by Anny Scoones
At Halloween, the jack-o’-lanterns in Fairfield are neatly carved into spooky faces of ghosts with toothless grins, which sit on porch railings and in big stained-glass windows and then, after the frightening night, are taken to the community compost centre. (In James Bay, the pumpkins are carved with sails, hearts, stars, and moons, and placed in apple trees and lawn sculptures. After Halloween many carved pumpkins appear on the great logs on the beach, and the sea gulls have a feast before the winter’s grey tide washes them away and they become one with the sea glass and kelp.)
Men with shoulder satchels stroll through Cook Street Village, some wearing rolled-up black jeans, others in lime-green ski jackets and pants with side pockets. Cook Street is all about the stroll. Many merchants move their wares outside onto the sidewalk, so people are forced to amble. When merchandise, especially interesting items such as lovely blue cotton rag rugs, vintage clothing, organic soaps, art books, and trolleys of herbs are displayed on the sidewalk, a barrier is broken down between the shop and the walker. Shop owners sweep the sidewalks and greet passersby. They are putting themselves “out there” as part of the strolling community, and that’s very appealing for a pleasurable amble through a village. This sense of pride in the merchants flows onto the streets—add a dog dish of water, large pots of pansies, pretty awnings fluttering in the ocean breeze, freshly painted sandwich boards, red-enamel bike racks, Sunday papers, and quaint little restaurants that sell oven-baked pizza and herbal teas or mochas, and we have the village experience.
There’s a lot to be said for pride, and for taste, and for good old-fashioned community. Cook Street in essence resembles a traditional old English village—the philosophy is that the little shops are an everyday experience for people who live nearby. Perhaps its appeal to the public beyond the area is that by strolling through the village, they feel a part of the immediate community.
There are no art galleries with broad glass windows displaying rich oil paintings of landscapes and still lifes in gold-leaf frames under strategically placed spotlights; none that offer wine and cheese and chocolate gingers on art openings where you can read the artist’s statement (most of which I rarely understand) in a glossy pamphlet. Rather, artists in the Cook Street area sell their art from their homes, lovely homes with stepping-stone pathways, woolly thyme, and pots of tulips on the porch in spring.
East of Cook Street Village, on nearby Moss Street, is one of Victoria’s busiest and most popular Saturday street markets held throughout the summer. Perhaps one sign of a city’s coming of age is that it has a daily market, but for now the Cook Street area can boast of a healthy, vibrant, weekly market, set up under an array of little white tents in the Sir James Douglas schoolyard, where people amble, carrying woven Peruvian baskets to fill with everything from exotic mushrooms, orange beets, and homemade cilantro salsa to jars of chutney and other lovely concoctions such as Bartlett Pear Butter With Vanilla.
One farmer had a basket of quince for sale. The pale yellow, smooth-skinned quince, lightly covered with a soft down, always reminds me of a teenage boy’s face (not the yellow part but the fuzziness). The quince is an old fruit, hard as rock but delicious when stewed or made into jelly. We don’t see it very often anymore, so it is delightful to know that it has been kept popular by a farmer at the Moss Street Market. A delicious way to serve quince for dessert is simply to bake it and then add a little maple syrup to sweeten it, and some whipped cream and maybe a tiny sprinkle of nutmeg.
One of the largest stands at the Moss Street Market is the apple kiosk. Here the vendor, from a nearby Gulf Island, sets out numerous wooden boxes of apples, all different sizes and colours, and because he doesn’t spray with pesticides and other poisons, his wonderful country apples look like the fruit that our grandmothers grew—with blemishes and spots and not perfectly round!
