We go back to the days of glaciation at the Inner Harbour and follow the story that led us to the iconic waterfront we have today.
We go back to the days of glaciation at the Inner Harbour and follow the story that led us to the iconic waterfront we have today.
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Disclaimer: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Jackie: Hi, my name is Jackie Lamport. Today is Thursday, May 27. Welcome to the Capital Daily Podcast. Today on the show, from glaciation to colonialism to environmental havoc. The Inner Harbour of Victoria is full of history. So we go back to the beginning to find out how we got to where we are today. Long before European settlers occupied the Inner Harbour, the land was home to the Songhees people. As you learn in our interview with historian Catherine McAllister, they were forcibly relocated by settlers to make way for the city we now know as Victoria. As all Canadians should understand, this has had and continues to have drastic consequences on the people that were displaced. And this is not a unique story in the country. In today's episode, we will cover the entire history of the Inner Harbour. And this includes colonialism, as well as the development of the city we now call Victoria. And now we welcome Kathryn McAllister, historian and board member at Ross Bay Villa Historic House Museum. Kathryn, thank you so much for joining the podcast today.
Kathryn: Thank you; glad to be here.
Jackie: So tell me about the beginning of the Inner Harbour.
Kathryn: Well, I think what's interesting is that 15,000 to 29,000 years ago, there was glaciation. So the actual structure of what we see today shows traces of it in part of the harbour and the Confederation Garden Plaza. There are these big rocks, and they're sort of scratches across them because all the ice and the snow and the rocks went across that whole area. And what we see now is the result of that; in some ways, the timeline is always a little hard to tell for sure. We know that people inhabited the area for thousands of years, their shell mittens, layers of shells in the gorge evidence of like 4000 years of human habitation. So we do live and work on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples, and that's something to keep in mind. It's been a long time that there's been human habitation here.
Jackie: When did colonialism come in and start to change that?
Kathryn: Well, there were layers of that too, because you have Captain James Cook who's exploring Vancouver Island, you also have the Spanish peoples from 1778 through 1790. There were people from other continents coming here, and looking around 1843 is when what we know today started to happen. And that was the Hudson's Bay Company constructing for Victoria.
Jackie: Can you tell me about the impact that the Hudson's Bay Company coming into the area had on the population and the general city?
Kathryn: Yeah, it was huge. Having people coming here not as colonizers initially interested in the land itself, but the resources in the land meant that the way they engaged with indigenous groups was, you have something that we want. And so, at least for the initial period, things like smallpox were coming in. And that had devastating consequences of alcohol, differences in what indigenous people had access to in terms of guns. But there was a difference in that they weren't coming for the land itself. And I think that allowed for a lot of back and forth in ways that we didn't necessarily experience in other parts of the world.
Jackie: But then that started to change. Let's go to the 1850s; that's when the Gold Rush happens. Can you tell me about that?
Kathryn: Yeah. So in 1843, James Douglas started the construction of Victoria, which the local population did actually help with bringing logs for the Palisades in their culture. Again, I am not Lekwungen. This is not me claiming ownership of anything, but they lived in big houses, from what I understand. If you were building a house, you were doing that collectively, and you had a stake in the proceedings. So they built for Victoria. They had this trade back and forth, and then someone found gold in the Fraser River and overnight, a huge change came to the area. The first ship of prospective gold miners doubled the non-Indigenous population of the area that we now know as Victoria. So you have a huge change, rather than for traders who had a lot of them living here, this was their home up to a certain point, you suddenly have people coming in from San Francisco from further afield aiming to get gold. And, of course, you have a huge amount of construction. So the Inner Harbour had, at this point, had been a place that was very rich in natural resources. There are herring runs up the gorge every year, which is a huge food source, not just to people but also to the rest of the ocean. It's one of those keystone species that everything eats at a certain point. You had oysters in the gorge, which we still have Olympia oysters, and then suddenly have the people who are coming for the Gold Rush going, "Hey, those look tasty."
Jackie: And that's when things start to change from trading resources to claiming land, correct?
Kathryn: There was definitely a still resource trade happening, but suddenly people started coming here to settle. And that resulted in a lot of construction. Places like Laurel Point originally were burial grounds. And when you have a lot of people coming into this space, there's a huge amount of things that get just taken away by a change. Initially, there were four walls, and then you had to start pulling down the four walls and building out for just this huge population that was moving through here before they could go up the Fraser River.
