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“Look! A whale spout!” my husband, Mark, pointed off the bow of the car ferry. The city of Vancouver faded behind us as we cruised through the Strait of Georgia. Green hills hugged the shore, and mountains peaked in the distance. Soon, we could see the picturesque city of Victoria. Zipped up against the cool breeze, we felt lucky to have escaped the Lowcountry’s August heat for a month in British Columbia.
On our first exploration of Victoria, we stopped overlooking the Inner Harbor, where a festival was being set up, and struck up a conversation with a young couple who lived nearby. “What are they setting up for?” we asked. “We don’t know exactly, but every time we leave our apartment, there’s something going on,” they said. It turned out to be a blues festival. We enjoyed a weekend of free concerts, dancing in a crowd of aging hippies as a prancing guy blew bubbles. Our first indication that we were in a different culture was the local cannabis store sponsoring the festival.
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There was also a wonderful theater fringe festival, with tickets priced below $20. Should we see nude actors covered in projections, travel through the lens of a 16th-century nun, hear the songs and poems of serial killers, or watch a man’s journey into puberty at age 40? While we stood in line for our favorite play, Jew-ish, actors approached to promote theirs. “It’s about how my mother should never have been a mother. Too many cats and too few abortions,” one actress told us. Before every performance and in every tourist brochure, indigenous tribes were recognized. For example, “The Victoria Fringe Festival respectfully acknowledges the Lekwungen peoples and their ancestors on whose traditional lands we present live theater.”
Every day we took long walks to different parts of the city and beyond. One morning, Mark and I followed the sound of classical music until we reached the waterfront and saw the cute little water taxis doing their weekly ballet. Picture synchronized swimming, but with boats. So charming! Another day, we hired a water taxi to take us to the far reaches of the pedestrian path and walked a couple of hours back to town. The captain of that boat told us how they practiced for the ballet. “We bump into each other a lot as we learn, that’s for sure!” Fisherman’s Wharf’s festively decorated houseboats were another day’s fun destination.
A big benefit of visiting Victoria in August is that Butchart Gardens is gloriously in full bloom. The 55 acres of hundreds of colorful plants draw close to a million visitors each year. It has a fascinating history: it began in the early 1900s with Jennie Butchart’s vision to turn her family’s defunct limestone quarry into a verdant sunken garden. It’s filled with rare and exotic shrubs, trees, and flowers, many collected from around the world. The garden does a lively business selling seeds, and in the summer they often present concerts and fireworks shows.
We were reminded of Canada’s cultural differences again when we stopped for gas and were greeted by an attendant who filled our tank and washed the windshield. It had been a while since we’d seen that, and Tim Hortons seemed to be everywhere. Our nephew, who joined us from Seattle for a few days, stockpiled paninis and donuts before returning home.
It was easy to eat well in Victoria with the abundance of seafood and an authentic Chinatown. Salmon was especially good everywhere. A long line formed early every day for Barb’s Fish and Chips on the Inner Harbor. We skipped the local specialty poutine—a combination of fries, cheese curds, and gravy. You can add meat, coleslaw, or Bolognese sauce for a real gut-buster.
A few weeks before our arrival, we were notified that our Airbnb had been canceled due to a change in Victoria’s laws barring short-term rentals. We scrambled to find an alternative and booked a suite at the Doubletree Hotel for the week. It ended up being a fortunate change. We could walk everywhere easily, and the view from the balcony was stunning: all the way to Washington state and across the city to the harbor. It was particularly spectacular at night when the Parliament buildings were illuminated. There is so much to see and do in Victoria. It’s easy to see why it describes itself as “where land meets sea and cultures converge.”
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