Victoria's New Groove
Soar Magazine, Winter 2006
Our uniformed waiter has just delivered a silver tea caddy brimming with sandwiches, cakes and other delectables. Slathering clotted cream onto a raisin scone, my friend Karen beams with delight as she surveys a Brideshead Revisted setting dotted with leafy palms and velvet-upholstered Edwardian furniture. She is road manager for the legendary gospel group the Blind Boys of Alabama, in town that night to perform at a sold-out Royal Theatre. During her fleeting 24 hours on Canada’s far west coast, Karen wants to strike one long-standing ambition off her life list. I’d suggested lunch at what I felt were more au fait options – oceanside on the patio of the Canoe Brewpub, for instance, or at the Bastion Square vegetarian mecca Rebar. But no, high tea at the grand dame of Victoria hotels, the Empress, was top of her agenda. Judging by the packed house daintily sipping Earl Gray, this century-old tradition is thriving in the here and now.
Occupying a prime corner of Victoria’s inner harbour, the Empress symbolizes a city still known to some as “Little England” in honour of its resolutely British heritage. A kilted piper can often be found playing haunting refrains on an adjacent street corner as Queen Victoria herself listens in stony silence from her plinth on the front lawn of the B.C. legislature. Double-decker buses rumble along city streets. Confectioners do a brisk business in imported toffee. The occasional Dr. Who-style red phone box rises from sidewalks. And behind the “tweed curtain” in exclusive Oak Bay, the U.K. heritage lives on in the boot-shredded turf of Windsor Park’s rugby pitch and the tea-cosied confines of the definitively quaint Blethering Place restaurant.
Yet times have changed here in “garden city” (a nickname embraced by forward-thinking, green-thumbed Victorians). In its prototypically understated fashion, the city is transforming itself into a more sophisticated, hipper, multi-cultural version of itself. Just how hip has been a surprise to newly hired Tourism Victoria CEO Robert Gialloreto. “There is much more of a cosmopolitan feel than I anticipated – almost like Old Montreal meets New York in the way the city mixes heritage charm with urban savvy,” says Gialloreto, who arrived here in the spring from a position with Travel Alberta in Calgary. “It’s just a few steps from cobblestone back alley to chic café, and everything is uncrowded, friendly and walkable. When you factor in the incredible amount of soft adventure available throughout Vancouver Island – which we consider to be Victoria’s backyard – then you’ve got a genuinely world-class destination.” The readers of Conde Naste Traveller evidently agree as both the city and island have been routinely topping best-destination popularity polls for the last decade.
The new-look Victoria weds entrepreneurial dynamism and a growing population of downtown condo dwellers with all the city’s enduring hallmarks: well-preserved heritage zones, institutional solidity befitting a provincial capital, halcyon neighborhoods within walking distance of downtown, and a natural setting that James Douglas described as a “perfect Eden” when scouting the area in 1843 on behalf of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Once a visitor has settled into chain accommodations, a B&B or a sharp boutique hotel like the Magnolia or Oswego, there are distractions aplenty. Stroll amidst the throngs in the tourist area centred around the Inner Harbour – home to underwater gardens, the Royal B.C. Museum and architect Francis Rattenbury’s glorious odes to Britannia (i.e., the Empress and the legislative buildings). Then skip past the souvenir shops on Government Street and head for the vibrant, owner-operated fashion district branded as LoJo, a few hundred steps beyond which is Chinatown and a “design district” packed with home furnishing stores. Along the way participate in an unofficial pub crawl that encompasses such celebrated gastro brewpubs as the Canoe, Swans, Hugo’s and Spinnakers.
With urban pleasures satisfied, ramble past the duck ponds and across the rolling fields of Beacon Hill Park. Fronting it is Dallas Road, an unparalleled oceanfront route for hikers, dog-walkers and bicyclists that stretches from the impossibly scenic Royal Oak Golf Course to Ogden Point’s curved finger of a stone pier in historic James Bay. Get a taste of old-school Victoria in Oak Bay. Wander the lovely residential streets of Fairfield. Catch a show at the Belfry Theatre in Fernwood and dine before or aft at Stage, an intimate year-old bistro with a soaring reputation. Or make a reservation downtown at one of the city’s fine restaurants, the choice of which can be a little overwhelming given the sky-high per-capita numbers of eateries locally.