Gonzales Bay
These apples aren’t only clean and organic, but many are of heirloom varieties. A sign listing the country of origin and date sits in every box: “1809—Bramley—England”; “1750—King—New Jersey”; “1790—Esopus [that’s a place in New York] Spitzenburg.” I bought the oldest heirloom, a 1740 Blenheim Orange from England. There were tasting plates as well, and it was great fun to compare the tartness and textures of these dear old species. One of the most intriguing was the “Pink Delight—Origin Unknown.” It was a sweet apple with bright pink flesh, probably a creation by Mother Nature (she alone knows the real origin), crossbreeding her old heirlooms in a wild orchard on a breezy day when the pollen flew around and landed where it preferred. Or it may have been the work of a busy honeybee making its rounds.
East of Moss Street and a little ways along the shore is historic Ross Bay Cemetery. Apart from containing the graves of many well-known, historically important people from Victoria’s past, the cemetery is also known as a windblown place where winds lash the edge of the property with salt, sleet, driftwood logs, sand, and anything else that blows up from the beaches in our winter storm season. The winds often blow down trees and whip the waves right over parts of the road—it’s very dramatic, and this area is regularly cordoned off with orange sandwich boards and yellow plastic tape while workers put the road and property back together. These brutal storms literally washed the dead out of their graves and were part of the reason the Chinese graves in this part of the cemetery were moved to a more peaceful meadow on higher ground in nearby Oak Bay back in 1903 (see Chapter Three).
You can take guided Sunday-afternoon walking tours of the Ross Bay Cemetery with guides from the Old Cemeteries Society (tour groups meet across the road at the mall), and the interesting tours are usually theme-based. Cemeteries are not only about the deceased; they are also cultural landscapes. The Old Cemeteries Society has published some very informative brochures, which include a description of many of the graves at Ross Bay; you can visit the graves of Emily Carr, some of the Sisters of St. Ann, the Dunsmuir family (the famous coal barons), and Victoria Jane Wilson, who left her inherited wealth to her pet parrot to supply him with brandy, his favourite drink!
We cannot leave Fairfield without mentioning the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Government House Gardens, both located in Rockland, an area of wide, shady, tree-lined avenues with spacious lawns in front of large heritage homes and sprawling but neatly pruned blooming shrubbery and old rock walls.
The art gallery is housed in a Queen Anne-style mansion, which was built in 1889 and is painted in traditional heritage colours (a bright pinkish-orange with deep jade-green trim). Although the gallery has a large permanent collection of works by Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, the focus is on Asian art, and it has an Asian-themed garden that includes, amongst the Japanese maples, pink dogwoods, and bamboos, an authentic Shinto shrine. Inside the gallery is a huge iron bell (1641) from China’s Ming dynasty.
Many Japanese plants do very well in Victoria because our climate is similar to that of parts of Japan, but philosophically and historically, our gardens do differ. Even though our Victoria gardeners love to manicure our shrubs and train them to travel sideways, we do have a wild side! Our deep rainforests laden with fern, fungi and moss, our windswept meadows of gnarled Garry oak, our old orchards, sand-beaten grassy estuaries and seashores, are quite untamed and often make up local landscapes within our region and within our neighbourhoods. But in Japan, perhaps because it is smaller, control of the vegetation, such as the practice of bonsai, seems much more important. There is a bonsai display at the art gallery—wildness repressed—and even a bonsai salal shrub.
I took the drop-in tour to see the ancient Chinese pottery exhibit, a collection of vases, dishes, and trinkets with beautiful glazes and patterns retrieved from old shipwrecks off China’s shores. A man in a tweed suit and a name tag guided our small group around a white room filled with Plexiglas boxes displaying ancient, salt-encrusted teapots, jugs, and opium containers. On the walls hung old British oil paintings of stormy seascapes with clipper ships being tossed in the grey ocean, but I n
oticed that in every picture, there was a narrow and subtle strip of hopeful and promising yellow sunshine far away on the horizon.
One of the more elegant and exquisite pieces of pottery was what looked like a tiny chamber pot, but in fact it was a “vomit pot.” (I had never heard of such a thing, but it was the most beautiful piece of pottery I have ever seen—how ironic that it had such a not-so-pretty use!)
