Hometown

by Anny Scoones

  Join beloved storyteller Anny Scoones as she sets out to discover the quaint and quirky charms of Victoria, BC. Not just a book of facts, Hometown is a gentle stroll through a diverse region with a fascinating and layered history. Observe, pause, ponder, and have what Anny likes to call “a little think” on the various characteristics and personalities of these areas. Consider not only how public art, beach creatures, monuments, heritage and historical features create a neighbourhood and contribute to a larger city, but also how they make us feel, how they move us.

  Illustrated with 120 original watercolours by acclaimed artist Robert Amos, and featuring unique poems by Victoria’s poet laureate, Janet Rogers, Hometown: Out and About in Victoria’s Neighbourhoods presents Canada’s most livable city as the locals see it.

  * * *

  “Reading Hometown is the best way to experience the real Victoria. The beautiful watercolours are the scenes you would see walking down the street or looking out your kitchen window. This is not the Victoria of the tourist brochures. This is the ‘town’ where we live, complete with characters and touchstones of ordinary, everyday life, in a beautiful, extraordinary place.”

  —Jo-Ann Roberts, All Points West, CBC Radio

  OUT AND ABOUT IN VICTORIA’S NEIGHBOURHOODS

  Written by

  ANNY SCOONES

  Illustrated by

  ROBERT AMOS

  This book is dedicated to Victoria’s many volunteers, stewards, “friends,” and societies who devote many hours of personal care to keep our neighbourhoods clean, safe, and beautiful. To all of you who clean our streams, make soup, pull invasive ivy, plan for neighbourhood emergencies, preserve our historic cemeteries, beautify Ogden Point, prune the roses and tend the alpine rockery at Government House, create public compost, restore turtle habitat, and serve our community in many other countless ways because you care, this book is for you with gratitude and admiration.

  And to my new friends at the Victoria International Academy.

  From Beacon Hill

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  “Tripping Through Paradise” by Janet Rogers

  Map of Victoria’s Neighbourhoods

  CHAPTER ONE: James Bay

  CHAPTER TWO: Fairfield, Cook Street Village, and Rockland

  CHAPTER THREE: Oak Bay

  CHAPTER FOUR: Lower Government Street and a Little Beyond

  CHAPTER FIVE: Fernwood

  CHAPTER SIX: Quadra

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Up the Gorge, Vic West, and View Royal

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Esquimalt

  CHAPTER NINE: Cadboro Bay

  CHAPTER TEN: The Saanich Peninsula and Sidney

  Index

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  The Parliament Buildings

  Introduction

  This book celebrates Victoria’s neighbourhoods and surrounding region. It is not a book of facts, but rather a gentle stroll through our region during which we pause, observe, ponder, and have what I like to call “a little think” on the various features and personalities of these areas and how these features not only create a neighbourhood, and therefore our city, but also how they make us feel, how they “move” us.

  Our little thinks can include marvelling at the charming, hard-working winter wren who builds a vast array of tiny reed-and-grass houses hoping to attract a female, or experiencing the rowdy fun of “Uke Night,” when fifty people get together to play their ukuleles, or wondering why certain public art makes us stop and gaze in awe, or asking which is lovelier, a man-made environment or a natural one. These and many other features are explored here as we amble through our city.

  As we consider our neighbourhoods’ diverse personalities, we will see the many subtle elements that bind us all together—things such as the poems by our Poet Laureate, Janet Rogers (two of which are in this book); the thousand-plus hanging flower baskets that line our downtown streets; the Netherlands carillon that fills the Inner Harbour with joyful music on a bleak and dismal winter’s day; and the corner stores, always there, with their overflowing buckets of colourful bouquets under their awnings.

  I hope the observations and thoughts in this book, along with Robert’s lovely paintings, bring you many little thinks and much joy about Victoria and our place within it.

  Tripping Through Paradise

  Janet Rogers

  we take

  earthquake rides

  over rock waves

  kissing

  lake faces

  stretching past

  grass lands

  and heifer spotted

  landscapes

  road signs

  promise

  moose-elk-deer

  eyes peeled for

  big footed men

  and our reflections

  in stone

  emotional

  ups and downs

  crowned at

  toothy summits

  sliver wide highways

  balanced between

  judgment and progress

  referendum deals

  gone dead

  stirred up

  deep beds

  laid to rest

  new relationships

  of silence

  and inertia

  these lands

  grow and recede

  and always

  teach

  us ways

  to get around

  shows us where

  the trails lead

  to live

  in this land

  you must understand

  real histories

  still lived

  “No, that’s not

  a ski slope

  that’s a mountain

  we pray there.”

