When we woke up this morning, it was cool and gray. We decided that we had done most of what we intended to do in Victoria and we were ready to move on to our next destination, Nanaimo. We packed the car up and headed out of town. Along the way, we stopped near some of the grand houses in the Uplands area of the city and looked at some of them from the beach. Many, like the one below, reminded me a lot of Maine.
We glanced at the Abkhazi Garden which had been planted and tended by some expatriate royalty from somewhere or other. Nobody was twisting our arm for the admission fee of 10 dollars, so we just took a quick look and left. After the Butchart Gardens, it seemed like a really good back yard.
We were driving past the converted church where we saw Billy Bishop last night, so we stopped and took a snapshot.
Once we reached the unattractive outskirts of Victoria, the fog lifted and it became warm again. Traffic was bad on the Trans-Canada, but not as awful as it had been yesterday afternoon. British Columbia seems to have missed out on Lady Bird Johnson’s campaign against roadside billboards, and it is depressing to drive past ugly advertisements on the highway. And that’s after you’ve driven through the endless strip mall developments. These folks really need somebody to help them with urban planning.
We pulled off the highway to go to the town of Chemainus. We were here years ago. This is an old logging town which has tried to reinvent itself as an arts center. There is a big theater which for Broadway musical revivals – Guys and Dolls is being mounted now – and and just about every large wall in town they have painted murals illustrating the history of the area.
The dogs were indifferent to the art generally, unless some other dog had apparently done some art appreciation there previously….
Our final stop for the day was the city of Nanaimo. At one point, this was one of the most important cities in Canada. It was here that Robert Dunsmuir had his coal mining operations, and there were also extensive sandstone quarries operating here. The San Francisco Mint – the old one down on Fifth Street, not the new one near the Church Street Safeway – is made of sandstone quarried from Nanaimo. Logging later became a major industry in the area, but by the last 1970’s that had also disappeared and the town was in serious decline. They have tried to redevelop the old harbor area to made it attractive for tourists and retirees, and to some degree this has been successful.
We arrived in the late afternoon to our downtown Best Western, and our plan for the evening was to take a little ferry from the waterfront to Newcastle Island. This was once a resort run by the Canadian Pacific Railroad, but was acquired by the Province as a park. The weather was perfect, and we had a wonderful couple hours walking around the island.
Our ferry operator was a retired teacher. He did not seem to miss it….
As evening fell we walked around the city. John snapped this picture of the waterfront. He’s getting pretty good with that new camera, don’t you think?
Our dinner was at the Modern Cafe. The decor was great, the food mediocre, but it was pleasant to sit on the sidewalk and watch evening fade into night.
Tomorrow, we leave to adventures on the west coast of the island.
