Canada's oldest Chinatown and mildest winters
Victoria began in 1843 as a Hudson's Bay Company fort on Lekwungen territory, which makes it the oldest city in western Canada, and it stayed a quiet outpost of a few hundred people for fifteen years. Then gold was found on the Fraser River in 1858 and tens of thousands of prospectors came through the harbour in a matter of months, every one of them required by the colonial governor to buy a licence here first. Chinese miners who arrived in the same rush built what is now the oldest Chinatown in the country, where Fan Tan Alley narrows to about a metre across. The Parliament Buildings and the Empress Hotel were both designed by Francis Rattenbury, who was 25 and newly arrived from England when he won the first commission, having entered the public competition anonymously as A B.C. Architect. The winters are the mildest in Canada and the gardens show it.
