What to See in Victoria - Top Sights and Attractions

Museum in Victoria, British Columbia. Founded in 1886, the Royal British Columbia Museum consists of The Province of British Columbia's natural and human history museum as well as the British Columbia Provincial Archives. The museum is located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The "Royal" title was approved by Queen Elizabeth II and bestowed by HRH Prince Philip in 1987, to coincide with a Royal tour of that year. The museum merged with the British Columbia Provincial Archives in 2003.

The Royal BC Museum includes three permanent galleries: Natural History, Becoming BC, and the First Peoples Gallery. The museum's collections comprise approximately 7 million objects, including natural history specimens, artifacts, and archival records. The natural history collections have 750,000 records of specimens almost exclusively from BC and neighbouring states, provinces, or territories. The collections are divided into eight disciplines: Entomology, Botany, Palaeontology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate Zoology, Herpetology, Mammalogy, and Ornithology. The museum also hosts touring exhibitions. Previous exhibitions have included artifacts related to the RMS Titanic, Leonardo da Vinci, Egyptian artifacts, the Vikings, the British Columbia gold rushes and Genghis Khan. The Royal BC Museum partners with and houses the IMAX Victoria theater, which shows educational films as well as commercial entertainment.

The museum is beside Victoria's Inner Harbour, between the Empress Hotel and the Legislature Buildings. The museum anchors the Royal BC Museum Cultural Precinct, a surrounding area with historical sites and monuments, including Thunderbird Park. The museum also operates traveling exhibitions which tour the province of BC, as well as international exhibits Guangzhou, China.

On March 26, 2012, Jack Lohman was appointed CEO of the Royal BC Museum. Various groups assist with the development, success, and maintenance of the Royal BC Museum. These include volunteers, who number over 500 and outnumber the Royal BC Museum staff 4 to 1; the Royal BC Museum Foundation (formerly Friends of the Royal BC Museum Foundation), a non-profit organization created in 1970 to support the Royal BC Museum financially and to assist its work by forming links within the community; Security Services, responsible for risk management, emergency response, security services, and business continuity expertise; and Property Management and Operations, who focus on sustainability, recycling, and environment control within the museum.^[1]

Opulent parliament buildings with tours. The British Columbia Parliament Buildings are located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and are home to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.

The Speaker and the Serjeant-at-Arms are amongst those responsible for the legislative precinct, which by statute include the Parliament Buildings and grounds.

The Neo-baroque buildings face north on Belleville Street facing the Inner Harbour and diagonally across from The Empress Hotel. A statue of Queen Victoria stands on the front lawn as well the British Columbia Legislature Cenotaph commemorating the province's World War I, World War II, Korean War and Afghanistan War dead. Atop the central dome is a gold-covered statue of Captain George Vancouver. Free guided tours of the facility are offered year-round.^[6]

Large urban retreat with ponds and gardens. Beacon Hill Park is a 75 ha park located along the shore of Juan de Fuca Strait in Victoria, British Columbia. The park is popular both with tourists and locals, and contains a number of amenities including woodland and shoreline trails, two playgrounds, a waterpark, playing fields, a petting zoo, tennis courts, many ponds, and landscaped gardens. The traditional name of the hill is Meeacan to the Songhees people, meaning "belly."

The land was originally set aside as a protected area by Sir James Douglas, governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1858. In 1882, the land was officially made a municipal park of the City of Victoria, and given its present name. The name is derived from a small hill overlooking the Strait, upon which once stood navigational beacons. The hill is culturally significant, having been a burial site for the First Nations Coast Salish people, who are the original inhabitants of the Greater Victoria region. It provides scenic vistas of the Strait and the Olympic Mountains of Washington.

Although much of the park has been landscaped into gardens and playing fields, and populated with various structures, a great deal of the native flora has been preserved. Garry oak, arbutus, Douglas-fir, western redcedar, camas, trillium, snowberry, Oregon grape, and fawn lily still remain in the park. Raccoons, river otters, squirrels, and many types of birds are frequently to be seen. The ponds in the park are noted for their swans, turtles, ducks, Canada geese, and blue herons.

The park is notable for a few human-made features, as well. Most prominent is the world's fourth-tallest totem pole, a 38.8-metre (127 ft) work carved by Kwakwaka'wakw craftsman Mungo Martin, and erected in 1956 and was when built, the world's tallest. The pebble bridge over the stream between Goodacre and Fountain Lake is a tribute to renowned BC artist Emily Carr, erected by her sister Alice Carr in 1945. In the middle of the park, the Cameron Bandshell, otherwise known as "The Stage", is the site of concerts from June through September. "Mile 0" of the Trans-Canada Highway is at the south-west corner of the park, along with the old Beacon Lodge and the famous Beacon Drive In.^[7]

Park in Victoria, British Columbia. Thunderbird Park is a park in Victoria, British Columbia next to the Royal British Columbia Museum. The park is home to many totem poles and other First Nation monuments. The park takes its name from the mythological Thunderbird of Indigenous North American cultures which is depicted on many totem poles.

