Victoria's site was originally
inhabited by
Salish natives, and in particular by the
Lekwammen, who had a string of
some ten villages in the area.
From here they cultivated camas
bulbs - vital to their diet and
trade - and applied their advanced
salmon-fishing methods to the
shoals of migrating salmon in
net-strung reefs offshore. At the
time the region must have been a
virtual paradise. Captain George
Vancouver, apparently mindless of
the native presence, described his
feelings on first glimpsing this
part of Vancouver Island:
"The serenity of the climate,
the innumerable pleasing
landscapes, and the abundant
fertility that nature puts forth,
require only to be enriched by the
industry of man with villages,
mansions, cottages and other
buildings, to render it the most
lovely country that can be
imagined." The first step in
this process began in 1842, when
Victoria received some of its
earliest
white visitors ,
when James Douglas disembarked
during a search for a new local
headquarters for the Hudson's Bay
Company. One look at the natural
harbour and its surroundings was
enough: this, he declared, was a
"perfect Eden", a
feeling only reinforced by the
friendliness of the indigenous
population, who helped him build
Fort Camouson, named after an
important aboriginal landmark (the
name was later changed to Fort
Victoria to honour the British
queen). The aboriginal peoples
from up and down the island
settled near the fort, attracted
by the new trading opportunities
it offered. Soon they were joined
by British pioneers, brought in to
settle the land by a Bay
subsidiary, the Puget Sound
Agricultural Company, which
quickly built several large
company farms as a focus for
immigration. In time, the harbour
became the busiest west-coast port
north of San Francisco and a major
base for the British navy's
Pacific fleet, a role it still
fulfils for the bulk of Canada's
present navy.
Boom time came in the 1850s
following the mainland gold
strikes, when Victoria's port
became an essential stopoff and
supplies depot for prospectors
heading across the water and into
the interior. Military and
bureaucratic personnel moved in to
ensure order, bringing Victorian
morals and manners with them.
Alongside there grew a rumbustious
shantytown of shops, bars and
brothels, one bar run by
"Gassy" Jack Leighton,
soon to become one of Vancouver's
unwitting founders.
Though the gold-rush bubble
soon burst, Victoria carried on as
a military, economic and political
centre, becoming capital of the
newly created British Columbia in
1866 - years before the foundation
of Vancouver. British values were
cemented in stone by the Canadian
Pacific Railway, which built the Empress
Hotel in 1908 in place of a
proposed railway link that never
came. Victoria's planned role as
Canada's western rail terminus was
surrendered to Vancouver, and with
it any chance of realistic growth
or industrial development. These
days the town survives - but
survives well - almost entirely on
the backs of tourists (four
million a year), the civil-service
bureaucracy, and - shades of the
home country - retirees in search
of a mild-weathered retreat. Its
population today is around
330,000, almost exactly double
what it was just thirty years ago.
