Victoria the Way It Was

L.J. Rouse was a freelance writer in Toronto.

This handsome volume is more substantial in content than the coffee table book its size and beauty suggest. It combines history, bibliography and art: the history of dreamy Victoria, from the days of Fort Victoria (established by James Douglas in 1843), to its present prosperous situation as site of the government of British Columbia.

Victoria has always had a reputation as a last outpost of British colonialism, and indeed its sleepy charm of bygone days did evoke wistful memories of an older, more tranquil, and mannered society than most of Canada afforded. Author/artist Michael Kluckner’s exquisite watercolor plates capture that nostalgic charm, while period photographs and postcards, catalogues and advertisements have a more hard-edged reality. Kluckner’s accounts of personalities, politics, attitudes and events, illuminated by the kind of anecdotes, vignettes, and character sketches that do so much to enliven cold facts and figures, are both readable and informative. His own lively interest in the subjects of those stiff formal, yellowing portraits and snapshots breathes life into a vanished way of life that can never be repeated, and is well worth remembering.