Jackie: Wow. And then, shortly after the Gold Rush, that's when the colony of Vancouver Island opened its first legislature building. What was that like?
Kathryn: Yeah, those were called "the birdcages." They were kind of funny little odd buildings, compared to the ones that we're familiar with today. The lawn in front of the ledge that we now know is where those buildings were originally. So they built those, right as everything was kicking off in terms of settlement. And what we have now is a different set that was constructed much later on. So you had a government, but it wasn't Canada yet, which I think is important to keep in mind for the city's first decade. We weren't Canada; we were colonial and also partly traders. But then also this new wave of people coming into a colony to try and find a life for themselves. There was also overlaying a lot of what was here.
Jackie: There's an interesting story that you mentioned in the notes that you sent me about the James Bay neighbourhood's name. Can you explain that?
Kathryn: Yeah, that is one of those things where the words that we call things end up meaning something kind of different than they used to. So you have Fort Victoria built during 1843, you have a farm on the James Bay Peninsula, people went around the whole head of the bay, because before the Empress was there. If you take that away, you just had a lot of mudflats that were again very rich in natural resources, a lot of animals there. They built a bridge across that water that was originally called James Bay. And then when the Empress was built, and that area was filled in, and it wasn't a bay anymore. So that name got moved sideways to the area that we now know as James Bay, the neighbourhood.
Jackie: Wow, that's interesting. It's just one of those things where you call something for so long, but you don't actually know why you're calling it that, and you just get used to it.
Kathryn: Yeah, exactly. There's always this change that happens. Like across from James Bay, there's Songhees Point, also known as Cradle Point. There's an Indigenous name I have heard, but I'm not going to necessarily pronounce. But it was Sacred Headland, and it was related to when a child learned to walk, they would bring the cradle of their children there. And there is a connection to the waters that were supposed to protect the child. So you have these places that are still here that we've you know, we've sat on the rocks and looked out at the water. We've walked across the causeway where James Bay was, and we don't necessarily make the connections.
Jackie: I mean, it just kind of points out the fact that Victoria is really built on a lot of sacred lands, and I think that's something that it's easy to forget in daily life because it's been so long, but that is important to remember.
Kathryn: Yeah, relationships with the land continue to this day. It's very much not things that happened a long time ago that don't have a connection to now, but there's also a basic way that people approach the land. That just meant there were miscommunications and problems right from the get-go. Hudson's Bay Company comes here, looks at the camas fields and the beautiful Garry Oak ecosystem, and they're like, "Wow, it looks like a park. We should put all of our cattle to graze on this beautiful, untouched land." And then the Songhees are like, "No, that's my camas plot. We've been tending this for generations. This flower also has a bulb. That's our main source of starch that we used as a trade good. These are not untouched lands. We've been working really hard on this." But then you can't tell the settlers that because they just don't necessarily understand the same kinds of farming.
Jackie: Yeah, for sure. We are getting closer to Confederation now. Well, Victoria is just a few years shy of what it was before when it is incorporated. It's a few years shy of becoming a part of Canada. Can you tell me about the process leading up to that and what happened when Confederation did come?
Kathryn: So Confederation happened. But initially, it was the provinces way over on the other side of the continent, and you couldn't really get to Canada without going overland a great distance. There wasn't a railway yet. But also, you have a colonial government who spent a lot of money on making roads into the interior for the Gold Rush, which was starting to kind of taper off. There wasn't quite enough gold to sustain so much of a rush. So you have a colonial government that doesn't have a lot of money. And you have a government over East making promises, and one of them was we'll make a railway. So you don't have to go all the way down to San Francisco by steamer and then go across the states by train just to get to actual Canada.
Jackie: Interesting. It almost feels like, in another world, Victoria could have ended up being a part of America.
Kathryn: Or Cascadia, as I know people like to talk about.
Jackie: Honestly, though, that doesn't sound so bad. So then Confederation happens, and Vancouver Island is a part of Canada. Victoria becomes the capital of the province, and then not only after that, the harbour as we know it starts coming together. Tell me about the mainstay buildings that start to come up.
