Camosun and Grant
From the corner of Grant and Camosun Streets you get a good view of Vic High’s front door.
If it is a school day like today you will be sharing the corner with kids smoking just off the school grounds. Interesting to note that most of them seem to be a bit hunched with their backs to the school as if feeling a ‘distant’ authority, but that may be my nudge-of-experience interpretation!
It’s sunny and windy, typical Victoria weather in early September. Not summer. Not autumn. Both in a hither-and-thither combination. Sort of like a sharp cheddar cheese in a macaroni dish that resembles a Kraft dinner. The weather is pleasant but a bit unsettling for being neither.
There’s a soccer team, girls, on the field to the right. Popsicle green and banana yellow team shirt distinctions.
The mail truck just made its delivery to the gray box on the corner. I once saw a mailman (this may not be politically correct but it is gender correct in this instance) sitting in one of these gray boxes eating a sandwich. He did not respond to my amused – and appreciative – grin. You would think if someone was going to engage in such an endearing action he would see the humor of it!
There’s a nice garden/yard (no lawn!) around the blue and white house on the corner, various fir trees, driftwood, flagstones, rocks and bushes. There’s also a rose that looks like a candy cane, red and white. This house used to have a HUGE (yes, it deserves the capitals – it was larger than life-size) horse-leg sculpture in the side garden. I don’t know why or even if it was supposed to be a horse’s leg – but that is what it looked like to me and I wonder where it ‘galloped’ off to.
To the left, on Grant, a house is being built. It’s in what used to be the backyard of the house next door and where I went to a number of garage sales over the years. I got a nicely portable picnic table with matching folding chairs there once and one of the chairs continues to catch the western sun in my present garden.
In the hollows where the windows will be in this gestating house I can see clotheslines with what look like cedar shakes hanging on them. We have had unusual rains for this time of year and I wonder if these shakes are being hung to dry – indoors! What unusual ‘house garments’.
Curiosity got to me as I noticed a man on the roof, shingling, I supposed, so I walked along and called up to him (he looked around a bit, as one does, before he located the source of the “yahoo’s” – actually what I called up was “Hello. Sir. Excuse me.” “Yahoo” seemed a bit too casual). I asked him about the shingles. He told me they were hung like that and sprayed with a first coat of finish before being applied on the outside walls. “Not my idea. But a good one,” he said, and there was just enough hesitancy and reluctant admission in his voice to suggest that he had initially thought it a rather dumb idea. He went on with his hammering and I went on with my walk.
The line of wine-red trees along Grant are fragrant with blossoms in the spring. They are flowering cherries, I believe, and their scent and ‘pink snow’ is an experience worthy of planning a walk for in that season.
Between the second and third cherry tree (counting from the left while facing Vic High) you can look over the back track (boys are presently playing soccer there) (tangent – too bad we don’t leave some ‘typos’ – they make script more interesting – I just glanced up to see I had typed “buoys are presently playing socker” – this while transferring from longhand notes to computer) and over a very long distance you can see what looks like the Observatory way out on West Saanich Road.
A young man whizzes by and nearly wipes out (you can tell I have sons: I know the term!) on his skateboard as he tries to lift it up onto the curb from the road but he corrects in time and carefully does not meet my congratulatory glance.
Continue along Grant to Fernwood. Turn right and walk south. There’s one of those toothy old stone walls here and a fennel bush taller than I am scents the air with licorice. I pick off a small piece of the feathery frond and begin to chew it putting aside the wonder at pollution from passing cars when that pops to mind. But I do carefully spit out saliva after the first few mastications.
The next stone wall has been ‘capped’ and I can safely perch for a moment and have a water bottle break. Oh – it’s a bus stop. No wonder the wall has been smoothed out. A bus suddenly appears (of course! sit down here yourself and see if one doesn’t show up!) and I shake my head “no” a few times as it approaches to let the driver know I am not a potential passenger. He stops anyway but it is to dislodge students for the school.