  Anny’s House

  CHAPTER ONE

  James Bay

  I moved into a solid little white house with red trim and leaded-glass windows, a back garden and two apple trees, a fragrant old jasmine leaning against a small weathered garage and a wild array of spindly, yellow and purple snapdragons. It was built in 1911. Around the corner, in a sooty brownstone building with a green door, was a woman selling her homemade meat pies. One of my first impressions of James Bay, therefore, was that the residents here had a sense of how to take care of themselves and each other, and I was to discover more of this on my walks through this eclectic old neighbourhood. There’s a man who plants rows and rows of lush kale, lettuce, spinach, and other vegetables in his front garden, free for the taking, and the less fortunate and the eccentrics, some who talk to themselves as they ride around on colourful scooters covered with decals and dangling knick-knacks, seem to be subtly under the locals’ caring and watchful eyes—the owner of the flower shop, the three men who share a cigar on the corner bench every morning, the woman who feeds the birds on the boulevards.

  At Christmas, a man selling wreaths made from native plants stood in the rain in front of an unwashed tile mosaic of a mermaid at James Bay Square. Dripping and cold, he explained that he was out of work but had created the lovely wreaths of leafy green salal, with the white touches of snowberry and auburn of wild crabapple.

  Alice Mary, my portly old black Labrador, could not get up the steps of the house, so she had to succumb to living in the basement, which was at ground level—she had a grand bed down there, blankets and old feather duvets piled on the grey concrete floor next to the huge, shiny oil tank. She was very comfortable amongst the boxes of my childhood photographs—photographs of me playing in the huge snowbanks in Fredericton, grinning a toothless grin at six years old, in my blue snowsuit and thick red scarf, crawling through a snow tunnel. Another box contained my thirty dirty troll dolls and horse tack now rarely used. Saanich Fair displays, neatly packed in blue ru
bber totes, that I had used every year to decorate the pig stalls were stacked against the cool stone foundation—great red and purple swaths of cloth and gold silk flowers, as well as posters and information sheets about Mabel and Matilda, the two huge Gloucester Old Spot sows (whom I left back on Glamorgan Farm in North Saanich).

  Glamorgan Farm

  Alice Mary loves to be in the basement. She only has to lumber up one little cement step to the back lawn, where she peacefully dozes under the apple trees beside the big blue ceramic pot (which I lugged from the farm) full to overflowing with yellow and cherry-red petunias. On warm summer days, Alice sniffs the fresh sea breeze wafting up our quiet street from nearby Dallas Road. Just before the great move to James Bay took place, I called our dear veterinarian to the farm to put Alice Mary down—she is after all seventeen! And she had been having intestinal troubles which I will not go into—suffice to say it wasn’t a pretty sight, and my wool rugs were becoming stained and ruined.

  The nice veterinarian came to the farm and looked at Alice Mary, who was restless and panting under the grand old honeysuckle bush, and said that she’d be back later to do the deed, and would I like to bury her on the farm or have her cremated? I thought she should rest in peace with all the other dear creatures who were on the farm—lots of Naked Neck chickens, the old pony Napoleon and his scrawny, sad pal Kyle (an ex-racehorse), Buster, the most affectionate pig I have ever met, and Norman, the stray cat who crawled into the house one wet howling night and stayed for years. The vet gave Alice a pill to make her comfortable and left, and I went about my chores. Suddenly I heard a gastric commotion from Alice Mary’s rear end on the lawn. On close inspection, I found two excreted slimy Brillo pads, probably from the barbecue. Alice Mary has been fine ever since that day of the great excretion and has made it to James Bay.

  There is also a furnace in the basement of our new house. A great big old tin box whose filters I have been instructed to change regularly—I don’t have a clue what that means. But I couldn’t believe it the first morning when I woke up (during a very cold, late, damp spring) and only had to touch a blinking green switch to feel a surge of soft hot air (they call it forced air) surrounding me as I had my coffee in the front room and studied the wooden heritage houses with their ornate verandas and hanging baskets across the street. (One must keep a clean house if one has forced air, because there I was, warm, but surrounded by blowing, swirling dust and a lot of pet hair.) It is then, in the white morning, when the salty chill has settled down Medana Street, with the warm heat inside, that I have my first little thinks of the day.

  On the farm I had to venture out across a cold, wet meadow in a raw, dark-blue dawn in my nightie, rubber boots, and wet work gloves to a wood pile, load my arms full of heavy, knotty logs and spend an hour lighting the fire. There was no time to have a little think because then I had to feed the pigs—they would wake up and want their warm slop when they saw my porch light go on—and then the chickens would be awakened by the grunting of the pigs, and then the horses would come to life because of the cackling in the coop, and before long it would be lunchtime and I still hadn’t had my cherished little think, so I’d have it when I cleaned their pens later in the day. This is why I quite like my furnace and forced air.

  The uninsulated attic reminded me of the great barn on the farm—the smell of red-cedar beams made it a perfect place to write, I thought. But the narrow staircase was too small to take furniture up, so I bought simple pine chairs that one puts together with little screws and bolts. I assembled everything as the barn cats, whom I had brought from the farm, looked on from the nooks and crannies between the beams; they thought they had moved into another barn, but this one was warmer, and they thought the chairs with their lovely red cushions looked quite cozy.

