1971 Victoria White Christmas

Yes, Virginia, it sometimes snows in Victoria. This is our back yard after the surprise Christmas morning snowstorm of 1971. Victoria rarely gets a white Christmas; the chance of one happening is only about 11%. There wasn't another one for 20 years. The last one was in 2008 when the entire country had a white Christmas. (And technically, the Blizzard of '96, one of the biggest snowfalls in Canadian history, began on Boxing Day, and so doesn't count as a white Christmas.) The bridge in the photo (Admirals Road over Colquitz Creek) was replaced a number of years ago.

Prairie Sunset

In the fall of 1971, the family moved out west to Victoria. My mom and I took the train, while dad and my sister drove the car out. They approached Regina just as the sun was going down.

Then and Now: The Postcard Shot

The Empress Hotel 1971 as taken by dad:
The Empress Hotel 2014 as taken by me:

Then and Now: Mile 0

In 1971, not long after we moved to Victoria, Dad snapped this shot of the Mile 0 marker. This marker designates the Pacific terminus of the 8,000 km long Trans-Canada Highway. Sometime between then and now, the maker has been replaced. I took a picture of the new marker this past summer: And if you're dying to know what the backside of the marker looks like... Eagle-eyed viewers will notice that something has been added directly behind the Mile 0 marker.

Then and Now: Victoria Harbour 1971

This is a shot my dad took of Victoria's Inner Harbour in 1971, and below it is a shot of the harbour I took a few weeks ago. My, how things have changed.

In the foreground, the most obvious change is the rearrangement of the docks. Seaplanes still come into the harbour, but they don't dock in this part of it anymore. In the background, well, nothing's the same. All the buildings are gone, and the big piers jutting out into the harbour are gone. The MV Coho that dominates my photo docked on the other side of the harbour in 1971. The only building that remains is the old CPR Steamship Terminal building in the top left corner. In 1971, it was the Victoria Royal London Wax Museum; after recent renovations and seismic upgrading it's now the Robert Bateman Centre. Missing entirely now is the Undersea Garden (seen behind the seaplane in dad's photo). The Undersea Gardens was a long-time tourist attraction in the harbour. It's a 150-foot purpose built vessel where, according to Wikipedia, visitors "....descended 15 feet (4.6 m) beneath the ocean surface to look through the many viewing windows of the aquariums that surrounded the vessel and see the various marine life of coastal British Columbia, in their natural and protected environment." It was originally opened at the Oak Bay Marina in 1964, then it was towed to the Inner Harbour in 1969, but closed last year. We saw it this past January while kayaking in the harbour. It was towed to a shipyard where it sat waiting to be scrapped or sold.

Then and Now: Across the Harbour

A 1971 shot looking across Victoria's Inner Harbour taken by my dad.
As we can see from a recent photo that I took below, from this angle the harbour looks like it hasn't changed much with the exception of the addition of the looming Grand Pacific Hotel. But looks can be deceiving; this is probably the one view, towards the Legislature whose blue domes you can see in the trees, that hasn't changed radically through the years.

Sealand of the Pacific

These are pictures my father took at a show at Victoria's Sealand of the Pacific in the fall of 1971. I'm not positive which whale is pictured. It might be Nootka, who was captured in 1970, but my guess is it's probably Haida. It's not Tilikum, the most infamous of the Sealand whales, who wasn't captured until 1983.

Charlottetown

This picture represents a bit of a mystery. This is a street in Charlottetown in early 1971. I think City Hall is on the left. The mystery is, what was Dad doing there in the middle of Winter? We think he was looking for work. My parents had decided that it was time to leave Montreal as a result of the October Crisis, and he applied to a number of places across the country. We made a trip to Calgary around this time to check things out, but he went to Charlottetown by himself.

The Redcoats Are Coming

In 1971, my cousin Rob graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston. Mom, Dad and I drove own from Montreal for the graduation ceremony. Dad took the opportunity to take his camera along.
I remember that at one point in the ceremony, probably depicted in the picture below, the graduates were asked to step forward. Not understanding that the rest of the group were continuing on in their studies, I blurted out, "Hey, look at all the guys who flunked!" The fellow sitting beside us roared with laughter.

Puffins!

Puffins are rare in these parts, so rare that I've never seen one in the wild. But obviously, there were a few hanging around Willows Beach in 1971 where Dad took this photo. Or perhaps not. A reader believes these puffins are from the old Sealand of the Pacific marine attraction, and I think she might be right. I found some other pictures from the same period from Sealand, and they will appear here one day in the future.

Funky Phone Booth

Who ya gonna call? In 1971 along Government Street in front of the Empress Hotel in Victoria, if you were going to call someone, you'd plunk your dime (yes, only a dime) into this nifty looking pay phone. And look, kids! It has one of them old-timey rotary dials!

Then and Now: Centennial Ledge

Anyone want to guess when this picture was taken? Why, yes. 1971. How could you tell? 1971 was the 100th anniversary of British Columbia's entry into Confederation and Victoria was all decked out in Anniversary decorations. Dad took this pic of the Ledge in the fall of 1971. Compared to the picture below that I took of the Ledge last summer, not much has changed. The trees are bigger, of course. But the other change I see is that vehicle traffic is no longer allowed along the walkway right in front of the main stairs.

Tahsis Take Off

In the fall of 1971, my dad spent a few months working out in Tahsis. He was hired to install the electrical wiring in the new school being built, but he obviously had some time to take some pictures. Here's a series of shots of a BC Air plane taking off.

Somewhere Over Both Ends of The Rainbow

They say there's a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. However, in 1971 in Tahsis, BC, my father discovered that it wasn't true. And he had the photographic evidence to prove it.

What's that, you say? Maybe the gold was at the other end of the rainbow? No, no luck there, either.