A Singer’s Life: Victoria BC Pt2

In Part 1, I talked about my experiences in Canada as a singer, and ended by mentioning that ‘Capriccio’ needs to be performed in the language of the audience or with surtitles, and that I had seen a rather boring performance in Covent Garden with neither of these in place. Read on…. 

Our show in Victoria was never boring, as we had surtitles and a marvellous cast, largely of brilliant Canadians, and a charismatic leader in the musical director, Tim Vernon. Its success, and mine, led to me being invited back to sing Falstaff in Verdi’s eponymous opera, and then Bottom in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by Benjamin Britten. I was set to return in 2018 to sing Rocco in Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio’, but the mitral valve in my heart decided to misbehave, and I had to cancel my trip, resulting in a situation very like my first appearance in 2010, with someone having to step in at short notice. I’m happy to say that I now have a replacement valve which works very efficiently, but my fall later that year and a subsequent year of back trauma mean that I won’t be going back to Victoria to sing again, an outcome which saddens me. 

However, the memories are great. The ‘Capriccio’ coincided with the Winter Olympics just across the water in Vancouver, and it was fantastically exciting to be in a country where those winter sports are so popular. Actually, Victoria is by far the mildest spot in Canada, with little snow or months long zero temperatures, but a cast mainly of Canadians from Ontario was hooked on the Olympics from the start. When Canada beat the USA in the Ice Hockey final, mayhem ensued in the streets, and Victoria was a very jolly place indeed!  

When I went back for ‘Falstaff’, it was autumn and I was joined by my wife, Fran, whose trip was written into my contract. I had enthused so much about my first visit that I was determined that she would come, and Pacific Opera Victoria was happy to oblige. Singing the title role gave me a modicum of clout, but it was a magnificent gesture nonetheless, and we both had a great time. The nature of the opera means that there are quite large chunks of the piece that don’t involve Falstaff, and so Fran and I had the chance to explore Vancouver Island. People in Scotland are perhaps unaware that the island, which lies parallel to the west coast of British Columbia, is some 290 miles long. That’s as long as the southern tip of Ireland to the Giant’s Causeway in the north. A ridge of mountains runs the length of the island with the highest peak, the Golden Hinde reaching over 7,000 ft. This ridge splits the island into two sections. On the west, it is mainly temperate rainforest, an extraordinary landscape of huge trees, dripping wet, much exploited by loggers and a more fertile and drier east, where they can even grow vines. Most BC wine is grown beyond the mountains behind Vancouver in the Okanagan valley, but there are many wineries in east Vancouver Island, producing excellent wine, particularly whites. 

We hired a car, and drove north, a journey which takes you initially along the mountain ridge with fine views to the east, and you then emerge into the flatter central part of the island. One of the strange things you notice as you drive along, is that certain sections of the road suddenly become filled with large advertising hoardings. This indicates you are in or near an area reserved for members of Canada’s First Nation, the indigenous people who lived here long before the arrival of the Europeans, many of whom still live largely separate lives. The treaties signed over the years allowed the First Nation certain rights concerning advertising, I think, but it’s an odd thing. When you see lots of hoardings, you are also very likely to see First Nation Canadians wandering about. Whether this is a Canada-wide phenomenon or just Vancouver Island, I have no idea. Most of the indigenous tribes lived around the coasts, and there is a fascinating exhibition at the huge BC museum in Victoria, explaining the history, along with a fantastic garden filled with ancient and modern totem poles. 