Kathryn: So when you're walking through the harbour now, I think anyone who's lived here or just visited has a very clear image of several really huge landmarks. You have the Empress Hotel, you have the parliament, the steamship terminal, you have the museum, a lot of those were built in the same kind of timeframe. The old legislature, the bird cages, and really you should look up a picture of them. They're very funny-looking little buildings. They weren't quite sufficient for the purposes anymore. Although you know, the Royal bc museum did start there. There was a room with a collection and everything they put in. They actually did a competition to build the Parliament Buildings. Oh, wow. Here submit what you think they should look like. And Francis Rattenbury decided to submit his drawing anonymously as a BC architect. He wasn't technically qualified as an architect.
Jackie: That's maybe the anonymous part.
Kathryn: Exactly. But it sounded good. It sounded patriotic. And so he built it over budget, but very beautiful. So you had the new BC Parliament Buildings open in 1898. You have the new Legislative Assembly also built by right, and it opened in 1893. And then, by 1904, there's also the Empress Hotel, built by Rattenbury that was part of the CPR Canadian Pacific Railway, because, by this point, we did have a railway. We also had steamships, so there was a smaller steamship terminal building. That was the point of access to Victoria for people from across the ocean as well. So it was Canada, but there was also the vast Pacific that we were on the side of, which just kept becoming more and more popular. So by 1924, you have the steamship terminal building built by Rattenbury and actually PL James, but people like to talk about the one that's more notorious. And you have this really iconic couple of structures that defined the harbour, I think in people's eyes and a lot of ways.
Jackie: I understand that around this time, the Songhees reserve was moved. What happens there?
Kathryn: So the Songhees lived in the Inner Harbour. And traditionally, they lived in a number of village sites around the area. They weren't necessarily going to live here all the time they moved around seasonally. When the Hudson's Bay Company moved in the Songhees, it set up a village site specifically to trade with the Fort to be part of the new economy in the city as it was sort of being constructed. But as the new century began, there was increasing pressure on the Songhees to move outside the city of Victoria, which had a lot to do with racism, and a sense that it was awkward to have them there. There was a lot that you can actually find in the paper. If you go online, the Times Colonist has a lot of things digitized, so sometimes you can find things in there. Essentially, the Songhees were pressured to move out of the Inner Harbour to the present reserve, and they lived in the Inner Harbour at Cradle Point for 68 years; that was it. But they were a part of the Inner Harbour during the Victorian period when so much was happening. So many things were changing. And across the harbour, you also have people going back and forth with canoes, holding potlatches and ceremonies. And the sound of drums in the Inner Harbour is something I've been glad to see come back with the Indigenous Cultural Festival and that kind of thing.
Jackie: In your notes, you mentioned something about the Migratory Birds Convention Act. Can you tell me about that and why it was significant?
Kathryn: Part of the natural diversity of the Inner Harbour is that it's been a stopping point for migratory birds that go up and down the whole continent at different times of the year. So you'll have some birds just kind of pop in for a little bit. Some stay here for longer periods or even year-round. But when they came, they'd eat the herring and the Olympia oysters, the indigenous oysters, and have this be somewhere where they could stop for a bit until they kept going again. And then you also have Europeans coming in, seeing a goose and going, "Oh, delicious. That's going to be Christmas dinner." So you had amounts of birds being killed. And internationally, there was the Migratory Bird Convention Act in 1917. That set up some protections for migratory birds. So if you're in the Inner Harbour, you're in a bird sanctuary, and we have several of them around Victoria and up a little bit. We have several established migratory bird sanctuaries.
Jackie: Well, this is like so much history, even to our biodiversity. That's incredible. In 1924, that's when access to cities off Vancouver Island got a little bit easier. You've already mentioned the steamships a little bit, but can you tell me more about them?
Kathryn: You had the CPR, Canadian Pacific Railways, and a Princess Line of steamers that did a triangle route between Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, but they also went all across the Pacific Ocean to Hong Kong, Hawaii. So you had thousands of people on this huge Pacific circuit going through Victoria, and they went through the steamship terminal. So in 1924, the new one was unveiled that was a lot bigger and grander than the first one, also built by Rattenbury.
Jackie: Wow, he put his name on everything.
Kathryn: He was one of those odd historical guys that everyone kind of knows. But he didn't seem well when he was building the steamship terminal. He was also cheating on his wife quite a bit with a concert pianist that he met at the Empress. They just scandalized the town.
Jackie: So he was quite a big figure at one point, though.
