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This Greater Victoria Map contains many links to our pages on Towns,
Parks, Lakes, Ferry Terminals and Ferry Routes. Click on a live
area of the map to link to the desired page.
Almost half of
Vancouver Island's population of 700,000 lives within the Capital
region district (CRD) around Victoria
at the southern end of Vancouver Island. Victoria has a temperate
climate with mild, damp winters and relatively dry and mild summers.
It is sometimes classified as a cool-summer Mediterranean climate
due to its usually dry summers. There is a rich diversity of landscapes
within the region, ranging from the Douglas fir forests along the
coast to the drier, exposed conditions of the higher, rockier elevations
that support arbutus (madrona) and Garry oak forests. Flowers bloom
year-round in Victoria, which makes exploring the outdoors here enjoyable
in any season. Ferns and lichens colour the forest floor throughout
the winter; come spring, an explosion of trilliums and calypso orchids
heightens the effect before giving way to bushes lush with huckleberry,
salmonberry, trailing blackberry, salal, and Oregon grape. Such profusion
is a reward for migrating birds that make the Victoria region a semi-annual
stop-over point. Bald eagles, ospreys, turkey vultures, herons, shorebirds,
belted kingfishers, dippers, winter wrens, and many species of migratory
ducks, geese, and swans flock to the delightfully benign environment.
Victorians display their love for the natural world by cultivating
flower gardens at every turn. As you'd imagine in a region where a
large urban population interacts with such a delightful natural tableau,
a vast network of walking, hiking and biking routes leads through
the many parks with which the city is blessed. In fact, the very first
property to be donated to the provincial park system - John
Dean Provincial Park - is located in the middle of Greater Victoria's
Saanich Peninsula. Throughout the 1990s, a string of new parks have
been set aside in the CRD, including the almost 3,000-acre Gowlland
Tod Provincial Park and the 60-km Galloping Goose commuter walk
and cycle trail.
Although the mountainscape on the southern end of Vancouver Island
is not as rugged as the North Shore mountains that rise above Vancouver,
this actually mitigates in favour of hiking, as the physical demands
for reaching viewpoints is not as great. On the other hand, the views
are as panoramic and breathtaking as anywhere in the province. It's
easy to imagine how sweet life was for Native Canadians who once had
this all to themselves. Beacon Hill Park
in downtown Victoria was the site of a village that had been inhabited
for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the colonial settlers
in the 1840s. A tangled web of events since then has displaced the
original dwellers, but their history is evident in the petroglyphs
that adorn the shoreline and in the middens of seashells mounded up
beside the beaches on Strait of Juan de Fuca. Totem poles new and
old stand as proud reminders of this heritage.
To gain a fresh appreciation for the talents and skills of First Nations
people, combine a visit to the outdoors around Victoria with a stop
at the Royal British Columbia Museum, a world-class repository of
native artifacts. With the enriched perspective that such a visit
will bring, you'll look at the landscape with new interest and appreciation.
The figures on the totems will no longer be static representations
from a mythological age. Instead, combined with the presence of killer
whales, seals, eagles, ravens, salmon, and other species that are
as vibrant in the landscape today as they were in the past, you'll
enter a timeless real and, in the process, discover a new place in
nature for yourself.
Getting There
Victoria lies on the southern tip of Vancouver island and is
linked with the rest of the 450 km long island by the Island Highway
(Highway 1), whose southern terminus begins at Douglas Street in
downtown Victoria. Visitors from the Lower Mainland travel to Victoria
via BC Ferries' Tsawwassen
terminal in Delta. Visitors from the United States can journey to
Victoria via ferry from either Anacortes
in northwestern Washington, from Seattle,
or from Port Angeles
on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The Olympic and Saanich Peninsulas
are separated by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a 27 km stretch of
(almost) open ocean.
By air, visitors
arrive at either Victoria Harbour, by float plane, or at Victoria
International Airport on the Saanich Peninsula, about 27 km north
of Victoria.
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