We actually had an early start to our day. Our big adventure, as I mentioned yesterday, was to go to Butchart Gardens. We have both been there several times before and we know how crowded it can get. So we decided to get there just about at the moment it opened.
Here are a couple shots of our place. There is a nice deck which we can use if we want, though it really belongs to the main house. It does have a view of the ocean.
In the back there is a little sauna. Since there is not all the much privacy in this back yard, I am not sure how practical this is.
After stopping at Starbucks for some coffee, we made a quick trip to Butchart Gardens. Robert, the English voice on our GPS, insisted on calling it “butch art” gardens – which it really isn’t. Butchart Gardens is surprisingly dog-friendly. Canine have to be on leases, of course, and they cannot be in the buildings, but there are dog water fountains throughout the grounds and the folks in the information booths have an amply supply of dog biscuits to hand out as treats.
Robert Butchart was a successful cement manufacturer. After he had extracted all the commercial-grade limestone from his quarry on the Saanich peninsula, he and his wife Jenny decided to turn this industrial waste area into their home and garden. I suppose today we would think of this as an example of brownfield redevelopment. You can still see evidence of the old quarry in the “sunken garden”.
The deepest portion of the quarry was just turned into a lake. The fountain was added much later, but it is a nice touch.
One of the first things that Robert and Jenny planted was the Japanese Garden. Japanese gardens were the rage in British Columbia in the teens and twenties. Ironically, this was also the time that the Provincial Legislature successfully outlawed all immigration from Asia.
We talked to a tour guide who had the strongest Canadian accent John thought he had ever heard. It turned out she was from Minnesota! She was funny and offered to take our picture.
Besides the sunken garden and the Japanese garden, there is a rose garden and an “Italianate” garden which really did not remind me of anything I had ever seen in Italy.
After a couple hours, it started to get more crowded and a little warmer. The dogs were ready to go home. They had been real celebrities during their time in the garden in which at least two dozen people stopped us to pet them or even get their pictures taken with them. I have no idea how often I had to answer the question, “What kind of dog is that?” I was surprised, though, that many people accurately identified Edie as a Bouvier des Flandres despite her Giant Schnauzer haircut.
We stopped at a farm market along the way, and returned home briefly to have lunch and pick up a couple things. We then set out for Craigdarroch Castle, probably Victoria’s second most famous tourist attraction. We had never gone here on previous trips to Victoria because it seemed just so “touristy”. But there is often a reason why things are popular, and Craigdarroch Castle proved to be an interesting excursion. It is a particularly garish bit of late Victorian architecture as you can see in this picture, nicked from the British Columbia tourism website.
The interpretive leaflet we received with our admission referred to it as “bonanza” architecture, typical of the kinds of homes constructed by self-made industrialists in the late nineteenth century. John struck a pose which certainly seemed to capture the larger-than-life sensibilities of these robber barons.
This particular robber baron was named Robert Dunsmuir. A Scot, he emigrated to Vancouver Island in the mid-nineteenth century. Starting out as a miner, he managed to become owner of the largest coal mines on the Pacific coast. He sold much of this coal to the Southern Pacific railroad and a plaque in front of the house notes their connection to the Big Four.
The house has amazing woodwork inside, particularly the grand central staircase.
Although some of the rooms have yet to be restored – it was used as a military hospital and a school after the family sold it – the main rooms are set up in the style of the “mauve decade” of the 1890’s.
There is some lovely stained art here.
There is also a lot of really, really ugly Victoria kitsch as well. This, of course, is a little more fun than the tasteful stuff.
The smoking room, with its picture of Sir Walter Raleigh, may suggest why Robert Dunsmuir never actually lived long enough to move into this house. Just as guess….
After this, we traveled a couple of block to the Lieutenant Governor residence. Canada is nominally a monarchy, although a recent poll showed than less than 5 percent of Canadians knew that the Queen was Head of State. In each province, the Queen is represented by a Lieutenant (pronounced lef-TEN-ant if you’re a royalist) Governor. The residence is modern and frankly as ugly as any seaside hotel in England, but the grounds are interesting. They show some of the last remaining stands of Garry Oak in Vancouver Island. This was once the predominant ecosystem on the south and east coasts of the island.
The parts of the grounds that are not wooded and rocky have some pretty flower beds.
After our visit here, we tried to go to a provincial park on the other side of town that came highly recommended in some guide. But the traffic on the Trans-Canada Highway was as bad as any I have ever seen in Los Angeles, so we gave up and went to the sweet little beach by our house.
In the evening, we went to Billy Bishop Goes to War. This is a revival of what is considered the most successful Canadian musical of all time. It deals with the exploits of Billy Bishop, a loser from Owen Sound, Ontario – oddly enough, also the birthplace of Robert Butchart – who somehow became the most celebrated fighter pilot of World War I. Originally written in the 1970’s, this two man show is really an anti-war piece. But it is a brilliant showpiece for the lead actor. In this production that role was taken by the immensely talented Ryan Beil.
The play was performed in an old church in an interesting central Victoria neighborhood. The set design and lighting were perfect.
Tomorrow, we leave Victoria and head off to Nanaimo.