“For the quintessential Victoria dining experience, I’d recommend Brasserie L’Ecole or Zambri’s,” notes local restaurant critic Shelora Sheldan. “But we’ve developed a real big-city range of great restaurants, and it’s the new wave of tiny independents that are reinventing food in this city – places like Pig BBQ Joint, Choux Choux (a deli and charcuterie), Daidoco (Japanese) and My Thai Café.” Non-branded independent coffeeshops are also a Victoria strong suit; Habit Café and Culture, Two Percent Jazz and Caffe Fantastico brim with character, style and excellent java. And if faced with a craving for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding – the Seattle Times did, after all, recently call Victoria “our backyard Britain” – Sheldon recommends a homecooked meal at Kitty’s Hideaway on Douglas Street.
Certain long-established impressions about Victoria are indeed accurate. The temperate climate and gentle pace of life, for instance, ensures that it remains a bastion for the “nearly dead,” as another civic cliché puts it. The 2006 national census found that Victoria is home to the highest population of over-80s in any Canadian metropolitan area. Only Peterborough, Ont. and Kelowna, B.C. have larger per-capita numbers of seniors aged 65 or older. Armed with the $500,000-plus required to enter the housing market, retirees continue to flock here – just as they’ve been doing since waves of colonial settlers in the early 1900s began transforming what was originally the bustling frontier port known as Fort Victoria into a residental resort town of sorts that to this day relies on tourism and indexed pension plans to keep its economy ticking over.
When newspaperman Sid Tafler arrived here from Montreal via Calgary in the late 1970s, “all the proverbials about shooting a canon down main street and not hitting anyone applied,” he says with a laugh. “It was dull and provincial in some ways, but very quaint and charming. Every neighborhood had its bakery and butcher shop. People didn’t lock their doors. Now we’re much more worldly in terms of the arts, dining, the life of the city as a whole. Of course that generates more homelessness and other urban ills, but this is the price of progress and there’s no question change is happening fast.”
Tafler is a current columnist and former editor of Monday Magazine, weekly voice of the city’s feisty counterculture. (Among other free-for-the-taking city magazines readily available to visitors, Focus serves the socially aware, environmentally alarmed middle class, while Boulevard is a coffeetable fixture for readers eager to throw their money at classy local art and pricey home furnishings.) He notes that outgoing Victoria mayor Alan Lowe’s decade-long legacy will be the Save On Foods Memorial Centre (which has finally allowed big-name touring acts to perform locally) and a decision to allow high-rises in the downtown core, thereby forever changing the city’s decidedly small-town skyline. “We’re losing some of the things that have made Victoria unique among Canadian cities,” says Tafler. “But because we’re stuck on an island and hemmed in by the ocean, the psychology of this place will remain unchanged. We attract people who want to hideaway and be relatively introspective. It’s no coincidence that the city is filled with little streets and cul de sacs leading nowhere.”
Back at the Empress, my music-business pal Karen has concluded that the fabled tearoom is “the last word in retro chic.” In search of the first word in funky new-look Victoria, we stroll over to Johnston Street and linger in LoJo’s boutiques, flipping through the latest hemp fashions and inhaling the heady aromas at Saltspring Soapworks. After zipping through Chinatown’s back alleys and sampling a cup of flowery Darjeeling at the Silk Road teashop, we bid adieu over a pint of brewmaster Andrew Tessier’s award-winning ale at Swans. Like other visitors these days, she has been surprised and delighted in equal measure by this vibrant but relaxed 21st century city by the sea.
sidebar
Nightlife Victoria
October/November/December
Victorians cocoon indoors as the rainy season begins in earnest and the tall ships, festivals and outdoor markets of summer sail off into fond memory. Still there is no shortage of entertainment options as the days darken. The Pacific Opera Company is presenting Jules Massenet’s colorful opera Thaïs in mid-October. Dance Victoria is hosting troupes from San Franciso, Vancouver and Calgary. And the Belfry Theatre is staging Half Life, a drama written by local playwright John Mighton, and a produced based on the life of scientist Nikola Tesla. In addition to serving as a home base for Vancouver Canucks farm team the Victoria Salmon Kings, the Save On Foods Memorial Centre hosts Sheryl Crow (Oct. 5), Lenny Kravitz (Nov. 6) and Sarah Brightman (Dec. 13). The Victoria Symphony Orchestra is busy on many weekends at the Royal Theatre, which also presents Kris Kristofferson (Oct. 11), the classic musical Guys & Dolls (mid-November) and torch singer Holly Cole’s annual Christmas concert (Dec. 20). While the Royal B.C. Museum isn’t hosting a major Titanic-sized exhibition at the moment, the established galleries and a variety of smaller exhibits are always worth a (re)visit. For an updated calendar of local events, visit http://www.tourismvictoria.com.
