The third and final leg of our British Columbia vacation took us across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Island. We boarded the ferry at Tsawwassen and steamed through the scenic San Juan Islands to Swartz Bay, where we then disembarked and drove on to Victoria. Terry’s bike accident in Pemberton had put a pall over the prospects of what we’d be able to do for the rest of the trip. The doctor in Whistler had warned that she not even think about cycling, or anything else physically demanding that could strain her knee and make matters worse. So we got online and searched for ideas. And are there cool things to do in the City of Gardens without having to get on a bicycle and break your neck? You betcha.
We arrived in Victoria, the provincial capital of British Columbia, late in the afternoon, and soon after checking into our bed & breakfast inn, we strolled down to the harbor to look around. It is one of the oldest cities in the Pacific Northwest, established by Great Britain in 1843 initially as a fort and naval base. Located on the Strait of Juan de Fuca at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, it was strategically sited to thwart any Yankee incursions northward.
Having dinner with my beautiful wife at an outdoor café on the marina is one way to express “Life is good”.
A 25-year-old English immigrant, Francis Rattenbury, an auspicious young architect with no resume of accomplishments as yet, was awarded the contract to design the Parliament Building. Influenced by the Baroque and Romanesque Revival styles that were popular in late-Victorian times, the project far exceeded its budget and took five years to build. But when it opened for business in 1898, it was to immense fanfare and launched Rattenbury’s career as a successful architect.
An evening stroll brought us to the renowned Empress Hotel, where we just had to go inside and snoop around a bit. This is another of Rattenbury’s architectural designs, completed in 1908. The five-star hotel has 477 rooms, four restaurants, two ballrooms, an indoor pool and a luxury spa. Back in the day, kings, queens and tycoons stayed here on a regular basis. In the 1960s, during a major renovation project, the “Empress” sign over the entrance was added and the bluebloods were appalled. In their opinion, if you didn’t already know it was the Empress, then you had no business staying there.
No trip to Victoria would be complete without a visit to Butchart Gardens, where pathways wander through 55 acres of botanical wonder. It sees almost a million visitors each year—they literally arrive by the busload—so to get a jump on the crowds, we made sure to be at the front gate when it opened. The grounds were originally part of a limestone quarry operated by Robert Butchart, who made a fortune manufacturing and distributing Portland cement.
(The kiln chimney in upper right corner of photo is the last remnant of the cement plant.) Starting in 1906, as the quarry began to play out, Robert’s wife, Jennie, hauled in tons of topsoil and fertilizer from the surrounding dairies and slowly transformed the scarred landscape into a private Garden of Eden. She had quite the green thumb, and over the years, the gardens were expanded until they encompassed the large home they had built there. Today it is a thriving enterprise, still owned and operated by the Butchart family.
Maintenance is a gargantuan endeavor at Butchart Gardens. Depending on the season, there are 45 to 60 full-time groundskeepers, some of them professional arborists, horticulturists and landscape architects. I’m thinking they must have one big gnarly tool shed.
The Japanese gardens were my favorite. Though they lack the vibrant colors of the English and Italian gardens, the impeccable harmony of landscape and hardscape makes one desire to just linger and meditate.
Hanging out in the Japanese gardens.
Fountain statue in the Italian gardens.
Giant sunflower.
The small placard next to this rose bush said:
“Maggi Barry” – New Zealand, 1993. Ha! I must snap a photo of this. And as I move in for a close-up shot of one of the blossoms, a middle-aged couple walks up to ogle it.
“Hey look,” the woman says to her husband. “I gotta take a picture of this and send it to Maggi. They named a rose after her.”
Huh? I stood up and looked at her. “That’s my sister’s name,” I told her.
Small world.
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After an enjoyable day at Botchart Gardens, we drove back into Victoria, deliberating on what to do next. It was mid-afternoon. We could check out the Royal BC Museum. Maybe see Craigdarroch Castle? Or a harbor cruise? In the end, we returned to the Rosewood Inn for a little R&R at the B&B. Ter needed to rest her knee. But also, I was starting to get pangs in the gut, maybe indigestion, and all I wanted to do was lie down and recoup. And of course, that’s how it always begins. I know that now.
Within twenty minutes of returning to our room, I was writhing in agony on the bed, waves of pain so intense that I couldn’t think straight or carry on a conversation. It felt like somebody was driving a dagger into the left side of my abdomen, and then sadistically twisting the blade. I’ve only felt such incredible pain once before, about four years ago, and so with dreaded certainty I knew the probable cause: A kidney stone.
