by Anny Scoones
Brentwood Bay Shipyard
Victoria International Airport
The Victoria International Airport covers a lot of area, as you can imagine, but the forward-thinking managers and board have created an airport that is part farm, part heritage, part business, part park, and part protected ecosystem. And most of these features are open to the public to enjoy. Gentle, cud-chewing Holsteins lie in the airport meadows, and in mid-summer the meadows are hayed by a local farmer. The new campus-style business buildings on part of the airport land are not only low (good thing!) but attractive and blend into the landscape. There is a lovely, safe, wide bicycle path around most of the airport and plans to complete the perimeter; on the south side is a little forest and a creek and a glade of trees, which are protected for the skylarks to nest in, and on the north side is a rolling meadow with our native Garry oak trees, which the airport has acknowledged as being a heritage site—the site of a wartime hospital.
Public art is a main feature of the airport, both inside and out. We are greeted in the parking lot by huge, nodding, colourful flowers in front of the turquoise glass entrance, to say hello and goodbye to all travellers. What a wonderful last image to leave Victoria by, and such a glorious welcome home! This is the great significance of these joyous flowers.
The first pilot to land on the runway at the airport was George DuTemple. His son, Wally, owns the Ardmore Golf Course. Wally keeps a “green” golf course—it used to be his family’s farm, and Wally still allows his donkeys to roam the greens amongst the old apple trees and hedgerows of hawthorns.
Sidney-by-the-Sea
On the east side of the peninsula is the little seaside hub of Sidney. The carved blue welcoming sign sits on Beacon Avenue at the highway, and invites you to explore this delightful and unique town. In recent years, Sidney has beautified every street leading to its centre; there are lifelike bronze statues created by sculptor Nathan Scott sitting on the public benches all the way along Beacon Avenue. Every time I come out of Tanner’s Books I get a start, seeing the old bronze lady reading on the corner! And there’s an old man on a bench down near the wharf, sitting and reflecting with his hands folded in his lap, and every day somebody places a small bouquet of fresh flowers in his fingers.
This is what makes Sidney very special—the people (visitors and residents) involve themselves with the feeling and features of the town. They actually feel part of the community—they really do ask themselves what they can do to help and enhance the town, rather than ask what the town can do for them.
There are flower tubs everywhere and mini-gardens on the boulevards brimming with lush colour, and a quaint little museum in the old post office. The museum has exhibits ranging from the history of tea to teddy bears to quilts to Lego creations.
Down at the end of Beacon Avenue is the wharf where, in the summer, you can take a little boat ride to nearby Sidney Spit, a long and elegant arc of white sand that gently curves into the sea. There’s a traditional fish market on the wharf too, in a rustic building made of blue corrugated tin with yellow trim, with local art displayed on the sides.
There are also more than a few consignment and secondhand stores, which are great fun. There is even a “thrift shop” that has rescued cats up for adoption—they stretch out amongst the plastic flowers and chipped china, faded men’s ties, water-stained vases, tarnished candlesticks, and musty-smelling green drapes. They hide between the boxes of donated clothing and behind tired-looking furniture, or sit and glare at you from the shelves of yellowed how-to books.
A tourist magazine said that Sidney attracts mid-life retirees, but that didn’t stop Sidney-by-the-Sea from once having a “love shop”—it was over the vacuum store. There is a quaint and charming cinema with worn red seats that shows opera and interesting documentaries (along with popular features), and before each film is shown, the owner strolls down the aisle and welcomes you to the cinema and tells you a little about the production. Every so often the poor owner stands wringing her hands and explains that the projector has broken down or overheated and you are given a rain check, but that is all part of the charm and you just head for an espresso instead, and take an evening stroll along the wharves and piers, under the stars.
Sidney also loves its local culture. The well-known Canadian poet Al Purdy lived nearby and after he died, a group of intelligent, cultured people honoured Al by wrapping his words around a Hydro box in front of the bank!