Soar Magazine, Winter 2006
Our uniformed waiter has just delivered a silver tea caddy brimming with sandwiches, cakes and other delectables. Slathering clotted cream onto a raisin scone, my friend Karen beams with delight as she surveys a Brideshead Revisted setting dotted with leafy palms and velvet-upholstered Edwardian furniture. She is road manager for the legendary gospel group the Blind Boys of Alabama, in town that night to perform at a sold-out Royal Theatre. During her fleeting 24 hours on Canada’s far west coast, Karen wants to strike one long-standing ambition off her life list. I’d suggested lunch at what I felt were more au fait options – oceanside on the patio of the Canoe Brewpub, for instance, or at the Bastion Square vegetarian mecca Rebar. But no, high tea at the grand dame of Victoria hotels, the Empress, was top of her agenda. Judging by the packed house daintily sipping Earl Gray, this century-old tradition is thriving in the here and now.
Occupying a prime corner of Victoria’s inner harbour, the Empress symbolizes a city still known to some as “Little England” in honour of its resolutely British heritage. A kilted piper can often be found playing haunting refrains on an adjacent street corner as Queen Victoria herself listens in stony silence from her plinth on the front lawn of the B.C. legislature. Double-decker buses rumble along city streets. Confectioners do a brisk business in imported toffee. The occasional Dr. Who-style red phone box rises from sidewalks. And behind the “tweed curtain” in exclusive Oak Bay, the U.K. heritage lives on in the boot-shredded turf of Windsor Park’s rugby pitch and the tea-cosied confines of the definitively quaint Blethering Place restaurant.
Yet times have changed here in “garden city” (a nickname embraced by forward-thinking, green-thumbed Victorians). In its prototypically understated fashion, the city is transforming itself into a more sophisticated, hipper, multi-cultural version of itself. Just how hip has been a surprise to newly hired Tourism Victoria CEO Robert Gialloreto. “There is much more of a cosmopolitan feel than I anticipated – almost like Old Montreal meets New York in the way the city mixes heritage charm with urban savvy,” says Gialloreto, who arrived here in the spring from a position with Travel Alberta in Calgary. “It’s just a few steps from cobblestone back alley to chic café, and everything is uncrowded, friendly and walkable. When you factor in the incredible amount of soft adventure available throughout Vancouver Island – which we consider to be Victoria’s backyard – then you’ve got a genuinely world-class destination.” The readers of Conde Naste Traveller evidently agree as both the city and island have been routinely topping best-destination popularity polls for the last decade.
The new-look Victoria weds entrepreneurial dynamism and a growing population of downtown condo dwellers with all the city’s enduring hallmarks: well-preserved heritage zones, institutional solidity befitting a provincial capital, halcyon neighborhoods within walking distance of downtown, and a natural setting that James Douglas described as a “perfect Eden” when scouting the area in 1843 on behalf of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Once a visitor has settled into chain accommodations, a B&B or a sharp boutique hotel like the Magnolia or Oswego, there are distractions aplenty. Stroll amidst the throngs in the tourist area centred around the Inner Harbour – home to underwater gardens, the Royal B.C. Museum and architect Francis Rattenbury’s glorious odes to Britannia (i.e., the Empress and the legislative buildings). Then skip past the souvenir shops on Government Street and head for the vibrant, owner-operated fashion district branded as LoJo, a few hundred steps beyond which is Chinatown and a “design district” packed with home furnishing stores. Along the way participate in an unofficial pub crawl that encompasses such celebrated gastro brewpubs as the Canoe, Swans, Hugo’s and Spinnakers.
With urban pleasures satisfied, ramble past the duck ponds and across the rolling fields of Beacon Hill Park. Fronting it is Dallas Road, an unparalleled oceanfront route for hikers, dog-walkers and bicyclists that stretches from the impossibly scenic Royal Oak Golf Course to Ogden Point’s curved finger of a stone pier in historic James Bay. Get a taste of old-school Victoria in Oak Bay. Wander the lovely residential streets of Fairfield. Catch a show at the Belfry Theatre in Fernwood and dine before or aft at Stage, an intimate year-old bistro with a soaring reputation. Or make a reservation downtown at one of the city’s fine restaurants, the choice of which can be a little overwhelming given the sky-high per-capita numbers of eateries locally.
