Brief Overview of Bastion Square History

Compiled by John Adams, Discover the Past, Victoria, B.C.

Lekwummen

Lekwummen is the language spoken by the native people who lived where Victoria is today. The Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations are part of this group. Prior to the 1770s they were very numerous in villages all around the harbour, but severe depopulation occurred due to diseases such as smallpox which came up from the Spanish in Mexico in the late 1700s. The Lekwummen word for the area around Bastion Square was kuo-sing-elas which means "place of strong fibre," a reference to the Pacific willow which grew thickly there. Likely villages had been located at or near Bastion Square and burial sites would have been dotted along much of the shoreline. Camas was a bulb cultivated by the Lekwummen and there probably were camas beds in the area, too.

No First Nations were living in the immediate area when Fort Victoria was built. The nearest villages were at Cadboro Bay and Esquimalt Harbour. However, when the fort was built, the Songhees from Cadboro Bay moved to Victoria Harbour and a group of Clallam came from the Olympic Peninsula and for a while were located close to the fort, probably where the foot of Bastion Square is today at Wharf Street.

Fort Victoria (1843-1858)

Construction (1843)

March 16, 1843. Work started on building Fort Victoria. James Douglas chose the site, but Charles Ross was in charge of construction. French Canadian employees of the Hudson's Bay Company did most of the clearing, digging and axe work. Local Songhees people provided the cedar logs (from near Mt. Douglas) which formed the palisades. They were paid one Hudson's Bay Company blanket for every 40 logs supplied.

The fort measured 330 feet by 300 feet and had only one bastion in the southwestern corner (where Nautical Nellies Restaurant is today). At this time the northern palisade ran south of Bastion Square, behind what is now the Board of Trade Building, roughly along the lane (informally called Hudson's Bay Lane) behind the Board of Trade Building.

Fort Victoria at first was a secondary Hudson's bay Company post. The company's headquarters for all its posts west of the Rocky Mountains was at Fort Vancouver (where Vancouver, Washington is today).

Fort Victoria is Enlarged (1846)

In 1846 the boundary was established along the 49th parallel separating British from American territory. This put Fort Vancouver inside American territory. The Hudson's Bay Company moved its headquarters to Fort Victoria and enlarged the fort to accommodate more warehouses. The extension pushed the northern palisade of the fort to where Bastion Square is today. A line of bricks in the pavement in front of the Law Chambers and Board of Trade Building marks the position. A second bastion was built (at what is now the head of Bastion Square at Government Street). The exact location of the northeast bastion is outlined in brick with a brass Hudson's Bay Company's crest in the centre.

Fort Victoria becomes the Capital of Vancouver Island (1849)

In 1849 the British government created the Colony of Vancouver Island. The Hudson's Bay Company was given a ten-year contract to manage the colony and James Douglas moved from Fort Vancouver to take charge of the operations. At the same time, the British government appointed Richard Blanshard to be the first governor of the colony. He had little to do and resigned in 1851. James Douglas was appointed to replace him.

Richard Blanshard's house (the first Government House) was built just outside Fort Victoria (on property bounded by Yates, Langley and Government streets today). James Douglas lived at first in the Big House inside the fort (now the northeastern corner of Langley and Fort streets).

Activities at Fort Victoria

Life at Fort Victoria was typical of most Hudson's Bay Company posts. Men (mostly French Canadians) lived in large barracks. Local native people came to trade at the Indian Store. Furs from throughout British Columbia were collected and stored in large log warehouses. Small ships (such as the SS Beaver) and canoes transported most of the furs and trade goods along the coast. Goods arrived once a year by ship around Cape Horn from England and were also stored in large log warehouses. Farms were established near the fort. Hunting, fishing and riding were the main pastimes of the men. Dances with fiddle music and occasional plays were some of the few entertainments.

Gold Rush and Commerce (1858-1889)

The presence of gold in the Thompson and Fraser rivers started a stampede of gold miners from San Francisco in April 1858. This was the start the Fraser River Gold Rush and about 25,000 miners flooded into Victoria to buy supplies on their way to the goldfields. Many businesses from San Francisco started branches here and soon the old fort was being torn down and flimsy wooden buildings were springing up in the immediate vicinity. The northeast bastion still stood during the early part of the boom and the street that ran beside it became Bastion Street, leading to Bastion Square. It was the heart of the gold-rush city.

The people who came with the gold rush were from all over the world. Among them were people from many places (United States, Britain, Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia) representing a wide range of races, religions and nationalities, including Chinese, blacks from the United States and West Indies and Jews from eastern Europe.

The focus of gold-rush Bastion Square was the Police Barracks and Gaol, a small crenellated brick building that stood about where the Maritime Museum's gift shop is now, facing the harbour. The Police Court was held here and prisoners were locked up. The chain gang was a well known sight leaving the gaol every morning. During the 1860s about eleven public hangings took place in the fenced yard behind the gaol (more or less occupying the site of the Maritime Museum). Some of the bodies were buried underneath the gaol yard, never to be removed.