Sidney seems to have everything. There is a spacious marina full of polished white yachts and sailboats with lovely fresh names such as Wind Walker or Moon Prancer painted on them in elegant blue letters, a sea walk and a little band shelter for summer concerts. There’s a bakery, an ice cream parlour, a library, a rose garden, and a long, clean, beautiful pebble beach. You can rent kayaks and glide along the quiet, shallow shoreline, over the kelp beds and between little islets, around the bays and alongside the wharves lined with luxurious flower baskets of pink petunias and blue lobelia. There used to be two swans that loved to paddle beside the kayaks, and every year they had a little flock of grey fuzzy babies who would come along too.
Sidney, like many small towns, never used to be so charming, quaint, and physically attractive, but in the last ten years, there has been a “small town rejuvenation” and recognition of the importance of art, architectural design, aesthetic pleasure, beauty, intelligence, and a certain kind of cultural ease. Because of these improvements, better, healthier businesses have arrived or been enhanced—imagination and the idea of being “different” in Sidney are now embraced after a long period in our society when simply making money from business was the only goal. Architecture was dull, as stucco boxes went up everywhere (and often they leaked and were mildewed); taste and design weren’t even thought about and humour was absent—it would be a serious thing, for example, for a movie projector to break down, but now people love the idea of a homegrown little cinema business and accept the reality of small-business problems, which can and do arise, with much more compassion and empathy. The world is in a better place, much as it is difficult to see sometimes, but a small seaside town such as Sidney is living proof—there is indeed more of a feeling for beauty, humour, compassion and a thirst for a better society all around us. If you think about it, these four driving forces—beauty, humour, compassion, and desire for goodness—are related, and they work together.
One of the unique features of Sidney is that it is a “book town.” Sidney has had as many as ten bookshops at one time, operating within a few blocks of each other—one summer there were sixteen bookshops! There are used-book stores (some with priceless and rare literary treasures), bookstores selling only paperbacks, a military bookshop, and bookshops selling books on country crafts. Being a book town is yet another wonderful, fun, and intelligent branding of this lovely town. I love the fact that they are supporting books—how courageous and original in a world that seems to enjoy looking at screens more than turning pages. Book towns such as Sidney also host literary festivals and many arts events—the venues are in coffee shops, parks, and even in the Ocean Discovery Centre. I once did a book reading there in front of a tank full of huge, curious, and attentive fish.
There are many official book towns in the world, including Tokyo and, if you can believe it, a place called Archer City in Texas! The enterprise of bookbinding is also going on in Sidney. The craft required to design and bind beautiful books dates from the medieval ages when monks spent hours alone in their cells creating their illuminated manuscripts. The dedicated and patient bookbinders hand sew, not glue, the pages to the spine, and often include headbands, elaborately decorated trims and front pages, gilt fore edges, and silk ribbons that serve as bookmarks. Binding can be made from leather or cloth.
Some booklovers not only lovingly bind books, but print them too, on antique printing presses. My friends who work in one of the many Sidney bookstores have a cast-iron, 1900 Chandler and Price printing press in their basement and every so often undertake the g
rand project of printing a book; they use handmade paper and they have to do one page at a time before resetting the letters. Their books, cards, and leaflets are beautiful labours of love and works of art, often with engravings or woodcuts as illustrations; the work is not mass produced but is created as limited editions.
The Globe and Mail had a very stimulating article on the importance of the printed book. It referred to printed books as “artifacts of the human mind”—the books are passed down and studied as “print culture.” Margin notes can reveal all sorts of thoughts, and the material or type of leather binding can distinguish the wealth and location of the publisher. Perhaps the most interesting and relevant quote in Ian Brown’s article was from Professor Elizabeth Harvey; she said that “books were made to be touched.” Paper and leather and the oils from the inks give the reader a very close physical connection with the book; she also said that reading a physical book is like “visiting a historic site.” I love her perspective and I think so do many others who shop in Sidney, the book town, for the great art of the book!