A high hedge across the street gives a living wall between the houses and the street. Hedges of this height can give that sense of an unwelcoming barrier along city streets; lines of them would make a sort of maze. There’s likely some optimum number of feet that provides privacy but still allows for light and views. Hmmm.
Turn right along Balmoral but first glance to your left and down the hill. Apparently there was once a lake at the bottom – hard to imagine now – and cottages for people who lived ‘in Victoria’.
The corner house on the north-west corner of Fernwood and Balmoral is part of another walk but worth another gaze as we stroll along.
Next door, along Balmoral, is likely a cook’s/ gardener’s house as the very tall sunflowers and cosmos and glimpses of tomatoes and edgings of thyme are telling everyone who passes by. (I’m ‘cheating’ here – I know they are gardeners, at least, as I have been on a garden tour of this garden, front and back, with the Victoria Horticultural Society)
Continue along Balmoral. There’s an interesting square ‘upper’ porch on a house on the left.
The house on the corner of Balmoral and Camosun is a work in progress, an uncovering of the fine bones beneath. If Paul is on site, and has the time and inclination, stop and chat, learn about the history of the house, past and present.
Cross Camosun and walk up the hill on Balmoral. The Sun Ridge Apartments on the right look very Caribbean to me. And perhaps that influences my sense that Mitraniketan across the street has somehow a similar Islands feel but likely purely Vancouver Island. Actually it’s been co-op housing for families for the past twenty years; the name in the language of the state of Kerala in India means Abode of Friends. I learned this from speaking with one of the founders as she was walking her dog through Spring Commons, several blocks away; I have no idea how I discovered this from our chat. But I did!
Look at the two giant redwood trees flanking the next apartment building on the left. I wonder what the view from their summit is like. Would be nice to be able to speak crow or robin and inquire. And the huge stone at the base of the left giant’s trunk is relatively a ‘pebble’.
Glance to the right past the birch and pine and arbutus to some of the Glenwarren residences. Lord, what enhancers trees are. They soften the ‘intrusive’ aspects of man-made buildings on the landscape.
Further along the street two crows are on a high balcony squabbling loudly. My bike tires are popping acorns to add to the noise. Two police cars are parked on the street here at the moment and three police people (one is a woman) suddenly appear and get into the cars but I can hear them talking about the benefits of some kind of shoe so it can’t be terribly traumatic business that has them in the area. However the Bagel Factory is just a block away……… Or is it donuts that police people are supposed to be addicted to. Not in Fernwood. It would be bagels.
Chambers and Balmoral. View the views!
Good heavens. Crows are dropping acorns on the road! View the views with caution – or a bike helmet on.
The view to left, up and over the hill, massed clouds as backdrop, is inviting but for now turn right and stroll down the hill. I give a long look back over my shoulder at those clouds with the fanciful fear that there will never be quite that cloud formation again and I am reluctant to stop staring.
The two crows are still squabbling as I pause to sit and make notes on a nearby (capped!) stone wall and an ant scurries up and onto my notebook, walks across what is already written, then leaves.
Balmoral does a jog and continues to the left. Another two houses are being built a few steps along – big’uns they seem at this stage but not monster. Again I can’t remember what was here before and this time “empty field” does not satisfy as I know it was a house.
We continue along Chambers and there is a Siamese-quint aspen tree across from Yukon street. Yukon! What a chilly name for a street in temperate Victoria! The five houses on Yukon look over Haegert Park. They are all similar but different, the former architecturally, the latter to do with paint or decoration. The two on either end are painted, the center one in a weathered-shingled state.
There is an angled rose garden on the corner of the Park which is a passageway for pedestrians and often has high school students on the benches, sometimes munching on bagels. Of late this park has had a problem that cutting low a hedge and removing one of the benches is hoping to solve – something to do with drugs, I believe. I used to sit on the very bench that is now missing and knit and have breakfast a few years ago when I was between houses and renting an apartment nearby so there are pleasant memories here. A cat from one of the houses on Yukon would visit and see what I was eating. I got past the nodding to the greeting and exchange of some pleasantry with one or two of the residents of those houses as they left for work. Funny, but it doesn’t take much to foster a sense of community, of being part of the whole picture. I’m sitting on the grass where the bench used to be.
