‘To immerse oneself’ in Victoria
Hand Drawn Victoria: An Illustrated Tour in and around BC’s Capital City
by Emma FitzGerald
Toronto: Appetite [Penguin Random House], 2024
$19.95 / 9780525611042
Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore
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Emma FitzGerald lived in Halifax when she travelled to Victoria, B.C. to spend over a year sketching the charm of the city’s distinct architecture, parks, gardens, and stunning shorelines. Victoria is situated on the traditional lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) people, also known as the Songhees and Esquimalt.
Trained in visual art (BFA from the University of B.C.) with a Masters in Architecture, FitzGerald arrived in Victoria in March 2020 having made her decision to sketch and write about the city before the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada and beyond. The focus of the book is “on the life pulse of the city of Victoria that kept on going in spite of it.” She has really done a fine job of depicting that life pulse.
Hand Drawn Victoria begins with a two-page map and is divided into the city’s neighbourhoods, each with their unique treasures, visited by FitzGerald on foot or on her bicycle where she would sketch on location. Each drawing features small details most of us wouldn’t see in passing. The Caribbean Village Café in Quadra Village, for instance, shows the many plants and flowers of owner James Bowen’s container garden that “bursts with colour.”
While the drawings are charming, her short stories that include particular quirks, special characteristics, and overheard conversations are as well.
Visitors as well as residents of the city will be happy to see their favourite landmarks in the book such as the Empress Hotel, designed by Francis “Ratz” Rattenbury, who also designed the nearby parliament buildings, and Butchart Gardens, the former limestone quarry that became twenty-two hectares of multicoloured gardens. Others will definitely find unique locales they’ll want to check out.
I’m close enough to Victoria to make day trips but spending five weeks there one fall was the best way to explore many aspects of the very walkable city.
FitzGerald stayed in the Rockland neighbourhood just east of downtown, in a house built in 1908 (which she has sketched). She gradually increased the circumference of her daily jaunts to include the neighbouring municipalities of Esquimalt and Oak Bay. A car sharing co-operative helped her make day trips to North Saanich, Sidney, and the Juan de Fuca Trail.
While FitzGerald’s sketches may appear whimsical, she also covers serious aspects of Victoria life such as a protest directed at the provincial government to end the logging of the remaining two per cent of old-growth forests. “Protect Old Growth Forest” and “Worth More Standing” are among the signs on the steps of the BC Legislature or held by activists in masks.
Another demonstration was held following the murder of George Floyd, an African American man, by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25, 2020. Demonstrators in Victoria’s Centennial Square behind City Hall, are holding signs that read “Black Lives Matter.”
Munro’s Books, in a former bank building on Government Street, is one of several bookstores featured. There’s also Bolen Books in the Oaklands section of the city and Ivy’s Bookshop in Oak Bay. That’s where I first spotted this book!
Fan Tan Alley in Victoria’s Chinatown, the oldest in Canada, is a popular area for visitors and locals. Fitzgerald has also sketched Dragon Alley, part of the initial environment of Victoria’s Chinatown. “Its series of maze-like alleys would have been witness to daily life following the arrival of Chinese workers going back to 1898,” she writes.
The Chinese Public School at 636 Fisgard Street was built in 1909 because the Victoria School Board, in 1908, excluded Chinese children from public schools.
In the James Bay area, close to downtown, is a unique shop called the Birdcage Confectionery, in business since 1915. The oldest corner store in Victoria, it was named after the “the stretch of Government Street it sits on, which used to be referred to as ‘the Birdcage walk’ because of the abundance of birdcages in the neighbourhood homes.”
Also on Government Street is the birthplace and childhood home of artist Emily Carr whose paintings likely began in the back garden as well as “on visits to nearby Beacon Hill Park.” FitzGerald says her own childhood on the West Coast “imprinted itself on my imagination and now finds its way into my drawings.” (FitzGerald’s earlier book is Hand Drawn Vancouver.)
At the edge of Beacon Hill Park, Fitzgerald sees a carpet of blue camas flowers with Dallas Road, the Salish Sea, and the Olympic Mountains beyond. The Songhees people call the area of flowers “Meegan” meaning “warmed by the sun.”
FitzGerald learns from Cheryl Bryce, an Indigenous knowledge keeper, that “the bulbs of the camas flowers served as an important food source and are still eaten today.” The flowers’ bulbs were also a valuable item for trade with other Indigenous nations. Today a wooden fence indicates the protected status of the camas.
Cook Street Village has been one of my favourite spots to hang out in Victoria. FitzGerald has drawn some of the eating establishments including Thunderbird Korean Fried Chicken and Moka House, where coffee, “treats and chats can be found together.”
One of the cherry trees in Cook Street Village has been “yarn bombed” with a “colourful crocheted hug wrapped around it.” It’s a “tactile (and removable) textile form of urban graffiti,” FitzGerald says.
Peacocks are common in Victoria especially in Beacon Hill Park, and FitzGerald sees a few on her walk, in a residential area, to the Moss Street Farmers Market in Fairfield. It’s February, Valentine’s weekend, and there’s a peacock is in the snow with two more on the roof of a house.
Fernwood is where the Belfry Theatre is housed in a former church and the Fernwood Inn is a “neighbourhood institution.” I remember painted telephone poles in Fernwood; Fitzgerald finds one in nearby Rockland painted in the style of Emily Carr. It was Beth Threlfall, a local artist, who took to Victoria’s telephone poles with a paint can and the project became an annual event.
Hand Drawn Victoria is a delight to savour and may entice readers to begin sketching themselves. The book is a grand way to immerse oneself in the city’s vibrancy. You’ll definitely want to visit the neighbourhoods of B.C.’s capital city, with Emma Fitzgerald’s book in hand.
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Mary Ann Moore is a poet, writer, and writing mentor who lives on the unceded lands of the Snuneymuxw First Nation in Nanaimo. This regular contributor to The British Columbia Review has produced a new chapbook of poems called Mending (house of appleton). Moore leads writing circles and has two writing resources: Writing to Map Your Spiritual Journey (International Association for Journal Writing) and Writing Home: A Whole Life Practice (Flying Mermaids Studio). She writes a blog here. [Editor’s note: Mary Ann Moore has also reviewed books by Susan Alexander & Lorraine Gane, Judy LeBlanc, Kayla Czaga, Christine Lowther, Jude Neale and Nicholas Jennings, and Yvonne Blomer and DC Reid, for The British Columbia Review.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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