Victoria

Victoria, city, capital of British Columbia, Canada, located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island between the Juan de Fuca and Haro straits, approximately 60 miles (100 km) south-southwest of the province’s largest city, Vancouver. Victoria is the largest urban area on the island. It has the mildest winter climate of any city in Canada, and its many parks and green spaces have inspired its description as a “garden city.” Above all, Victoria is a city whose British heritage and colonial past can be seen clearly in its architecture, gardens, museums, urban squares, place-names, and English-style pubs. Area city, 8 square miles (20 square km); metro. area, 269 square miles (696 square km). Pop. (2011) city, 80,017; metro. area, 344,580; (2016) city, 85,792; metro. area, 367,770.

History

The history of settlement by Coast Salish (Salishan) First Nations (Native American) people in the Victoria region dates back well over 10,000 years. The site of the future city was known to the Coast Salish as Camosun or Camosack. In 1778 explorer Capt. James Cook reached the island. English navigator George Vancouver was with Cook on that voyage and returned in 1792 to circumnavigate and survey the island, which was later named for him. As fur trading became established in the region, the Hudson’s Bay Company came to dominate the island and in 1843 established Fort Camosun—later called Fort Albert and then Fort Victoria, for the British queen—at the city’s present site.

In 1849 Vancouver Island became a British crown colony with Fort Victoria as its capital. More settlers arrived, and a small village arose near the fort. By the early 1850s the village site had been formally surveyed, and in 1852 the settlement was named Victoria. Agriculture, forestry, and coal interests were by then replacing those of fur, but there were never more than several hundred residents until the discovery of gold in 1858 along the banks of the Fraser River and later in the interior Cariboo region, both in mainland British Columbia. The region, including Victoria, was transformed instantly by an influx of some 25,000–30,000 gold seekers (many of them American and Chinese), most of whom used Victoria as the port of entry to the mainland and as the supply centre for their mining ventures. (In 1858 British Columbia also was made a crown colony.)

Gold fever was thus responsible for Victoria’s rapid growth from a few hundred to several thousand inhabitants. It was incorporated as a city in 1862. In 1865 the Royal Navy designated an existing naval base at Esquimalt (now a suburb of Victoria), on the west side of the harbour, as its Pacific headquarters, further spurring population growth in the region. During this period Victoria became the most important city in Canada’s western region. It was made the capital of the combined colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia in 1866, and by 1871 the city of Victoria’s population was 3,630. The city’s protected harbour facilitated import and export services for the whole colony, and agriculture, forestry, and fishing provided additional employment. Victoria became the colony’s financial centre and a focus of industry, with a flour mill, soap works, gasworks, tanneries, shipyards, and brickyards, as well as baking, brewing, and distilling plants.

The arrival in 1886 of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) at Burrard Inlet, near Vancouver, made that city an international port connected to the rest of North America by rail. As a result, Victoria’s commercial activities and population soon took a backseat to booming Vancouver, although Victoria and its surrounding region experienced steady growth.