I happened to visit the gallery once on a dark, drizzly, blustery autumn day, and it was a lovely thing to do. I browsed the Persian miniature paintings that depict everyday life, such as miniature gold-leaf scenes of a shepherd in a red smock tending his flock of grazing goats. It was charming as the wind outside whipped the slim red leaves off the Japanese maples around the Shinto shrine.
Government House
Near the art gallery stands our stately Government House, residence of our lieutenant-governors. All sorts of ceremonial government events take place throughout the year that are open to the public. One of the most moving ceremonies is the swearing-in of new Canadians; there is something so compassionate about our country taking in new citizens, welcoming them to our home to begin new lives. I think that’s what multiculturalism and compassion are all about, and compassion permeates the Canadian cultural landscape.
Another striking feature of the ceremonies is the military-style clothing that our lieutenant-governor wears. Oh, it’s magnificent and regal, with swirling gold braiding and slim-fitting coattails and a beautiful hat with a white plume.
Although this beautiful historic building is worth visiting, it is the restored gardens on the thirty-five acres, set amongst the Garry oaks and camas meadows, that prove to be a grand highlight. The gardens are open to the public every day of the year, and in the warmer months there are picnics and games and tea and musical concerts on the lawn. The gardens are tended by four hundred volunteers! The volunteers even hold fundraisers to buy the plants, which they spend hours putting into the many beautiful beds. It is estimated that these dedicated volunteers save the provincial government close to a million dollars in labour by caring for these vast and varied gardens.
Composting is done on site, and there are beehives to supply honey for special occasions. Vegetables and fruit are also grown for use within the household. There are rose gardens, heather gardens, rock and alpine gardens, and water gardens, and benches for resting and pathways for strolling. Although they contain some exotic plants from faraway lands, including the Chinese dogwood, Mediterranean lavender, and the Cape fuchsia from South Africa, the gardens at Government House are not botanical gardens for educational purposes but are, rather, a source of beauty and serenity for us all to enjoy.
Credit for the garden restoration and expansion is given to Lieutenant-Governor David Lam, who took office in 1988. He apparently donated his entire salary toward the project! The gardens actually were established back in 1911 but over the years had fallen into disrepair and neglect. When I look at our community now, I see, more than ever before, a positive recognition of the need to restore and preserve the beauty of the past and to create present and future beauty as well, and this is thanks to sensitive and forward-thinking people like Mr. Lam and these volunteers.
The efforts and love the volunteers put into this beautiful landscape give me great hope.
Willows Tea Room at Oak Bay
CHAPTER THREE
Oak Bay
Oak Bay, named after the many old oak trees that line the quiet streets and are spread across the wild parks and meadows, is known for its Englishness, and indeed there are some features that are very British, such as tea houses and a pub called The Penny Farthing. But when I walked through the absolutely stunningly beautiful camas and Garry oak meadows in Uplands Park, the people were more English than the landscape. The scenery and physical features are quite Canadian, but it is the people who reflect the Englishness of Oak Bay. I was passed by energetic older residents who carried walking sticks and wore tweed caps and tall buckled gumboots, accompanied by wet Labrador dogs with lolling pink tongues.
Oak Bay has some unique features that are clearly not English; did you know that it is “The Palm Tree Capital of Canada”? The palm-tree count in 2006 was 2,669! There’s even a self-guided tour you can take to see the palm trees, some of which are thirty feet high.
With English gardens characteristically known for precise pruning and planned landscape design, Oak Bay’s Native Plant Garden on Beach Avenue stands as another unique feature that breaks the mould of Englishness. The land was donated by Ada G. Beaven (1867–1958) and is lovingly tended by the local Native Plant Society. It’s a lush pocket oasis with shafts of sunlight illuminating groves of burgundy trilliums, ferns, fawn lilies, and bluebells under the green shade of Indian plum, snowberry, maples, and evergreens. A dear little winding chip path takes you on a gentle curved stroll through this delightful native woodland, where logs are allowed to rot back into the earth, weeds are not weeds but a food source for birds and insects, and slugs can wander freely.
