History
Victoria's site was originally inhabited by Salish natives , and in particular by the Lekwammen, who had a string of some ten villages in the area. From here they cultivated camas bulbs - vital to their diet and trade - and applied their advanced salmon-fishing methods to the shoals of migrating salmon in net-strung reefs offshore. At the time the region must have been a virtual paradise. Captain George Vancouver, apparently mindless of the native presence, described his feelings on first glimpsing this part of Vancouver Island: "The serenity of the climate, the innumerable pleasing landscapes, and the abundant fertility that nature puts forth, require only to be enriched by the industry of man with villages, mansions, cottages and other buildings, to render it the most lovely country that can be imagined." The first step in this process began in 1842, when Victoria received some of its earliest white visitors , when James Douglas disembarked during a search for a new local headquarters for the Hudson's Bay Company. One look at the natural harbour and its surroundings was enough: this, he declared, was a "perfect Eden", a feeling only reinforced by the friendliness of the indigenous population, who helped him build Fort Camouson, named after an important aboriginal landmark (the name was later changed to Fort Victoria to honour the British queen). The aboriginal peoples from up and down the island settled near the fort, attracted by the new trading opportunities it offered. Soon they were joined by British pioneers, brought in to settle the land by a Bay subsidiary, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, which quickly built several large company farms as a focus for immigration. In time, the harbour became the busiest west-coast port north of San Francisco and a major base for the British navy's Pacific fleet, a role it still fulfils for the bulk of Canada's present navy. Boom time came in the 1850s following the mainland gold strikes, when Victoria's port became an essential stopoff and supplies depot for prospectors heading across the water and into the interior. Military and bureaucratic personnel moved in to ensure order, bringing Victorian morals and manners with them. Alongside there grew a rumbustious shantytown of shops, bars and brothels, one bar run by "Gassy" Jack Leighton, soon to become one of Vancouver's unwitting founders. Though the gold-rush bubble soon burst, Victoria carried on as a military, economic and political centre, becoming capital of the newly created British Columbia in 1866 - years before the foundation of Vancouver. British values were cemented in stone by the Canadian Pacific Railway, which built the Empress Hotel in 1908 in place of a proposed railway link that never came. Victoria's planned role as Canada's western rail terminus was surrendered to Vancouver, and with it any chance of realistic growth or industrial development. These days the town survives - but survives well - almost entirely on the backs of tourists (four million a year), the civil-service bureaucracy, and - shades of the home country - retirees in search of a mild-weathered retreat. Its population today is around 330,000, almost exactly double what it was just thirty years ago.
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