Kathryn: He was one of those people who thought very well of himself but was also getting a lot of commissions. There are buildings around Victoria houses and that kind of thing as well made by him. But once he kind of got to his Apex and started cheating on his wife with a concert pianist and having her in their home, people I don't think liked him so much. And it got to the point where he wasn't getting work, and they had to leave. They went to England. She cheated on him with their gardener, who was like 17, and the gardener ended up murdering Rattenbury.
Jackie: Oh my gosh, we'll have to do a full episode on this guy.
Kathryn: He was a piece of work for sure. But he also gave us a lot of what kind of makes Victoria recognizable in the Inner Harbour.
Jackie: Let's focus back on the steamships a little bit. How long does that service last?
Kathryn: You have huge steamers coming in all the way from Hong Kong, across the Pacific Ocean to Victoria. And you have that, actually, for decades. There were 1000s of people who came through here, but there was a lessening of the steamship service as the time was going on. There are other methods of travel and people weren't coming on the same methods quite as much. So you ended up having the CPR kind of start to lessen its influence here somewhat. You ended up getting the Royal Wax Museum moved into that building. Anyone who remembers that from when they were kids was a little horrified by it. So by the late 1970s, the CPR did end passenger service.
Jackie: Okay, throughout all of this industry, building on the island in the Inner Harbour. And this is, as we know, a very sensitive ecosystem. Can you tell me about the impacts that the industry was starting to have?
Kathryn: Well, I think partly we'll never know some of the details. We know that herring don't spawn in the gorge. Now we don't know exactly why, but it's probably a combination of pollution. The noise changed the environment. There's a lot of industry for shipbuilding. And also, Laurel Point had a paint company on it, which probably had all sorts of chemicals happening and going into the water. So by that, I mean, even by the time the Empress was constructed, the mudflats were now stinking mudflats.
Jackie: Also, when we're talking about changing the environment and affecting it, there was a rock in the gorge narrows that was dynamited without any consultation?
Kathryn: Yeah, so there's a rock part of it that still remains in the middle of the gorge called Camosun. The college takes its name from a local legend, which I would recommend checking out the Songhees book, which was published by the Songhees Nation, and it has an account of that legend. It's basically the transformer, an important figure, coming into the area, meeting this girl offering her these various resources in her being a picky eater and saying, "No, I don't like that one." And he goes, "Okay, I'll put it over here then." And he got fairly frustrated with her and turned her and her grandfather into the rock. And again, the Songhees book tells it a lot better than I can. But you have this rock that is important to how the water runs and how people see that part of the area. It's about being a steward of what you have. And then I think 1960 comes along and goes, "I don't want this rock here." And it was dynamited without consultation. You can see the difference in the way that the water flows. There are old pictures of it. And you can just see this whirlpool happening. It still happens now, but it's not nearly as intense.
Jackie: Let's catch up to the present. Now, what happened between the 70s and now? And how do we reach where we are now?
Kathryn: Well, I think it has become much more based on tourism. Part of that does mean that there's a desire to make things beautiful. And I think we've done that really successfully. But it's also a case of looking at the harbour, looking at the gorge and realizing there was so much pollution here, maybe we can actually do something about it. And there's a gorge cleanup. There's a lot more awareness in terms of the industry that's still there in terms of what it's putting into the water. And it's at the point where people could swim in it back in the day, for part of the century, you didn't want to do that. And now it's at the point where people do swim in it again. And there's eelgrass there, which is a habitat for a whole lot of different plants and animals. You also have herring still in the gorge, they still don't spawn, but they are there again. Whereas before, we had huge runs of it. And you have Olympia oysters, which are native oysters that are mostly extinct and a lot of areas, but we still have a population of them in the gorge.
Jackie: Wow, that's incredible. So here we are, we have our tourist city. and we have a lot of people who are super focused on the environment. But I guess it took us a lot of learning to get there.
Kathryn: We have a tendency to take time to notice what's right in front of us.
Jackie: Thank you so much for this. This has been really interesting. And I'd love to have you back so we can focus a little bit more on some of the specifics because it's a lot of interesting stuff that's happened over the years.
Kathryn: Yeah, I would love that. One thing I like is that when you are wandering around the harbour, you can sort of start to see some of this. If you go to Red Fish, Blue Fish, and then you walk along that area, you can see some actual they're painted white to make it easier. But you can see the rings put into the rock itself where they used to tie up the ships. There's the spindle whorls, the displays that have the indigenous word for each area still there. The more you notice, the more you start to realize and put the pieces together.
Jackie: Yeah, thank you so much.