I told Terry: No effing way am I going to the ER in a foreign country on my vacation. No. Way. Period. But when the third tsunami of pain knocked me to the floor, and I was calling out for morphine, she promptly got directions to the nearest hospital from the desk clerk and we were on our way.
Royal Jubilee Hospital was a nice-looking facility with shiny glass facades. Inside, the Emergency Care Admissions lady asked to see my Care Card. Every Canadian has one. Instead, Ter pulled out my Kaiser Permanente card and placed it on the counter. The lady tossed it back at her. It was worthless here. The only cards they took from foreigners were Visa or MasterCard, and I was in too much pain to negotiate.
Once they had my credit card number, we were directed to the ER waiting area, which had the ambiance of a crowded three-ring circus. I was instructed to sit on a bench seat outside the lab and wait for them to draw a blood sample. An hour later, we were still waiting. The two technicians who were working the lab casually ignored us.
Meanwhile, a disheveled fellow was escorted back by an armed security guard and instructed to sit on our bench seat, right next to Terry. Once the guard departed, the guy began to moan, pleading with every nurse and doctor that passed by. He clutched his stomach and bellowed that his appendix was going to burst any minute. He needed pain meds. Now. Please. Turning to Terry, he lamented that he was fifty-five years old and was going to die. In response, the much-older man sitting on the other side of him said: “Oh, hush up. I’m eighty-seven. You’re not going to die.”
As the two men argued over who was going to croak first, an RN called my name and ushered me into one of the exam bays. His name was Kyle, a buff dude; military haircut; tattoos on his arms and neck; possibly ex-JTF2, which is Canada’s Special Ops force. Who knows? One thing for sure, he totally knew how to insert an I.V. catheter. Smooth as silk. He was done before I knew he’d started. But when he found out that the lab tech hadn’t drawn my blood yet, he rolled his eyes and led me back to the bench where Terry was sitting and told me to wait there.
By now, almost two hours had passed. Lucky for me, the pain was subsiding, so when Kyle returned with a hypodermic syringe full of morphine, I held up my hand. Wait a minute, I told him. I had no desire to be flying high as a kite right there in the waiting room—especially a waiting room that reminded me of a three-ring circus. Maybe I didn’t need the heavy artillery. He tried to persuade me otherwise, but I shook my head. Finally, as a compromise, he injected me with a cocktail of anti-inflammatory drugs and I’d wait to see how things went.
While all this was going on, the disheveled chap who was sitting next to Ter—the same guy who’d been moaning in pain earlier and was convinced he was dying—gazed pensively at the syringe of morphine. He never took his eyes off it. And when Kyle was finished and walked away, the guy quietly stood up and marched out of the ER, his burst appendix apparently healed. Which goes to show, miracles do happen.
In due course, an attendant paged me and I was led to another exam bay, where a doctor soon arrived and apologized for the long wait. He examined me thoroughly and asked a load of questions. By now, I was no longer having the pain attacks at all. Maybe I’d passed the stone? It was possible. Nevertheless, as a precaution, he wrote me a prescription for Ketorolac and told me to take it easy. Thirty minutes later, I was released.
And the lab techs never did draw my blood.
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The next morning, we drove 25 miles down the coast to the Sooke River, and then followed it upstream for a few more miles to the Sooke Potholes Provincial Park. I had read beforehand that this area was one of Victoria’s best kept secrets. It was off the tourists’ map, mostly locals came here. We parked in a dirt pullout and walked down a pathway to an incredible overlook of the gorge. It was a sheer drop of 400 feet to the river. But the best part was yet to come: This is where you’ll find the ruins of the Deer Trail Chateau.
In the early 1980s, Victoria developer Albert Yuen bought a prime, 160-acre parcel along the Sooke River with intentions of building a resort and conference center. He christened it the Deer Trail Chateau and literally built the foundations at the very precipice of the gorge. Construction ensued in fits and starts for the next decade. The framework went up. A roof was added. But then investors got cold feet, funding dried up, and the project was abandoned.
The massive, four-sided fireplace at Deer Trail Chateau was large enough to roast an entire ox. For perspective, the archways are about six feet tall and twelve feet wide.
Stairways lead to nowhere throughout the ruins today. All of the decaying wood walls, flooring and roof were removed several years ago for fear of it collapsing or catching fire.
This is an old photograph of the abandoned Deer Trail Chateau before the timber and roof were removed. After a fierce, decade-long battle over what to do with the property, a land conservancy group bought it in 2004 with intensions of creating the Sooke Potholes Provincial Park. The little town of Sooke cried foul: They were under the impression that the land would be sold to another developer, who would then build some sort of resort that would bring jobs and tax revenue. In the end, the conservancy won out. The land is now part of the Provincial Parks system.
