Downtown Victoria: A Historic Walking Tour

Victoria, British Columbia, holds a remarkable amount of history for a city its size. On this walking tour, you'll trace the city's story from its origins as a Lekwungen fishing settlement to its transformation through the Gold Rush, colonial expansion, and the rise of Canada's oldest Chinatown. You'll also hear how the Chinese community built a thriving parallel city – complete with secret alleys, opium dens, and gambling houses – right under the authorities' noses.

The tour starts at the Inner Harbour, where seaplanes still take off for Vancouver and Seattle, and where Lekwungen people once harvested clams from mudflats now buried beneath the city's foundations. From there, you'll pass the BC Legislative Building – designed in 1894 by a 25-year-old self-taught architect named Francis Rattenbury, whose own story ends in scandal, adultery, and murder – and explore Thunderbird Park's collection of totem poles carved by Kwakwaka'wakw master carver Mungo Martin.

The route continues through Bastion Square, where you'll stand on the exact footprint of Fort Victoria, and along Government Street, lined with Victorian-era architecture that once housed the city's banks, merchants, and brothels. The tour ends at the Gates of Harmonious Interest on Fisgard Street, the ornate entrance to Chinatown, inscribed with the words To work together with one heart.

On this 90-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Examine the bronze Spindle Whorl sculptures by Songhees artist Butch Dick, marking culturally significant Lekwungen landmarks
• Hear how Fort Victoria's population exploded from 500 to 30,000 in a single spring when gold was discovered on the Fraser River
• Walk Fan Tan Alley, Canada's narrowest street, once lined with opium dens that made Victoria the opium capital of North America
• Discover how the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1903 imposed a head tax equivalent to two years' wages on Chinese immigrants
• Visit Loy Sing Meat Market, the oldest continuously operating Chinese business in North America, established in 1889
• Explore the Mungo Martin House, site of the first legal Potlatch ceremony in Canada in 1953, after decades of government suppression

By the end, you'll see this charming harbour city through an entirely different lens – and you'll want to stay for a pint at the Bard and Banker.