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Victoria is a lovely city. There are lots of tree-lined streets and well-kept homes. Little parks dot the neighborhoods and one is never far from the ocean or forested hills. And compared to many other cities in North America Victoria does not have much strip mall such as pictured above. These business oriented zones full of used car lots, fast food restaurants, inexpensive motels and malls encircled by vast blacktopped parking lots sometimes seem like something left over from the era of Willy Loman, a part of the city still struggling to get out of the '50s.

Coal in THEIR Stockings For Sure

Above, busy with a cell phone and an i-Pod, passersby fail to notice Mr. and Mrs. Santa strolling by on Victoria's Government Street.

Below, what looks like a normally busy day in downtown Victoria is a bit unusual because this was taken on a Sunday. Usually on a Sunday here there is very little traffic and few pedestrians. It's because of Christmas shopping, of course. How's yours coming?

Crystal Gardens

This is the intersection of Douglas and Belleville Streets, one block over from the Empress Hotel and the Inner Harbor. In the foreground of the photo is the Crystal Gardens, designed by Francis Rattenbury, the architect responsible for two other downtown landmark buildings, the Empress Hotel (now known as the Fairmont Empress) and the Legislative Assembly Buildings. The Crystal Gardens was originally erected as a public swimming pool in 1925. It also had tea gardens and dance floors and was very much a social center. In 1925, Johnny Weismuller, the Human Hydroplane, set a world swimming record for the 100 yard freestyle here. Later he became well-known in the movies as Tarzan.

The Crystal Gardens remained a public swimming pool until 1967. Since then the building has been used in a number of ways, mostly unsuccessful. My favorite use was when it was transformed into a tropical garden filled with lush jungle growth. Now it has become part of the Victoria Conference Centre and is full of delegates.

(Yesterday's flowering tree is visible in this photo, near the exact center at the bottom, just to the right of the two green signposts.)

Downtown

I haven't shown much of downtown Victoria so here's another taste. This is the intersection of Douglas Street (Victoria's main thoroughfare) and Yates Street as it was this afternoon about 4 o'clock. It all seems sort of ho-hum but that's one of Victoria's charms too.

The Hudson

While I'm on the subject of residential initiatives here I'll post these pictures of The Hudson, currently under construction on the corner of Fisgard and Douglas Streets (i.e. downtown). It's called The Hudson because for many years it was the Hudson's Bay Company department store, known as "The Bay." For those of you who may not know, the Hudson's Bay Company was responsible for the exploration/exploitation of much of Canada, especially for the fur trade.

Victoria founder James Douglas arrived here in 1843 to set up the Hudson's Bay Company Trading Post that became Fort Victoria. Such trading posts were widespread throughout Canada. In more recent years the company was represented by a chain of department stores across the country. With the decline of department stores and their replacement by suburban malls, this building became vacant for some years since it was too nice to demolish but no longer usable as originally intended.

In its transformation to The Hudson, most of it has been demolished except the façade and interior flooring. Those creamy columns are terracotta, a kind of ceramic. Saving attractive old buildings, rebuilding them and increasing the residential areas within the city are initiatives I'm happy to see and I will be watching The Hudson as it develops. And, while not as revolutionary as Dockside Green, The Hudson is nevertheless being rebuilt with some sensitivity to environmental concerns. Below is a wider angle shot of the building in context.

Street Scenes #2

Mother and ChildThis scene was photographed on Douglas Street, Victoria's busiest business and shopping street.

Skyscaper

Victoria doesn't have any really tall buildings - only a few over 20 stories. This building at the corner of Douglas and Herald Streets is not the tallest but it has a mysterious monolithic appeal.