(I actually was seated on one of the remaining benches – it being easier to write- but when a lady came along and asked if she could join me there and then lit up a cigarette I moved along to the grass.)
The high green hedge is no more but the trees are as gorgeous as always. Pine and sequoia and fir and cherry and chestnut.
Enough of resting, time to move along, in spite of it being so pleasant in the sun and breeze under these trees. The lady smoker has butted out and gone, the students have left. I’m all alone. A train whistle from down by the Blue Bridge on Johnson Street gives a few toots. Or maybe it is a boat I hear. I think the E and N Railroad leaves that charming little station early in the morning. (Do look into it and take a ride if you haven’t already.)
Back along Grant towards Cook Street. Oh, there’s a crosswalk here now. And a sidewalk planting. But no sidewalks so it retains its lane appeal although there have been changes lately. New houses.
The first two ‘new’ houses to the left of the blue house on the left have been here for awhile.
Now look to your right and see the giraffe and rhinoceros mom and kids cut into the wooden fence. The house faces onto North Park, as does the one next door to the left; I find its flatness, its squareness, its chimney pots, its stairwells and porches intriguing. You have to observe the components one at a time to come to a realization that the whole is quite unique. Same applies to some people.
To the right of the blue house (we’re back across the street) are three ‘new’ structures. The first one replaced an existing house – and the next two got built in the former ‘driveway’. Now, it was a large driveway, I admit, but we neighborhood ‘watchdogs’ were wondering how they were going to fit two houses into that space. Well, they did. And I quite like how they look, the details, the copper roof on the upper porch (and a porch that looks useable!), the finials, the outdoor lights (different on the three houses), the pear tree in the front garden. No garage stuck on front. Just a nice little shared driveway. Enough time has passed so that I do not immediately see the former driveway and have to ‘build’ these houses on them. Now I have to think of what the former driveway looked like
Directly across the street is the ‘new kid on the block’, just completed. The trees in the front yard have taken root, as have the roses on the trellis – they looked a bit dicey at first. And I am getting past the mindset that this house is in the backyard of the lovely old house on North Park. Changes.
A white van just came along the street, a shade too close for my liking – and, apparently, for the liking of the driver who looked quite startled when he, at the last moment of passing, saw me! – he was looking at the house too! I moved my bike closer to the fence.
The next light spring-colored house with its single column has been here as long as I can remember. It’s unusual but somehow fitting. Perhaps it is simply the familiarity of time.
The Bagel Factory is on the right a few houses along toward Cook. Good heavens, a man has just backed his car into the pole in front of it. Crunch! Drama of the day. I’m not sure if he was coming or going. Maybe he was chomping down on a still warm bagel and got distracted.
A warm bagel is reason enough to come early. Add cream cheese and lox, remember a napkin and plastic knife, walk back to Haegert Park and have an impromptu picnic
Cook and Grant. The Polish Deli. The Tokarski family, Janina, Paulina and Karolina, with Sebastian the newest member. Amant (gigolo in Polish), the Dalmation, is sometimes on site. Great homecooking. Perogies, cabbage rolls, borscht and Easter babka are the favorites.
* Amant RIP November 8 2005 His ashes were scattered at Thetis Lake where he loved to run.
Patisserie Daniel is next door and there is a wide array of pastries and cookies and muffins and biscotti as well as lunch offerings of sandwiches and rolls.
The Parsonage Café around the corner on North Park has intimate booths as well as outdoor seating and provides a good selection in the way of meals and snacks. The cheddar scone is my favorite.
Stand on the corner of North Park and Cook and you may well be treated to the fragrance of coffee, croissants, bagels and simmering soup. One does well foodwise in this area.
Across Cook Street is the Do It Center and the Cubbon Apartments with a wonderful central courtyard that is not visible from the street.
