and stained and leaded glass.

Much the same goes for the *Victorian-Italianate Point Ellice House & Gardens *, 2616 Pleasant St (mid-May to mid-Sept daily noon-5pm; $4; tel 387-4697; bus #14 from downtown), magnificently re-created but less enticing because of its slightly shabby surroundings. These can be overcome, however, if you make a point of arriving by sea, taking one of the little Harbour Ferry services to the house (10min) from the Inner Harbour. The restored Victorian-style gardens here are a delight on a summer afternoon. The interior - one of the best of its kind in the Northwest - retains its largely Victorian appearance thanks partly to the reduced circumstances of the O’Reilly fam-ily, whose genteel slide into relative poverty over several generations (they lived here from 1861 to 1974) meant that many furnishings were simply not replaced. Tea is served on the lawns in the summer: it’s a good idea to book ahead ($16.95).

Similar reservations apply to the Craigflower Manor & Farmhouse about 9km and fifteen-minutes’ drive from downtown on Admiral’s Road, or take the #14-Craigflower bus from downtown (May-Oct daily 10am-5pm; $5; tel 387-4697). In its day the latter was among the earliest of Victoria’s farming homesteads, marking the town’s transition from trading post to permanent community. It was built in a mock-Georgian style in 1856, apparently from timbers salvaged from the first four farmhouses built in the region. Its owner was Kenneth McKenzie, a Hudson’s Bay Company bailiff, who recruited fellow Scottish settlers to form a farming community on Portage Inlet. The house was to remind him of the old country (Scotland), and soon became the foremost social centre in the fledgling village - mainly visited by officers because McKenzie’s daughters were virtually the only white women on the island.

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria , 1040 Moss St, just off Fort Street (Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Thurs till 9pm, Sun 1-5pm; $5; bus #10-Haultain, #11 or #14-University from downtown; tel 384-4101, www.aggv.bc.ca ), is a long way to come and of little interest unless you’re partial to contemporary Canadian paintings and Japanese art: the building, housed in the 1890 Spencer Mansion, boasts the only complete Shinto shrine outside Japan. It does, however, have a small permanent collection of Emily Carr’s work, and you may catch an interesting temporary exhibition that changes every six weeks.

Parliament Buildings

The huge Victorian pile of the Parliament Buildings , at 501 Belleville St (daily: June to early Sept 9am-5pm; early Sept to May 9am-4pm; free; guided tours every 20-30min), is old and imposing in the manner of a large and particularly grand British town hall. Its outline beautifully picked out at night by some three hundred tiny bulbs (though locals grumble about the cost), the domed building is fronted by the sea and well-kept gardens - a pleasant enough ensemble, though it doesn’t really warrant the manic enthusiasm visited on it by hordes of summer tourists. You’re more likely to find yourself taking time out on the front lawns, distinguished by a perky statue of Queen Victoria and a giant sequoia, a gift from California. Designed by the 25-year-old Francis Rattenbury, who was also responsible for the Empress Hotel opposite, the building was completed in 1897, at a cost of $923,000, in time for Queen Victoria’s jubilee. Figures from Victoria’s grey bureaucratic past are duly celebrated, the main door guarded by statues of Sir James Douglas, who chose the site of the city, and Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie (aka the “Hanging Judge”), responsible for law and order during the heady days of gold fever. Sir George Vancouver keeps an eye on proceedings from the top of the dome. Free tours start to the right of the main steps. Guides are chirpy and full of anecdotes. Look out for the dagger which killed Captain Cook, and the gold-plated dome, painted with scenes from Canadian history.

Royal British Columbia Museum

The Royal British Columbia Museum , 675 Belleville St (museum: daily 9am-5pm; National Geographic IMAX Theatre daily 10am-8pm; museum $9.65, IMAX Theatre $9.50 (double feature $14.50), combined ticket $15.50; museum tel 356-3701 or 1-888/447-7977, IMAX tel 480-4887, www.rbcm1.rbcm.gov.bc.ca ), founded in 1886, is one of the best museums in the Northwest, and regularly rated, by visitors and travel magazine polls, as one of North America’s top ten. All conceivable aspects of the province are examined, but the aboriginal peoples section is probably the definitive collection of a much-covered genre, while the natural-history sections - huge re-creations of natural habitats, complete with sights, sounds and smells - are mind-boggling in scope and imagination. Allow at least two trips to take it all in.

From the word go - a huge stuffed mammoth in the lobby - you can tell that thought, wit and a lot of money have gone into the museum. Much of the cash must have been sunk into its most popular display, the Open Ocean , a self-contained, in-depth look at the sea and the deep-level ocean. Groups of ten are admitted into a series of tunnels, dark rooms, lifts and mock-ups of submarines at thirty-minute intervals. You take a time-coded ticket and wait your turn, so either arrive early or reckon on seeing the rest of the museum first. Though rather heavy-handed in its “we’re-all-part-of-the-cosmic-soup” message, it’s still an object lesson in presentation and state-of-the-art museum dynamics. It’s also designed to be dark and enclosed, and signs wisely warn you to stay out if you suffer even a twinge of claustrophobia.

The first floor contains dioramas , full-scale reconstructions of some of the many natural habitats found in British Columbia. The idea of re-creating shorelines, coastal rainforests and Fraser Delta landscapes may sound far-fetched, yet all are incredibly realistic, down to dripping water and cool, dank atmospheres. Audiovisual displays and a tumult of information accompany the exhibits (the beaver film is worth hunting down), most of which focus attention on the province’s 25,600km of coastline, a side of British Columbia usually overlooked in favour of its interior forests and mountains.

Upstairs on the second floor is the mother of all the tiny museums of bric-a-brac and pioneer memorabilia in BC. Arranged eccentrically from the present day backwards, it explores every aspect of the province’s social history over two centuries in nit-picking detail. Prominently featured are the best part of an early twentieth-century town, complete with cinema and silent films, plus comprehensive displays on logging, mining, the gold rush, farming, fishing and lesser domestic details, all the artefacts and accompanying information being presented with impeccable finesse.

Up on the mezzanine third floor is a superb collection of aboriginal peoples’ art, culture and history . It’s presented in gloomy light, against muted wood walls and brown carpet - precautions intended to protect the fragile exhibits, but which also create a solemn atmosphere in keeping with the tragic nature of many of the displays. The collection divides into two epochs - before and after the coming of Europeans - tellingly linked by a single aboriginal carving of a white man, starkly and brilliantly capturing the initial wonder and weirdness of the new arrivals. Alongside are shamanic displays and carvings of previously taboo subjects, subtly illustrating the first breakdown of the old ways. The whole collection reflects this thoughtful and oblique approach, taking you to the point where smallpox virtually wiped out in one year a culture that was eight millennia in the making. A section on land and reservations is left for last - the issues are contentious even today - and even if you’re succumbing to museum fatigue, the arrogance and duplicity of the documents on display will shock you. The highlights in this section are many, but try to make a point of seeing the short film footage In the Land of the War Canoes (1914), the Bighouse and its chants, and the audiovisual display on aboriginal myths and superstition. The National Geographic Theatre in the museum plays host to a huge IMAX screen and a changing programme of special format films. Outside the museum, there’s also Thunderbird Park , a strip of grass with a handful of totem poles.

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                  * Region: British Columbia
* Time Zone: Pacific (GMT-8)
* Geography: Northern Hemisphere, Pacific Northwest