Category: Environment

I am going to get into a bit of trouble with this post. So be it.

Ah Victoria. Good or Bad? Weather actually sucks. Endless winter days turn into weeks of gray dull skies; mist transforms into drizzle, showers transition to rain. Waiting for summer to arrive, patiently, in June, only to be tricked yet again that it is really November outside.

Fashionable? Perhaps, if one takes to Tilley hats, fleeced vests, birkenstocks, slickers, and gum boots. Last vestige of hippiedom in Canada – alive and well and living in a kaleidoscope of multi-coloured, ugly, and messy wood-framed homes and apartments (the Pink Palace comes to mind) in James Bay, Fairfield and the Jubilee area. Where the only excitement one can muster is having an overpriced coffee in one of the coffee houses in the Cook Street Village.  I have finally made it here because I live in a cloister of over priced, original, cold, un-updated, asbestos laden 1940 era homes in Oak Bay behind a tweed and snobby curtain – for close to a million bucks! And no respected individual would ever venture across the new “Blue Bridge”into Esquimalt.

Ah Victoria, the city of continual protests – from the new interchange and bridge to nowhere to the rotten 300 foot high cedar, that needed to come down in Cordova Bay, or was that Cadboro Bay?  Sewage treatment and LRT discussions that never seem to end. Lovely bedroom communities of the tired worn out neighbourhoods of Gordon Head, Esquimalt, Vic West – Bay St,  Hillside and Mount Tolmie corridors – neighbourhoods now weaned on uncut, brown grass, peeling paint, dirty stucco, unsightly weeds and outdoor lawn furniture by either Ford or GM.  Of course defining something as quaint in Victoria, such as Fernwood or the Quadra Street Village really equates to a “dump” in the rest of Canada.  And the traffic sucks. Big city like!

Ah yes Victoria, City of Gardens, now a City of Weeds.  Yes Victoria? A leader on the cusp of 19th Century transportation initiatives.  And, the only place that I know of on earth, Bangladesh excepted perhaps, that has an aggregate stone processing facility and cement plant in the middle of the city!!!!  And the University of Victoria? Oh yes, that beacon of light in the darkness and bastion of free speech and lawful assembly everywhere – NOT! Only at UVic would one hear that a Canadian icon such as the canoe is really a throwback to imperialism, colonialism and oppression. Those dastardly Brits and their Evil Empire! What?

Ah, the Victorian Waterfront – it’s a jungle down there, especially around Beacon Hill Park – cut the friggin grass! The New West Shore will always be, in my mind, the old Western Communities: Colwood, Langford and Metchosin, and all the red neckiness that this area represents. Traffic headiness, high density West Hills and Royal Bay, which will be projects in 10 years time, and an ugliness that would rival Toronto’s rush hour. There’s only one way out of town – to nowhere.

This city is pedantic, provincial, parochial, insecure and smug – that’s why everyone here has to constantly remind themselves and everyone else within earshot about what a great place Victoria is – the best place on earth to live. Well, you know what Victorians? It isn’t.

Don’t get me wrong. Victoria is still a nice place to live in many respects but the smugness here is ingratiating to me.

I always thought they were singing ” douche”

Have a great Navy day.

SJ…………………………………………………….Out