WIN (Women in Need) is on the corner of North Park and Cook, a “you go girl!” thrift shop. Might as well check out the wool bin and the dollar rack for fibre and fabric………… None today. Just as well – my panniers are already full of stuff for this walk like water and a poncho in case it rains and my knitting in case I need a break and some raisins and peanuts for a peckish attack.
Walk along Cook on the same side as WIN going north. The ‘cement trees’, a bas relief decoration on the next building, at 1821 Cook, are interesting in their contrast aspect. Cement. Trees.
Across the street an apple tree gives very tasty fruit in the late summer and it is worth a stop for a windfall.
Along Cook to Caledonia. Look left along Caledonia. It is a long gaze to those Sooke (likely Metchosin) Hills and occasional – oh, wow, like now! what a special coincidence – sights of float planes descending into the Inner Harbour.
Look right and note the row of tall similar houses on the north side of the street. I’m sure there is a story about their origins – possibly a man with seven daughters and he built them each a house (what comes to mind is the guy likely wanted his bathroom back!) – but I am inventing.
The Athletic Park on the north west corner of Cook and Caledonia (it occupies an entire block) took down most of its high board fence and replaced it with chain link. What a difference. Space and air and views. Today I see ten or more marquees being erected on the playing field. Wonder what this is all about. My eyes cut to the Park’s bulletin board – ah – Great Canadian Beer Fest this weekend.
On the other side of the playing field, on the fence facing west, are a series of murals. Go along Caledonia and turn right, along a subdued Vancouver Street, walk along the fence and take a look. I’ll wait.
There, what did I tell you: worth the effort.
The Ukranian church on the north east corner of Cook and Caledonia was moved a few years ago – not far, just a few feet on the lot and then added on to - and I remember the procedure as being impressive and attracting quite a crowd. Today the bulletin board on the outside of the church announces a basement sale this Saturday. I take note. I’ve found interesting items at their sales in the past (the Ukraine and Poland are similar so my roots respond) and sometimes they sell home baking.
Continue along Cook northward.
* Look to the left across the playing field at the Athletic Park. On misty days with a low cloud cover, the roof of the new arena looks like a large white space ship in a hover. The first time I caught sight of this I stopped and stared and it took me a moment or two to identify exactly what I was seeing.
At Pembroke and Cook is the Sara Spencer House, Capital Health Region Victoria Health Unit. A room in the building is used on Friday mornings very early (6:50 a.m.!) by the NorVic Toastmasters. I attended this a few times and it was pleasing to come at dawn to such a group of enthusiastic people. The sign they put outside when they are meeting says they have been coming together since 1981 and gives a phone number (592-4033) but the part I like best is the “just simply come in” welcome.
Nearly at Pembroke the sidewalk circles around a large tree, one path paved, one not. Each time I walk along here I make the decision – now, do I take the “path less travelled” or not. And, actually, true to Robert Frost’s poem they both seem to have equal wear of foot traffic. But it is fun to make the choice. I love the fact that the tree was not removed to make it easier for pedestrians. One of my first impressions of Victoria that said to me “of course you will stay here and live” was the sign on Dallas Road advising motorists to allow for the angled trees that sloped out into the road like busybodies peering at the traffic.
Pembroke Street. Cook Street Grocery is on the corner. There aren’t many of these corner grocery stores – hmmm – I initially wrote stories instead of stores. Not at all inappropriate if you think about it. These small grocery stores (particularly in comparison with the giants) suggest the personal aspects of stories, of interaction with customers, of community along with commodity.
Turn right along Pembroke. Saunter along and enjoy the variety of houses on the left that are a combination of city and yet country. Perhaps it is the size of the lots and the houses’ situation on them. Perhaps it is the side-street aspect. Perhaps it is purely my own perception and you are shaking your head and slightly frowning.
Cameron Street on the right is worth a slight detour up and back. It is unique. Reminds me of a book with only one cover but one which I am glad to have read. This one would be an eclectic collection of short stories. The garage at the very end is where a woman has occasional sales of vintage clothing. And the living wall of hedge on the end house somehow seems to breathe out loud.
Continue along Pembroke to Chambers. Aren’t the colors pretty on the house on the north west corner? And an inviting upper porch. And a wooden door.