Tea at nearby Willows Beach is like being in an era gone by. The tea house on the beach is a simple white structure with blue trim, originally built in 1949. Its salt-sprayed windows overlook the promenade, with its dark green hand railing, along the vast stretch of sand, and inside the tables are covered with white plastic table cloths adorned with tiny bouquets of real pink carnations. You can have chips or tea or an ice cream and a few other snacks. The tea house is run by volunteers for the Oak Bay Kiwanis Club; they are raising money for one of their many compassionate causes, a residential care home for the elderly that will include a therapeutic garden and a van for venturing out on local excursions.
A particularly charming part of Oak Bay is its village, which is lined not only with little shops but also numerous art galleries. The streetscape of Oak Bay Village is bustling, colourful, and joyous, with pretty street banners on freshly painted lamp-posts—shiny black with gold oak leaves—potted plants shaded by shop awnings, hanging flower baskets, and informative heritage plaques. The shops are small and low, no more than two storeys, so you can always see the sun through the tops of the trees. The original 1936 Oak Bay Village sign sways above the sidewalk where a little theatre stood in the 1930s—admission was ten cents. The oldest business is the Oak Bay hardware store, which has been there since 1912.
The village is known to have a very British flair, and it does in fact have many English features; you can purchase British newspapers at Ivy’s Bookshop and have a meat pie at The Penny Farthing, but what is on the increase in Oak Bay Village are the delectable and elegant food outlets. There’s The Village Butcher, a shop run by a man considered an artisan with meat—he makes two kinds of the most delicious pepperoni I have ever tasted—and there’s Ottavio’s, an Italian deli and bakery where you can pick up lemon polenta, aged Tuscan sheep cheese, bourbon bread pudding, fig shortbread, or Italian truffle butter. There’s Feys and Hobbs across the street, where a fine cup of coffee comes on a wooden platter accompanied by a little jug of cream. All the Feys and Hobbs products are made locally from local ingredients; the crackers are actually handmade, and you can also buy bacon jam and suffins, a delicious bun that is a combination of a muffin and a scone. Feys is the owner, and Hobbs is his dog. Oak Bay Village may have its British flavour, but as one merchant explained to me, it is becoming a “foodie mecca.”
The municipal hall displays local art and heritage photographs of the old streetcars, which is a refreshing change from the dimly lit, dull-beige buildings with blank walls you must usually endure when paying a utility bill or asking the location of the gas lines under your front lawn. Perhaps our municipal halls should indeed be cultural centres; they certainly would be more inviting to do business in! Oak Bay loves its heritage; it still has manhole covers that date back to the 1800s, imported from Scotland and used as ballast in sailing ships.
Everywhere you look in Oak Bay there is a plaque, a cairn, or a kiosk describing a historical aspect of the place. At wild and windswept
but beautiful Cattle Point, there is a brass plaque explaining that the land used to be part of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s farm and that from 1860 to 1910, cattle were barged from the mainland and pushed overboard to swim ashore, where cowboys would round them up; I don’t think the poor cows’ swim would be as traumatic as trying to scale the black, jagged, rocky shore.
At nearby Uplands Park, a cairn that overlooks the sea is dedicated to Walter M. Walker (1887–1983), an Oak Bay councillor who had the brilliant idea of creating the seventy-five-acre park, a place of stunning beauty where the rich bluish-purple camas in the spring sunshine actually hurt your eyes from their beauty. Sometimes beauty actually physically hurts from its intensity. It’s not often that art can provide the same intensity nature does, although there are some pieces of music that can bring me to tears, such as Elgar’s “Enigma Variations.”
My awe and wonder at the stunning Garry oak meadow in Uplands Park were interrupted on one visit by a woman who was marching and lunging in her Lycra pants and pink visor, blowing and puffing erratically along the grassy paths and bringing her knees up to her pale chin with every elongated stride. It reminded me of John Cleese in the Monty Python skit about the Ministry of Silly Walks. I wondered if she knew how beautiful a camas flower is.