Fran and I travelled further north, stopping at a small town which is covered in magnificent First Nation murals. More than halfway up the island, we stopped for lunch, and as we got back to the car, we heard a strange honking and bellowing. On investigation, we found a colony of Pacific sea lions just off a pier in an estuary. There were hundreds of them, and they were making quite a racket. Turning inland, we drove up into the thickly forested hills, past mountain lakes and stopped at a marked trail where several cars were parked. We wandered into the forest to find some of the biggest trees we had ever seen, predominantly conifers. This turned out to be Cathedral Grove, a copse with some of the biggest trees in Canada, Douglas Firs as big as cathedral vaults with trunks which dwarfed the groups of people round them. Why they grew to such a height in this particular spot, I never discovered, but they were mighty impressive. We were assured that the road over the mountains had recently been improved dramatically, but it was still steep and very bendy. Suddenly we emerged to see the Pacific gleaming in the sunshine. A marvellous sight! We drove down to the coast and followed the road as far as Tofino, towards the end of a peninsula which gives way to a whole group of islands at the western end of the upper middle of Vancouver Island. Rather like the north west of Scotland, breaking up over millennia into the Inner and Outer Hebrides, this part of the island has numerous small islands and inlets, and has become a tourist site for whale and dolphin watching, and black bear viewing. The whale thing involved heading out into the ocean in smallish boats, which didn’t hugely appeal, but we decided to try the bear watching. The island is home to a number of black bears – not grizzlies which are found further north on the mainland – and, apparently, they like to wander out of the forest to the water’s edge to feed. Consequently, we got into a small boat and puttered into one of the many creeks and inlets beyond Tofino. After about thirty minutes scanning the shore for imaginary, as we thought, bears, we saw our first sauntering down to the water. The captain cut the engine and we drifted nearer and nearer in complete silence, and then we saw another couple of bears coming to join their friend. It was wonderful to watch these wild creatures in their natural habitat. They were safe from us, and we were safe from them. It’s fascinating for us British to see wild animals roaming free, and to know that, in the wilderness of Canada, there are wolves, bears, moose, lynx and mountain lions aplenty. Our foxes and badgers seem small fry in the face of this abundance. 

Returning to Tofino, we had booked a lovely room in a small hotel looking out over the inlet and walked the short distance to a highly recommended restaurant overlooking the Pacific. The sunset over the ocean was stunning, as was the food and the Canadian wine. Returning south again, we crossed over the mountain ridge and then crossed back further down, and found ourselves taking a loggers’ track through the temperate rainforest, bringing us out once again on the Pacific Ocean at a place called Renfrew, named as so many places in Canada after Scottish towns, this one near Glasgow. Driving back round the coast, we noted with some trepidation the signs telling us that in the event of a tsunami, we should drive inland and into the hills at once! No doubt a wise warning, but one designed to instil a sense of foreboding, nonetheless. As we finally neared Victoria, which is by some way the largest town on Vancouver Island, we passed the Canadian naval base, where the Canadian Pacific Fleet has its headquarters. 

This was yet another reminder that, long before Europeans came to Canada, and even more so since, the sea has been the main route for travellers and native people alike. The First Nation tribes lived mainly in villages on the coast, eking out a living by fishing and hunting, and communicating with other tribes by boat. Again this is very similar to life in prehistoric west Scotland, where there were no roads and few tracks. The name of many small settlements in Scotland, Tarbert, comes from an old Gaelic word (tairbeart) meaning the place or isthmus where boats were carried overland from one shore to another.  

On another free day, Fran and I drove north from Victoria to the large group of islands on the east side of Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands. We had been told that the northern group of these islands was home to many Canadians and some Americans who, after the heady days of Flower Power and the Hippie era of the late 60s, had set up hippie communes. Sadly, we failed to spot any, and the smoke rising from many houses turned out to be log fires rather than the pot smoke of elderly flower people. However, it is a lovely area, served by numerous small ferries, and again very reminiscent of the Scottish western isles, although with a rather more benign climate. This climate, though famously wet, has drawn generations of people to Vancouver Island, and there are several huge trailer parks around the island full of refugees from the icy climate of the rest of Canada, who winter there, rather like the Canada geese which migrate to find better climes. 

Exploring Victoria itself is a very pleasant experience. Unlike most cities in Canada and America, it retains a feel of the old colonial days, with almost no high-rise developments. It has grown up round an enormous bay, with deep water anchorage and calm sea, and is a most delightful place. With a population of around 400,000, Greater Victoria covers most of the southern tip of the island, but the city itself numbers less than 100,000, and is splendidly old fashioned. The magnificent Empress Hotel (now the Fairmont Empress), overlooking the bay, was built in 1908, and is one of several Canadian hotels constructed along the lines of French Chateaux. On my first trip to Ottawa, another delightfully old-fashioned city, I stayed in the splendid Chateau Laurier, built in a similar Gothic revival style in 1912, which dominates that city too.  One of the must do things in Victoria is to take afternoon tea at the Empress. Actually, I never did, as I hadn’t been paid yet!  

Not far from the Empress and the harbour, is a wonderful natural park forming a section of the southern tip of the Saanich peninsula with views over to the USA and the Olympic Peninsula (see my article about Seattle). Part of the park houses the Victoria Cricket Ground, reminding us of Canada’s past. There is a pub very close to the theatre and my hotel called was called The Cricketers, with a very fetching pub sign showing cricketers in their whites. On my second visit to Victoria, there was a Cricket World Cup going on in, I think, Australia. Keen to see some highlights on TV, I sauntered into The Cricketers and asked if they would mind changing one of their TV channels to the cricket. “I am not aware of that particular activity, sir” said the young bartender. Ah well! 

