Victoria — Old Town, Chinatown & Inner Harbour
Market Square and Old Town Warehouses
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
Market Square and the surrounding Old Town blocks preserve the commercial city built during and after the gold-rush era.
Victoria became the supply base for people rushing toward the Fraser River and later the Cariboo. Merchants sold food, equipment, transport and credit to miners before most of them ever reached a gold field.
That made the city rich without requiring gold beneath its own streets.
Warehouses, hotels and wholesale firms clustered near the harbour.
The architecture is often described as Victorian, which is true chronologically but can hide the harder economic story: these were working commercial buildings.
Gold rushes reward suppliers as reliably as miners.
Victoria's boom also drew Chinese migrants and merchants, many arriving through San Francisco or directly across the Pacific. Chinatown developed immediately beside this commercial core because it was part of the same economy, not an isolated ethnic quarter.