Victoria's Inner Harbour was called Whosaykum, meaning "muddy place," by the Lekwungen people who harvested its clam beds for thousands of years, trading seafood with nations canoeing in from as far south as Oregon and north as Haida Gwaii. Today it's a rather different kind of trading post: the busiest working harbour in Canada, where seaplanes leap to Seattle, water taxis putter to Fisherman's Wharf, and decorated Lekwungen war canoes still dock at Protocol Corner during special events.

The Empress Hotel behind the causeway was built on drained mud flat. Much of the waterfront as you see it was created to erase what came before it.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace this layered history, from Lekwungen stewardship through HBC colonisation to the gold rush that turned a fort of 500 into a city of 30,000 overnight, connecting the physical waterfront to the communities and ambitions that made it.