Directly under the chateau ruins, the Sooke River spills into a string of large pools. These are the “potholes” to which the park gets its name. Incredible high-diving here—though getting to some of these pools can be daunting.
Part of our hike along the Sooke River was done via the Galloping Goose Bikeway. A century ago, this was the roadbed of a narrow-gauge railway that extended up the river to Leechtown, a gold-mining settlement of which little remains. You can catch the bikeway in Victoria, where out to Leechtown and back is 68 miles. It is flat, mellow riding through mostly rural or wilderness scenery. We stopped and chatted with a Vancouver couple who were riding it. They had boarded the ferry with their bikes yesterday, and then rode into Victoria and stayed at a B&B. Today they were riding the Goose. Tomorrow they would pedal back to Swartz Bay and take the ferry home. Big smiles adorned their faces. So I wager we’ll have to put this on our tick list if we’re ever in Vic again.
We stopped off to see Hatley Castle on the way back into the city. It was built by coal-mining/railroad magnate, James Dunsmuir, in 1908, and featured the finest in oak and rosewood paneling throughout; teak flooring; giant stone fireplaces; a steam heating system; and the latest in new-fangled electric lights and appliances. Total living space was over 25,000 square feet. And yes, it cost a fortune. But as Mr. Dunsmuir was quoted as saying: “Money doesn’t matter, just build what I want.” The highlight of our visit was me chasing a large gaggle of Canadian geese across the South Lawn. Crazy Americans.
Our stay at the Rosewood Inn was exquisite
(again, thanks to LeRoy). It’s located in a historical district near the harbor, where just about everywhere is walking distance. On our last night in town, we strolled down to a local eatery that the desk clerk had recommended. We passed by house after house that had been restored, many of them quite old. In fact the Rosewood, built in 1932, was one of the “newer” homes that populated the neighborhood. Just three blocks down was the gabled, Victorian home where Canadian artist, Emily Carr, was born in 1871. Back then, this was the residential core of the town.
We dined at the Bent Mast, a pub located at the corner of Toronto and Simcoe. The house was built in 1884. And according to the waiter that served us, it's haunted.
This is the last picture taken in Vic, hanging out at the Bent Mast, sampling the local ales on tap. (Tough duty, I know.) Just 24 hours earlier, I was writhing in agony from a kidney stone attack. And now… Well. Bartender, bring me another IPA.
We boarded the noon ferry to Tsawwassen. Passengers lounged on deck, soaking up the sun’s rays as we cut a course back through the San Juan Islands. Within a few hours we’d be on a big bird, flying home. It had been an “interesting” vacation, starting off normal enough in Squamish, climbing and hanging out with good friends. But then came the freak fall in Pemberton, and a rush to the hospital in Victoria. Weird. One must conclude that not all vacations ensure smooth sailing. There can be rough patches. Sort of like Life in general. In the end, nevertheless, we made the very best of it.
BACK HOME
Clearly we both had to see doctors when we returned. Ter saw an orthopedic surgeon, who ordered an MRI of her right knee. Turns out, she indeed tore her ACL. I saw my doctor as a follow-up to my Canadian ER visit. Since I was feeling fine and dandy, he suggested we just keep an eye on things. Six weeks later, I was back in the ER, shooting up morphine and passing another kidney stone—or the
same stone, as my urologist pointed out in the CAT scan. It had nailed me first in Victoria, and was doing so again. And it’s still stuck there as I write this blog, along with a
SECOND rock. So now I’m scheduled for a “procedure” to extract them. Ter’s injury will take longer to recover from, but recover she will. She’s tough as nails
(and beautiful, and brainy). In time, she’ll be back out riding in Chino Hills, kicking my butt up South Ridge.
NOTABLE EATERIES & PUBS
For the foodies and winos out there...
The Wood (Pemberton): Dropped in for dinner, not expecting much. Left fully satisfied and impressed. Good BC wines on hand. The salmon was grilled to perfection.
Araxi (Whistler): Exemplary menu, flawlessly prepared; incredible service; vast wine selection. It’s not cheap, but you certainly get what you pay for. Besides, I had a hot date that night. :-)
Milestones (Victoria): We normally shy away from chain restaurants on our travels, and Milestones are planted all across Canada. But this one is sited right on the harbor, overlooking the marina and boats. We dined on the patio for the great view. Very good.
The Bent Mast (Victoria): A jovial neighborhood pub in a 130-year-old house that has a couple of ghosts living in it. You just can’t get this in Yorba Linda.
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