Kitty-corner – the white corner house, stucco with green trim – I once read (but cannot recall where!) was designed by Victoria’s first woman architect. Considering the size of the lot (was it perhaps rather disdainfully handed over to an ‘upstart of a woman daring to enter a man’s profession’ as a challenge?) I like how she has placed the house at the frontmost corner leaving room for a sizable garden in the space between it and the heritage brick house next door.
I am tired and hungry. See you later – likely tomorrow.
Actually it is later today. A stop at the park further along, drink of water, handful of peanuts and raisins, bagel (of course I stopped at the Bagel Factory: still-warm bagels are irresistible), apple, and a bout of knitting restored me. It is a perfect day. Let’s finish the stroll.
Continue along Pembroke from the possibly-lady-designed house, past two turn-of-the-century brick houses. The garage sale where I encountered Elvis was in the back of the second one.
We now come to Stevenson Park – behind all that chain link fence. Isn’t chain link quite awful? There used to be many bushes but they got removed in the interest of crime prevention or something. Fascinating to think of Nature harboring thugs.
Oh, quick, look back along Pembroke toward the west. Another float plane is descending into the Harbour, noisy in its passage. I had caught a sound glimpse and that is why I looked around.
Turn right into the playground. It was mentioned in passing on a previous stroll but this time we are actually in it. It is awesome. Three comfy wooden benches and a picnic table. (The former is where I had my restorative break and where I am now.) The ground under the swings and slides and play area is blue/black mottled and spongy! Soft, wonderful ‘cement’.
A small kid just rode by on his small bike and smiled at me and said hi and I said hi back and then I immediately looked around for an accompanying adult – sign of the times, sigh. A young woman then arrived with a younger girl child who immediately removed her shoes and began to climb the monkey bars. Brother (I assume) also shed his shoes and socks even faster once he saw what his sister was doing and is exhibiting great skill moving from bar to bar that hold circles of swings. I think the woman with them is likely a nanny.
The strip of wild left along the fence where I gather armsfull (armfuls? whatever!) of lilac blossoms each spring is now grassy-long with colorful calendula and a magnificent fennel bush. The grass around the playground is golf course green and smooth. The nanny has just slipped off her shoes and is showing the little girl how to place her feet on one of the poles. The boy has to demonstrate that he already knows how. “Are you a monkey?” his sister asks him.
I hear chimes, wind-driven, and realize part of the playground equipment is hollow tubes hanging loosely enough in hollows so that they ‘sing’ as the wind blows. Oh! If I run my finger along then I can greatly increase the ‘music’.
Next to this is a steering wheel that ‘drives’ very satisfyingly and a manual gear shift of sorts. Then there are fifteen cylinders, each in five parts, half brown, half cream, that can be rotated to create different patterns.
A yellow metal speaker-looking thing, resembling a shower head, is also here, about four feet high. I thought it was a horn so pushed and prodded everything in sight to make it ‘sound’. No luck. Was about to call out to the boy and girl to identify it for me when it occurred to me to bend down and call up into it. It echoes! Well, sort of.
The boy is curiously watching me so I ask if it is for speaking into. He says yes but that it connects to one on top of the slide. Oh, now I get it. I ask him if he will go up and call through the top one and I will listen but he doesn’t want to. I think he is shy, but realize, after the little girl goes up to it but at last minute will not talk into it, and then the nanny goes up and we call through but with limited success, that he knows it doesn’t work and is not about to waste time on it. When I first asked about it he had remarked “The sound has to go a long way underground.” Obviously that said it all for him! Marvellous no-nonsense men. Even as children. I have raised three males and this has been my experience.
Behind me the ‘field’ is sort of dug up behind a temporary wall of wire and caution flags. I have no idea why but there are men at work down by the Fernwood Youth Centre so I trot over and ask the three people who are putting in new steps.
“They’ve dug a big hole.” one tells me.
“Why?” I want to know.