Also in the park are St. Anne's Schoolhouse (built 1844), Helmcken House (built in 1852 by Dr. John Helmcken), and Mungo Martin House (Wawadit'la), a traditional Kwakwaka'wakw "big house" built in 1953 by Kwakwaka'wakw Chief Mungo Martin. The park is part of the Royal BC Museum Cultural Precinct, an area around the museum that contains a number of historical sites and monuments.^[22]

City park in Oak Bay, British Columbia. Uplands Park is located within the municipality of Oak Bay, in the Uplands neighborhood, adjacent to the city of Victoria, British Columbia. Uplands Park consists of 76 acres of woodland trails and undeveloped natural reserve land, and includes Cattle Point with two well used boat ramps for trailerable boats, as well as the Oak Bay Cenotaph which honours the 97 Oak Bay men and women who died in World War Two.

From 1860 to 1910, cattle were pushed overboard from paddle steamers to swim ashore to what is now Cattle Point, which is where the name Cattle Point comes from.

It is among North America's first natural preserves to be set aside in an urban region; it was established in the 1940s by the Oak Bay city council, under the leadership of Reeve Walter Walker. A cairn, marking Walker's instrumental role in the creation of Uplands Park, stands at Cattle Point, near the southern coastal edge of the park.

Cattle Point was designated an Urban Star Park in 2013 by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, only the second such park in the country. It joins a national and global network of Dark-sky preserves mostly found in remote areas and wilderness which adhere to guidelines to conserve the night sky for astronomical observation.^[24]

Museum in Saanich, British Columbia. The Craigflower Manor and Craigflower Schoolhouse are National Historic Sites of Canada located in View Royal, British Columbia and Saanich near Victoria. The centerpiece of each historic site is a 19th-century building — a manor and schoolhouse commissioned by the Hudson's Bay Company to provide education and lodging for their employees. Built as part of the agricultural community Craigflower Farm, the buildings served as a focal point for the community into the modern era; they remain open to the public today as museums devoted to the colonial history of Victoria.

The sites also have unique archaeological merit, encompassing three distinct periods, and types, of human habitation which span thousands of years. In addition, the existing structures have great historical and cultural value, remaining some of the best, and last, examples of their kind in Canada. These factors combine to make these two sites important National Historic Sites, and have been given government protection for the public trust.^[25]

Bastion Square is a historic pedestrian mall in Victoria, British Columbia.

The square has a ceremonial entry arch at View and Government streets, and the exit on the Wharf Street side opens to a staircase with a view of the Inner Harbour.

In 1963, under the direction of city planner Rod Clack, Bastion Square was developed as part of the modern scheme for Centennial Square. View Street was closed off, and a pedestrian area was created, set off by restored historic buildings on three sides and a view across the harbour on the fourth.

Historic buildings on the square include Burnes House, the Beaver Building, the Board of Trade Building, Chancery Chambers, Law Chambers, the Rithet Building, and the Supreme Court Building.

Events held at the square include the Bastion Square Public Market, the Holiday Market, and the Art Walk.^[30]

Nature preserve in British Columbia, Canada. Swan Lake Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary is a nature reserve located in Saanich, British Columbia. The sanctuary includes a lake, adjacent marshy lowlands, and the Nature House, as well as a good part of the summit regions of Christmas Hill.

The nature sanctuary consists of two physically and ecologically distinct areas: the low wetland area surrounding Swan Lake, and the rocky Garry oak-forested hilltop of Christmas Hill. The two areas are joined by a connecting corridor trail along the Nelthorpe Road allowance, crossing McKenzie Avenue at a pedestrian-controlled crosswalk. Portions of the corridor trail are on the roadside, and are identified by signs with a hiker symbol and arrow to indicate the direction.

The sanctuary land surrounding the lake covers 43.4 hectares (107 acres) in addition to the 9.4 hectare (23 acre) lake. In the winter flooding stage, the lake can cover up to 32.4 hectares (80 acres) of the low-lying lands around the lake.^[32]

Tourist attraction in Victoria, British Columbia. The Netherlands Centennial Carillon is a 62-bell carillon located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Its tower is located at the intersection of Government Street and Belleville Street, in front of the Royal British Columbia Museum and across the street from the Parliament Building.

It was given by the Dutch community of British Columbia in thanks for Canada's role in the liberation of the Netherlands during World War II. Queen Juliana of the Netherlands unveiled its cornerstone in 1967, Canada's centennial year. The carillon officially opened in May 1968.

Its first 49 bells were cast at the Royal Bell Foundry by Petit & Fritsen at Aarle-Rixtel, in the Netherlands. Another thirteen were added in 1971.^[34]