  In the small back garden I had two raised beds built by a dear man from down the street—he built the beds and filled them with soil in one day! I was amazed at his energy (he also insulated the basement) until he told me that he was bipolar, and we had a little joke that he must have been on a high to have worked so fast. I promised him vegetables in the summer, and when summer came I gave him, among other things, a lovely big round purple cabbage, which he loved; he said that purple cabbage helps bipolar people—it helps their nerves. I made salad bouquets from mustard greens, arugula, French sorrel, kale, baby broccoli sprouts, beet tops, parsley, green onions, and edible flowers.

  Our street is lined with pink-blossomed hawthorn trees—some people call them may trees. Gran always said that you should never bring hawthorn into the house, that it would bring bad luck. Other streets are lined with flowering plums or cherries, or chestnut or beech trees. Residents plant bulbs randomly on the boulevards—the city doesn’t mind at all! So this autumn I planted some daffodils around the hawthorn tree, plus a few red tulips here and there, and in the spring the man on the ride-on mower neatly mowed around each one. That meant something to me, the fact that he just didn’t mow them all down—I should write to the City and tell them how I appreciate the care that their workers take.

  It amazed me that on one of my first days in my dear little house, as I was sitting looking out the front window, a girl drove up and from a hose attached to a water tank on the back of her small truck, she watered a newly planted young hawthorn. It filled me with joy and hope for the world that a human being would actually come around and water the street trees, much as a lamplighter used to come around and light the street lamps at dusk. I hope there will always be a job for a human to do publicly on a regular schedule—it seems to give us a special type of certainty and security just to know that the streets and trees are being cared for, that the city has an ordered routine. It’s as if we are all being taken care of; human labour connects us to a feeling of home and comfort when we see people physically, looking after our community.

  A few minutes after the tree-watering girl left, there was a solid and steady clip-clop echoing on the street, and a great grey horse strolled passed the window, pulling a white carriage carrying a happy-looking family, as the driver, a girl in black wearing a little top hat, described some local history. “This area used to be Beckley Farm,” I heard her say as she gently held the leather reins and the grey’s head bobbed with every step. “Some of these houses are brightly coloured and that’s a sign of wealth!” she said, and I looked at my dear little peeling white house with affection.

  I love the horses—they line up near the Parliament Buildings at the Inner Harbour every morning for their day’s work. They are tied under great shady trees and have bowls of oats and alfalfa cubes, and huge rubber buckets of water. They never complain, these gentle giants, and plod along faithfully, giving the tourists a good look at this quirky and historic neighbourhood. On Canada Day the horses wear red hats and Canadian flags that are tucked onto their thick plaited forelocks, and at Christmas they wear holly sprigs and little brass bells hung from their harnesses. The girls who drive the horses wear top hats, pink lipstick, and dark green silk cummerbunds. They keep the streets hosed and braid the horses’ tails in elegant French braids, sometimes entwining the braids with flowers and plumes. On damp, misty mornings we can smell the subtle odour of manure and mare’s urine mixed with the sea drifting up the foggy streets.

  Canadian Coast Guard Station, Odgen Point

  The history of a city is a funny thing—the same features exist now as long ago, such as the horses, but the purposes have changed; horses used to be a form of transportation, and now their purpose is tourism. I think it’s a fine sign of a tasteful and sophisticated city when it can adapt a historical feature in a modern way; Victoria is brilliant at this, adapting to modernism using the best of its history, and we can see this in all of the neighbourhoods. Victoria respects, and has not forgotten, its roots, and has established its identity from its colourful history.

  The horses load and unload in the works yard at nearby Ogden Point, near the cruise-ship terminal. It’s rather an austere and empty space, a quiet area between the bl
ue-and-white Harbour Authority offices and a seaside café. Here is where the horses can rest and eat their hay surrounded by the city’s marine-infrastructure equipment: stacks of creosoted planks, stockpiles of rusted marine paraphernalia, boat propellers, engines, ropes, and weathered vessels on blocks about to topple over.

  The enormous white cruise ships dock just yards away, as well as the yellow Search and Rescue dinghies, solid little tugs with chimneys, and the occasional foreign visiting vessel, all tied to the massive steel girders on the protruding wharves.

  For about a week one summer, the elegant Chilean naval-training ship Esmeralda was tied to the Ogden Point dock. I could see it from the beaches on Dallas Road, and every morning as Archie, my new hound companion, and I climbed over the damp black rocks of the shore, we could hear the lively brass band on the ship playing a morning tune through the dawn mist as they raised both the Chilean and the Canadian flags. I cannot really explain why, but this daily dawn tradition of the brass band and the flag raising was quite moving—the little musical tradition was dwarfed by the immense, green, turbulent sea and snowcapped mountains. They acknowledged their Canadian port and their naval tasks before they quietly raised their billowing white sails to continue on their travels.

  Part of the fun of moving into a new neighbourhood is exploring its cultural features. For entertainment in James Bay, I noticed that the White Eagle Polish Hall, a rectangular white-stucco building up by the baseball diamond, tennis courts, and communal garden plots, was having a traditional Polish lunch for ten dollars, and farther along the street, near where the Coast Guard stores its red-enamel buoys, chains, and great piles of ropes, there was to be a Big Band evening at the Edelweiss Club, a fundraiser for the hard of hearing.