The first fire hall in Victoria was a small wooden structure, about the size of a single-car garage. The Union Hook and Ladder Company's building stood beside where the entrance to Helmcken Alley is now off Bastion Square. The northwestern corner of the Board of Trade Building is the site of the first fire hall.

The first commercial brick structure in the Bastion Square area was Commercial Row, a series of privately owned stores and offices, now forming D'Arcy's and the Rithet Building (1117 Wharf Street). They were completed in the early 1860s and their fronts were adorned with cast iron columns from San Francisco. (The foundry mark dated 1861 can be seen on the bottoms of some of them). The Reid Block was built around the same time. It has been altered substantially, but still stands and now houses a restaurant and stores running from the northwestern corner of Bastion Square along Wharf Street.

Another substantial brick building dominated Wharf Street below Bastion Square, blocking the view of the harbour from the square. This was the Hudson's Bay Company's warehouse which was built to replace the log storehouses inside the fort. It was two stories below Wharf Street and rose two and a half stories above street level. Torn down in the 1940s, the only part that remains is the stone foundation wall topped by brick on the west side of Wharf Street. This is an important heritage feature of the area which should be protected.

The Boomerang Saloon was a landmark saloon and hotel, operated by Ben and Adelaide Griffin. At first it was a two-storey wooden structure, located about where the spiral staircase comes down from the back of the Yates Street Parkade. In the late 1800s it was replaced by a brick structure. The Garrick's Head Pub began on its present site (originally in a wooden building) in 1867, thus giving its name one of the oldest historical links in Bastion Square today. However, the Garrick's Head had a long gap in its operations, starting when prohibition started in British Columbia in 1917.

Gold-rush Victoria was a frontier town with lots of drinking, prostitution, gambling and crime. In order to pacify the hordes of single men church groups, with funding from Baroness Angela Burdett Coutts, a wealthy English heiress, brought two shiploads of marriageable (mostly) young ladies from England to Victoria. The Brideships provided wives for many lonely bachelors. The ships landed along Wharf Street, within sight of Bastion Square.

Bastion Square: Legal and Professional Era, 1889-1961

The Police Barracks and Gaol was demolished in the mid-1880s and a new courthouse was built on the site. This was the first purpose-built courthouse in British Columbia and replaced the former courtroom in the Birdcages (the old Parliament Buildngs). When the Courthouse opened in 1889 it changed the face of Bastion Square. Lawyers established chambers close by and several buildings such as the Law Chambers were built specifically to house them. Francis Mawson Rattenbury, architect of the Parliament Buildings, was also the architect of the Law Chambers.

Tommy Burnes and his family had operated the American Hotel for many years on Yates Street. With the opening of the new Courthouse they built an imposing three-storey brick hotel behind the American Hotel, facing Bastion Square. The Burnes House served as a hotel for many years. On the south side of Bastion Square the British Columbia Board of Trade built their new office building in 1892. This was not just for Victoria, but for all of British Columbia. Even the old wooden Boomerang Saloon was pulled down and replaced by a brick structure (now demolished, about where Boomerang Court is today). In 1911 the Hibben-Bone Block was built to house more professional offices. It is now the Bedford Regency Hotel.

Slowly, but surely, through the 1890s until about 1912 Bastion Square developed as the legal and professional centre of Victoria and British Columbia. However, a depression in 1912, followed by World War I and Prohibition (1917-1920) began to weaken the economic base of Bastion Square and Old Town in general. The rapid growth of Vancouver as the principal port on the west coast drew many businessmen to the mainland. Gradually Victoria started to become a backwater and Bastion Square started to take on a shabby appearance.

Without revenue from saloons, hotels such as the Burnes House were not viable. The Board of Trade Building lost its tycoons to Vancouver. These buildings became storage facilities for moving companies. The Hibben-Bone Block became a hotel, the notorious Churchill Hotel which had a beer parlour in the basement considered one of the roughest in town. Then in 1961 a new courthouse opened on Blanshard Street and the one in Bastion Square was abandoned. In many people's minds, Bastion Square was ready for the wrecking ball and redevelopment.

Bastion Square as a Heritage Precinct, 1960s to Present

The heritage movement is now widespread in North America and many people appreciate the importance of heritage buildings in the urban fabric. However, in the mid-1960s in Victoria, this was not the case. It is remarkable, therefore, that the City Planner, Roderick Clack, was able to spearhead the revitalization of Bastion Square as a heritage precinct which earned it the prestigious Massey Award at the time.

Clack created the modern Bastion Square. First, the streets were closed to traffic and walkways and the main pedestrian portion of Bastion Square was created. Previously, cars drove from Langley Street to Wharf Street and could even drive on Chancery Lane that wraps around the west and north sides of the Maritime Museum. The derelict buildings were assembled and redeveloped under strict guidelines for heritage conservation. Adaptive reuse was the key.

Bastion Square is an important heritage precinct in Victoria. It was the northern edge of Fort Victoria and became the centre of civic life during the gold-rush era and afterwards. Some of its buildings are among the oldest in Old Town and many are landmark structures in the city.