Of course the peninsula, being a peninsula, also has lovely beaches. One of the most delightful is Island View Beach, in the heart of the agricultural belt in Central Saanich. You drive down a country lane to the beach and pass a long stretch of rolling, fertile fields full of cabbages, little flower stands, a strawberry kiosk, and a goat farm, and then you come upon the wonderful wild view of the sea and the windswept, sandy cliffs of the islands just off the shore.
The two main features of Island View Beach are its amazing, endless silver sand strips, exposed at low tide, and its rather rustic carved trail along the shore atop a berm. On the seaward side of the berm is a unique salt-washed landscape that begins as a grassy meadow, then turns into a dark amber peat bog, and finally, at the end of the trail, becomes a meadow of sand dunes and sun-washed, sea-bleached grasses and stunted sedums. These dunes are little ecosystems where specific rare flora can grow, and these specialized, salt-air plants host numerous endangered species, both plant and animal.
In this particular sand-dune ecosystem grows a rare little grassy plant called the yellow sand verbena. It has a delicate trumpet flower and is the host plant to a very rare, tiny moth called the sand verbena moth. The moth is very vulnerable because it depends only on this specific plant to feed and breed, so projects are constantly under way to maintain and enhance the sand-dune ecosystem—the sand verbena moth is only found in ten locations in the world!
The Restoration of the Peninsula’s Streams
Between the farms and residential neighbourhoods, market gardens, wineries, and horse stables, the peninsula is a maze of watersheds, lakes, grasslands, and salmon streams. The areas along these watercourses are called riparian. There is a current environmental movement to restore the streams, watersheds, and riparian areas on the peninsula—not only to enhance them, but to encourage salmon spawning. On weekends you may spot a group of dedicated volunteers in bright yellow, muddied rain gear and rubber boots, busily working in and around streambeds and on misty fields, often in the dismal, raw winter rains, bringing the life force back to a stagnant or polluted pond.
Restoring a stream and watercourse requires a few special procedures. The first thing the volunteers do is clean out the litter. Tests are done to determine water quality, then the real work begins. Water flow must be increased, usually from a source upstream. Riffles, which are rows of small boulders across the streambed, are built to create oxygen as the flow rushes over the ledge. In some cases the streambed may have to be restored with gravel, or reshaped by redirecting the water.
But one of the most important processes is to restore the natural environment on the streambanks; this involves removing invasive plants such as English ivy and Scotch broom, which choke out native plants, and replanting with beneficial species such as red alder and willow, which prevent erosion and stabilize the banks. The plants also provide shade to cool the stream in hot weather, and give natural wildlife a habitat and marsh birds a nesting site. Finally, salmon eggs are deposited in the stream. Other stream life will soon appear as the stream returns to a healthy, living, breathing ecosystem.
The stark and barren sand-dune area at the end of Island View Beach is a transition zone between the sea and an inland mass of lush shrubbery and a marshy meadow where many seabirds nest. Natural landscape transitions are fascinating and house a multitude of diverse plant and animal life only feet apart. Sometimes I wish that humans could handle transitions as well as nature.
On a blustery summer day, the sea at Island View Beach is full of the colourful sails of windsurfers. The paragliders are attached by long, thick lines to slim and flexible figures in rubber wetsuits, knees bent and leaning against the winds and waves, always hoping for, always anticipating, that surge and moment of perfection (as an artist does) when they will be carried into the air or sea on that ideal angle that nature has spontaneously thrown at them. Perhaps what they are striving for is to be at one with nature, if only for a moment.
Elk and Beaver Lakes—A Natural Neighbourhood
The largest public freshwater area on the peninsula is Elk and Beaver Lakes (they are joined). These lovely lakes are surrounded by a six-mile trail where many recreational activities are enjoyed. You can stroll through the woods and listen to the lake lapping along its rocky shore as you see horseback riders, dog walkers, and, in some areas, recreational cyclists. There are picnic areas under the willow trees and several safe, sandy swimming beaches.