I have already mentioned the fabulous museum, next to the Empress, which shows the history, geology and evolution of British Columbia, and Vancouver Island in particular. Further round the end of the harbour are the magnificent British Columbia Parliament Buildings, opened in 1898, where the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia still sits. This is another monumental edifice, built in a Neo-Baroque style, which dominates the harbour area. It is surprising that the assembly sits here rather than in the much bigger city of Vancouver on the mainland (pop 1,500,000), but history is important for Canadians and Victoria was historically the first and main settlement of the original British settlers, who arrived after the exploration and charting of this whole region down as far as Portland, Oregon, conducted by George Vancouver in his 1791-95 expedition. The British, and indeed Scottish, connection is still evident in many of the street names in Victoria, with many amusing discoveries of street names from Edinburgh cropping up. 

The harbour is often visited by ferries and hydrofoils from Seattle, but also features wonderful little mini ferries for about 20 or so passengers in tiny oval boats. These ferries (or water taxis) weave around the whole harbour and inner bay area, and are an excellent means of travel, cheap and convenient. They will take you to several restaurants and bars around the bay, but also function as daily commutes for some locals. They have to be very manoeuvrable as they often have to dodge ocean going car ferries, as well as the many seaplanes operating out of the harbour. Victoria Harbour is, apparently, the busiest seaplane airport in Canada, and maybe the world. 

Fran and I took a seaplane to Vancouver one day, to meet our friend, David James, the Hilliard Ensemble’s countertenor, who had come, get this, all the way from London just to see me sing. The least we could do was take him out to lunch, so, learning that he had flown into Vancouver, we met him at the seaplane airport in Vancouver harbour (apparently, the second busiest seaplane airport in Canada!) and we went to a swanky restaurant overlooking the bay. After lunch, David went back to the international airport for a short conventional flight to Victoria’s land airport, while Fran and I took a leisurely ferry ride through the multitude of small islands between Vancouver and Victoria, where we met up with David again at our hotel, the Chateau Victoria Hotel, in downtown Victoria, near the theatre. This trip confirmed to us the amazing statistic that over 50% of Vancouver’s population is ethnically Asian, after a recent influx from China, Korea and Japan. This all adds to the delightful quirkiness of Canadian life, especially as the bilingual aspect of the country’s constitution (French and English) is marvellously confused by the almost total lack of Francophones in BC,  and the predominance there of people speaking Asian languages. As ever in north America, the reality is the dominance of English, although at least in Canada, many of the Americanisms and spellings which we Brits dislike, are absent. I was delighted to discover I was singing in a theatre and not a ‘theater’! 

One last place of wonderment on Vancouver Island is the Butchart Gardens, about twenty minutes’ drive from central Victoria.   In 1904, a cement manufacturer from Ontario, Robert Butchart and his wife Jennie, came to Vancouver Island to run a limestone quarry, designed to supply his cement business. The Butcharts met a Japanese gardener, Isaburo Kishida, who had recently created a Japanese garden in the area. They commissioned him to build a much bigger garden near the quarry, running down to the inlet on Brentwood Bay. When the quarry was exhausted of limestone in 1912, Jennie had a sunken garden created in its place. Gradually, an Italian garden was added and then a rose garden, and their house, sitting right in the middle, became a magnet for gardeners and visitors. Still owned by the Butchart family, but now a major tourist attraction, it has become one of the greatest gardens in Canada, thriving in the warm and wet climate of the Pacific coast, and is a special place. They serve afternoon tea there, in the Butcharts’ old house, and, unlike at the Empress, Fran and I indulged ourselves! 

In “A Singer’s Life”, Part 24, I wrote about the lovely Royal Theatre, opened in 1913, where Pacific Opera Victoria performs and, in Part 23, about the Chateau Victoria Hotel where I stayed in fantastic suites, overlooking the harbour. I refer you back to those articles, but, basically, I want to urge you, if at all possible, to visit Victoria and the wonderful Vancouver Island. I know it’s a long way from Scotland, and we are all being told not to fly any more, but this is one magical place, and I hope my two articles here have given you some idea of what it is like.