Victoria — Old Town, Chinatown & Inner Harbour
Inner Harbour and the Lekwungen Landscape
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
Begin with the harbour before the buildings.
The protected inlet made this place useful long before Europeans arrived. Lekwungen-speaking peoples lived, harvested and travelled around what is now Victoria and southern Vancouver Island.
The Hudson's Bay Company chose the harbour for Fort Victoria in 1843 because it offered anchorage, agricultural potential and access to regional trade.
Colonial maps then converted a lived Indigenous landscape into lots, roads and Crown land.
Today the harbour is filled with ferries, seaplanes and pleasure craft. That continuity of movement is useful: the water is still infrastructure.
Victoria's grandest buildings face the harbour because political and commercial power wanted to be seen from the route by which people arrived.
The city did not grow inland and discover the water later. It faced the water from the beginning because the water was the reason for the city.