Rowers, kayakers, and canoeists use the lake, as do, in specified areas, motorboats. On a breezy, sunny day you can see people fishing from the shore or from little rubber dinghies, or our Olympic rowing team practising, led by a little yelling man with a megaphone, or a water skier, or a canoe full of birdwatchers sitting quietly in the reeds.
The landscape is a diverse combination of forest, grassland, and wetland, and is home to many species of native flora and fauna—the lake, however, is threatened by the invasive giant American bullfrog, which can consume a small duckling. These bullfrogs are being dealt with by our busy Parks workers, to help preserve the lake’s natural ecosystem. The giant bullfrog was originally bred in New England for its legs, a delicious delicacy. Over time, the frog, like all great explorers, made its way west.
Although Elk and Beaver Lakes are not neighbourhoods per se, they are indeed natural neighbourhoods with freshwater life cycles, food chains, and thriving ecosystems. Along the walk are several areas of marsh full of bulrushes. The bulrush, or cattail, is often referred to as “the shopping centre of the pond” because it has so many uses. The leaves can be woven into baskets, furniture, hats, and mats (the little wren uses the leaves to weave his multitude of lovely homes to attract a wife) and can even thatch a roof; the cattail fluff from the seed can be used as warm stuffing for pillows and is gathered by marsh birds to line their cozy nests; the cattail is also a delicious vegetable—the peeled shoot makes a lovely cucumber type of crunchy salad enhancer; and the golden pollen is highly nutritious and can also be made into a flour.
And there’s more! The jelly substance between the leaves soothes wounds and boils and carbuncles. Nobody speaks of carbuncles these days—it’s an old condition rarely seen, just like quinsy and consumption and chilblains. Carbuncles are similar to a boil, but worse. The word sounds rather English, like something Gran would have suffered with in a damp English cottage on a bleak moor in winter.
And if these uses of the fabulous cattail aren’t enough, here are even more. The dried seed heads light easily and the smoke will repel annoying insects; the cattails also absorb water pollution from their lake, marsh, or ditch, and purify the water. According to the “wild man,” Steve Brill, who has a wonderful website on this amazing plant, cattails have been planted along the Nile River to reduce salinity.
Scotch Broom
We have all seen this beautiful and invasive, brilliant yellow flowering shrub thriving in the hardest, most unfertile soils, even in rock crevices. (
Its cousin is the thorny gorse, which covers the cliffs of Dallas Road and seems to love the salt gales that blow it hard against the clay bluffs. Gorse may be invasive, but it’s keeping the seaside cliffs intact—sometimes invasive and tough can be a good thing. Trust the Scots!).
Broom most likely received its name because it was bunched together and used as a broom way back in Anglo-Saxon times—brom meant “foliage” and besoms meant “broom.” The Latin name for Scotch broom is Planta genista; the early medieval British king Geoffrey V chose the sprig of broom as his badge, and thereafter the British dynasty was named the Plantagenets. The Plantagenets ruled England from 1154 to 1485. Imagine this great virile dynasty being named after a little yellow flower! Well, come to think of it, the broom plant is pretty tough, tough but pretty—like the kings of that time!
A marsh thick with bulrushes and cattails is also home to the stunning red-winged blackbird, who wears the classiest and most tasteful outfit of all birds in my opinion—he is slim and black and elegant, with just a dash of red and gold on his shoulder. The blackbird nests in little woven cups sealed with clay amongst the stately, modest bulrushes.
A silent creature who quietly resides in Elk and Beaver Lakes is our endangered western painted turtle (the only native freshwater turtle in British Columbia). This little animal has a beautiful, colourful pattern on its underside (the plastron) and loves to crawl up the muddy banks of the lakes and make its way to secluded sandy spots on the edge of the forests to breed. Environmental groups are protecting the turtles’ nesting sites. The turtles can be seen on the lakes from a quiet canoe, often sunning themselves on logs or stones or on the warm muddy shore; they bask in the heat to dry their shells and rid themselves of algae. They feed in the morning and bask in the afternoon, the way people do in Spain! Turtles have no teeth but eat with their sharp, shapely beaks.