“For the quintessential Victoria dining experience, I’d recommend Brasserie L’Ecole or Zambri’s,” notes local restaurant critic Shelora Sheldan. “But we’ve developed a real big-city range of great restaurants, and it’s the new wave of tiny independents that are reinventing food in this city – places like Pig BBQ Joint, Choux Choux (a deli and charcuterie), Daidoco (Japanese) and My Thai Café.” Non-branded independent coffeeshops are also a Victoria strong suit; Habit Café and Culture, Two Percent Jazz and Caffe Fantastico brim with character, style and excellent java. And if faced with a craving for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding – the Seattle Times did, after all, recently call Victoria “our backyard Britain” – Sheldon recommends a homecooked meal at Kitty’s Hideaway on Douglas Street.
Certain long-established impressions about Victoria are indeed accurate. The temperate climate and gentle pace of life, for instance, ensures that it remains a bastion for the “nearly dead,” as another civic cliché puts it. The 2006 national census found that Victoria is home to the highest population of over-80s in any Canadian metropolitan area. Only Peterborough, Ont. and Kelowna, B.C. have larger per-capita numbers of seniors aged 65 or older. Armed with the $500,000-plus required to enter the housing market, retirees continue to flock here – just as they’ve been doing since waves of colonial settlers in the early 1900s began transforming what was originally the bustling frontier port known as Fort Victoria into a residental resort town of sorts that to this day relies on tourism and indexed pension plans to keep its economy ticking over.
When newspaperman Sid Tafler arrived here from Montreal via Calgary in the late 1970s, “all the proverbials about shooting a canon down main street and not hitting anyone applied,” he says with a laugh. “It was dull and provincial in some ways, but very quaint and charming. Every neighborhood had its bakery and butcher shop. People didn’t lock their doors. Now we’re much more worldly in terms of the arts, dining, the life of the city as a whole. Of course that generates more homelessness and other urban ills, but this is the price of progress and there’s no question change is happening fast.”
Tafler is a current columnist and former editor of Monday Magazine, weekly voice of the city’s feisty counterculture. (Among other free-for-the-taking city magazines readily available to visitors, Focus serves the socially aware, environmentally alarmed middle class, while Boulevard is a coffeetable fixture for readers eager to throw their money at classy local art and pricey home furnishings.) He notes that outgoing Victoria mayor Alan Lowe’s decade-long legacy will be the Save On Foods Memorial Centre (which has finally allowed big-name touring acts to perform locally) and a decision to allow high-rises in the downtown core, thereby forever changing the city’s decidedly small-town skyline. “We’re losing some of the things that have made Victoria unique among Canadian cities,” says Tafler. “But because we’re stuck on an island and hemmed in by the ocean, the psychology of this place will remain unchanged. We attract people who want to hideaway and be relatively introspective. It’s no coincidence that the city is filled with little streets and cul de sacs leading nowhere.”
Back at the Empress, my music-business pal Karen has concluded that the fabled tearoom is “the last word in retro chic.” In search of the first word in funky new-look Victoria, we stroll over to Johnston Street and linger in LoJo’s boutiques, flipping through the latest hemp fashions and inhaling the heady aromas at Saltspring Soapworks. After zipping through Chinatown’s back alleys and sampling a cup of flowery Darjeeling at the Silk Road teashop, we bid adieu over a pint of brewmaster Andrew Tessier’s award-winning ale at Swans. Like other visitors these days, she has been surprised and delighted in equal measure by this vibrant but relaxed 21st century city by the sea.
sidebar
Nightlife Victoria
October/November/December
Victorians cocoon indoors as the rainy season begins in earnest and the tall ships, festivals and outdoor markets of summer sail off into fond memory. Still there is no shortage of entertainment options as the days darken. The Pacific Opera Company is presenting Jules Massenet’s colorful opera Thaïs in mid-October. Dance Victoria is hosting troupes from San Franciso, Vancouver and Calgary. And the Belfry Theatre is staging Half Life, a drama written by local playwright John Mighton, and a produced based on the life of scientist Nikola Tesla. In addition to serving as a home base for Vancouver Canucks farm team the Victoria Salmon Kings, the Save On Foods Memorial Centre hosts Sheryl Crow (Oct. 5), Lenny Kravitz (Nov. 6) and Sarah Brightman (Dec. 13). The Victoria Symphony Orchestra is busy on many weekends at the Royal Theatre, which also presents Kris Kristofferson (Oct. 11), the classic musical Guys & Dolls (mid-November) and torch singer Holly Cole’s annual Christmas concert (Dec. 20). While the Royal B.C. Museum isn’t hosting a major Titanic-sized exhibition at the moment, the established galleries and a variety of smaller exhibits are always worth a (re)visit. For an updated calendar of local events, visit http://www.tourismvictoria.com.
