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The best park within walking distance of the town centre is Beacon Hill Park , south of the Inner Harbour and a few minutes' walk up the road behind the museum. Victoria is sometimes known as the "City of Gardens", and at the right times of the year this park shows why. Victoria's biggest green space, it has lots of paths, ponds, big trees and quiet corners, and plenty of views over the Juan de Fuca Strait to the distant Olympic Mountains of Washington State (especially on its southern side). These pretty straits, incidentally, are the focus of some rather bad feeling between Victoria and its US neighbour, for the city has a (literally) dark secret: it dumps raw sewage into the strait, excusing itself by claiming it's quickly broken up by the sea's strong currents. Washington State isn't so sure, and there have been plenty of arguments over the matter and, more to the point for city elders, economically damaging convention boycotts by US companies. Either way, it's pretty bad PR for Victoria and totally at odds with its image. Gardens in the park are alternatively tended and wonderfully wild and unkempt, and were a favoured retreat of celebrated Victorian artist, Emily Carr. They also claim the world's tallest totem pole (at around 40m), Mile Zero of the Trans-Canada Hwy, and - that ultimate emblem of Englishness - a cricket pitch. Some of the trees are massive old-growth timbers that you'd normally only see on the island's west coast. Come here in spring and you'll catch swaths of daffodils and blue camas flowers, the latter a floral monument to Victoria's earliest aboriginal inhabitants, who cultivated the flower for its edible bulb. Some 30,000 other flowers are planted out annually.
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