“To supply water to this building and irrigate the field.” he replies. Oh. So, by the time you read this you will likely be able to walk across “an irrigated field.” Do so. Walk across that field. Back toward the steps you see at the west end of the field.
I am stopped in my tracks around the wire enclosing the field by bright orange leaves with white overtones. Not some new tree, or – oh, lord, the thought comes leaping – new disease, but paint some worker has sprayed from a can to mark a finish line (I guess) on the field and paint has landed on some leaves. Allowable graffiti! But the ditch it is perhaps supposed to define does extend past it a full twelve inches. Oh well, this is Fernwood and we do tend to ‘stroll’.
At the top of the steps we are at the end of Stelly Street. The street sign is missing at Chambers so you have to take my word for it. I checked a city map to confirm my memory.
There’s a mural of singing birds (Rachel Boult 04) on the back of a garage to the left at the top of the stairs. A hidden treasure. The house, which fronts on Gladstone, is a daycare.
Let’s walk along the backs of houses here – only one actually fronts on Stelly – past the free leftovers from the garage sale, past a wall of glorious vines covered in white flowers now with a lanky eucalyptus tree waving behind them – lord, I think it might be a potato vine (solanum crispum) which is amazing and underused – it arches the gate as well.
On the left now is Springridge Commons, an ongoing adventure of community gardening for nature, humans and otherwise. Stone walls and some huge rocks, a bench and other areas to sit, a rustic tin-roofed shelter housing what I first thought was a giant turtle but on closer inspection proves to be a cob oven and chimney with information on how to use the oven on the notice board. Ghost thistles and mallow and a globe thistle look springlike in their new growth but in Victoria this is not being overly optimistic. Some plants inspire the thought of spring yearlong.
Next is an open roofed structure with a bird house and partial old brick floor. I have a vision of a house with a brick floor that extends from the outdoor to the indoor. Wouldn’t that be pleasant.
Darn – now I wish I hadn’t missed the tour here a few weeks ago explaining all this. I’m sure it will be repeated.
* The FCA manages this; for further information or to be a part, contact them.
Paths meander everywhere and there is much to see. A mass of willows wave us down one path. Frothy plumes of pampas grass beckon further. I recognize comfrey and tansy and raspberries and fig trees, squash plants and arugula. I believe this is meant to be a garden for the public to harvest. The raspberries I see don’t look quite ripe but, hey, I’m into this idea of such a harvest and I pick one. Okay – it could have been more ripe but it is tasty. Mmm – second one is even more so. Maybe they are golden raspberries. What fun.
The sun is nearing its four o’clock state which means its warmth is mostly spent at this time of year so let’s do a quick walk through the rest of the garden.
Oh – here’s a plaque. “Spring Ridge Commons. Original site of a one room schoolhouse built in 1887, closed in 1957, demolished in 1968. The FCA has facilitated the greenspace on this site, named after the school which played such an important role in the development of the neighborhood.”
Well, I think that is just great. I wish the schoolhouse was still here. Let’s imagine it. My version is influenced by the one room schoolhouses I have seen – or maybe it is just pictures of! – back in Ontario. Maybe western ones were similar.
There is a massing of herbs on the last path. Sage, rosemary, lavender, mint, thyme, lemon verbena, more thyme – I snap off a bit to flavor my chicken tonight.
Well, what a delightful place. I’m perched on a wooden seat nailed to two firm wooden supports. Gazing around I see some interesting plants I have no idea about – one is a bush with lime-sized fruits – or nuts? – I must come on the tour.
The sun is cloud-cloaked and I’ll leave you here to get yourself back to where we started – walk along Gladstone back to Fernwood and turn right at Fernwood Square. Pizza ‘on tap’ could be the one that is my favorite at Thin Edge of the Wedge. Say – maybe I’ll walk back home that way as well. Chicken could wait on tomorrow!
Today when I opened my tee-shirt drawer (the prime uniform for this work-at-home writer), the shirt I pulled out commemorated the Great Victoria snowstorm of December 1996. Even for a dark, early December morning, the math was simple: a few weeks from now would mark the fifth anniversary of that event.
