Notes from Victoria, BC 1890

Knowing your scientific proclivities, and especially your partiality for meteorological studies, I enclose you herewith Mr. Livock’s schedule (just issued) of the temperature and rainfall here for the past year, and also Captain Peele’s New Westminster observations for the period same.¹

In these schedules I do not find that the dewpoint is anywhere noted. I regret this, as I have heard it stated that, although the rainfall at Westminster is much greater than here, the climate there is drier; the atmosphere here being, in general, almost saturated with moisture. This damp air is carried over to the mainland, and the moisture is there precipitated; the intervals of precipitation being comparatively dry. Certainly the dampness here is quite perceptible. In summer, sitting outside after sunset is almost an impossibility. The air, even in midsummer, becomes, of a sudden, chilly, and damp. The climate appears to me quite unfavourable for all who suffer from affections of the throat or lungs. On the mainland the contrast of the seasons is more marked. The winters are colder, and the summers warmer and drier. I suppose it is the immense evaporation from the Pacific, together with the warmth of the Japan current, that gives our Victoria climate its peculiarly damp and equable character.

We are now scarce past the middle of March, and the temperature is already in the forties. This morning at 8, it was 41, and the day has been pleasant and sunny. The trees are budding everywhere, and the spring may be said to have fairly commenced. There has been no snow on the ground since the beginning of January. The winters here are almost without snow.

The Beacon Hill park, a favourite place of resort, is now again becoming crowded on Saturday afternoons. It is a delightful place, though rather spoiled, many think, by injudicious and expensive attempts at improvement. The surroundings in the way of sea, mountains, and forests, are highly picturesque. Steamers and ships are constantly passing in the straits; some of the latter come from British ports round Cape Horn. It is quite a sight to see, on a fine summer afternoon, the innumerable army of baby-carriages (!), and the fair Victorians, in their quaint costume, watching the progress of a game of football or lacrosse. The latter game, I am happy to say, is gaining favour here, and on the mainland; and bids fair to banish that odious “baseball,” a mere resuscitation, I am told, of the “rounders” formerly played in the slums and by-places of London.

The town itself is certainly growing. Within the last few months an immense church has been completed for the Presbyterians; and buildings of equal size are contemplated for the Methodists and Romish sects.² The Anglicans will no doubt follow suit, as their present cathedral is not over large. The leading denominations are all fairly well represented, and, none having any great preponderance in numbers, we all get along in peace and harmony. May it always be so!

Apropos d’église I would you were here to enjoy the superb rendition of the services in our English cathedral. The reading and intoning are alike excellent. One would say that the officiating priests had received a special training in this part of their duties. I have nowhere heard the sublime liturgy of the Church more impressively recited. For the rest, I confess that, here as elsewhere, we suffer under the infliction of a married clergy. We do not see much of these gentlemen outside the church walls. A great gulf seems to lie between the clergy and laity. Burdened as most of our presbyters are with wives and families, they cannot but be heavily handicapped in the performance of their pastoral functions.

Pleasant enough is the living in this little outpost of the Dominion, with its mixed Oriental and Caucasian population, and its white cottages embosomed in foliage. Of necessity, some things are wanting. The town is young. Books are scarce. Art is at its nadir. We miss the large libraries, the scientific and literary associations, and the art galleries of the Eastern provinces; a contrast the more striking, as in the older French communities in the East, the literary aspirations are immense, and some one has said that almost every third man you meet in Quebec is either a poet or a historian. But these are the natural defect of a new colony, with a limited population. Time will cure all this. A facile communication with the East is now open. We receive from that side large and constant accessions to our numbers. We are part and parcel of a Dominion that bestrides the entire continent. The great centres of Canadian civilization, as Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa, are now easily accessible, and we cannot fail to profit by the connection.

Laus Deo in excelsis: the genial springtime is already upon us.³ Let us walk out by the side of the “many sounding sea,”⁴ with its oak-covered land-slopes on one side and the waters of the interminable Pacific on the other. What can be finer than this glow of the setting sun, reflected on a thousand ripples—the “innumerable laughter of the sea waves,” as old Aeschylus has it? So, too, the Roman Catullus, not insensible to these grand influences, has described the waves of a placid sea, “quae leviter resonant plagnore cachinni”—“Which sound gently with a noise of laughter.” Let us rest here; seated on a drifted pinestem and bathed in a flood of sunshine. Who is it, Persius I think? who speaks of the “aprici sense”?⁵ A most happy epithet. “Old men that love the open sunshine.” For what can be more pleasant, to those whose years are many than to bask in the sun, and feel one’s energies revive under the kindly warmth, the blessed and healing influences of the Lord of light and life? They say that in the childhood of the world men worshipped the sun as a Deity. A noble and natural impulse; for surely it is His most glorious image.

E. T. Fletcher

16 March 1890