Victoria’s nature.

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Continuing where we left off
, let’s rejoin our journey of British Columbia’s pristine capital city, located just off the country’s Pacific coast, at the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island.i

Just 30 minutes north of Victoria by bus are the Butchart Gardens, which began in 1904 as the site of Robert Butchart’s limestone quarry for his Portland cement business. Once the limestone was exhausted about 20 years later, Robert’s wife Jennie began to redesign the empty pits to accommodate her dream gardens, which became the Sunken Garden seen below.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe Butcharts also developed an Italian garden, a Mediterranean a Japanese garden, and a Rose Garden and opened them all to the public. Today, the Gardens see a million visitors per year and, like everything else good, have been co-opted by the kleptomaniacal state under the banner of a “National Historic Site of Canada,” as if the Prime Minister ordered the Butcharts to do his bidding. In any event, here are a few of my favourite flowers and plants from the 55 acre wonderland.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAfter the gardens, I took in a performance by Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, featuring Frank Vignola and Vinny Raniolo, at the McPherson Playhouse. They were fairly stunning musicians, the three of them. That they all, and Tommy in particular, could make seemingly mundane acoustic guitars sound such a diverse number of ways, and with such speed and accuracy, was nothing short of astonishing. I was agogue, I was aghast… was I in love at last ?ii

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe theatre itself was very romantic, harkening to an era when Greek culture was still embrace, back before modernity and “progress” made such a muck of things. The arrangement of the seats was unusually steep, much to the benefit of the visual and acoustic experience.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERACompleted in 1914, the detailing of the playhouse was thoroughly charming as well.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABack again outside the theatre, more nature, including a gently curving stretch of coastline :

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd check out this graveyard with a phallic gravestone mentioning one gentleman’s “second wife,” something I hadn’t seen before :

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAElsewhere, this was one of the truly surprising number of private mortgage brokers. I must’ve counted half a dozen independents, which is quite odd for Canada, where the big five banks dominate and a few credit unions pick up the table scraps left over.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Then there’s this gentle reminder that the weather on the coast isn’t always 15-25C and mildly overcast :

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd yes, the pacific coastal sun really brings out the red in my otherwise black hair. Magick !

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd just in case you were starting to think that Victoria is paradise on earth, as I was, lest we forget that it’s still a socialist province in a socialist countryiii with an inordinate number of aged folks who have every intention to sucking as many dollars from the humourless health care beancounters and their potato science cronies as they can before their heads get crushed by the fur-coated warriors riding in from the north or their wallets get crushed from the Leninists they idealistically voted into office, whichever comes first.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAÀ la prochaine !

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  1. Vancouver Island is almost exactly the same size as Israel, though far less contentious and far less contested.
  2. It’s really no wonder that Eric Clapton has called Tommy Emmanuel the best guitarist he’s ever seen.
  3. Hey, if Alberta is awash with orange, there goes the country !

4 thoughts on “Victoria’s nature.

  1. Mitchell says:

    That hair is epic bro.

  2. […] At least in Canada, the great thing about verbotene Frucht from across the pond is that we can import anything and everything once its 15 years-old.v This means that the early years of the Chris Bangle-designed Fiat Multipla,vi produced from 1998 – 2010 now have the green light ! Oft lambasted for it’s, shall we say, “unconventional” design, as may or may not be apparent from the picture below, it’s aged beautifully in person, taking a surprisingly wide stance and boasting panoramic daylight openings for improved visibility and a marked sense of spaciousness. It seems like it’d be a fantastic little family car for, say, coastal BC. […]

  3. […] roads lead here, some even leave, if you follow,i Canberra caresses Victoria, verily towards Venice, Iron fist in a Glooskap glove, rhythm, sensing, […]

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