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Beacon Hill Park

Parks in Victoria, British Columbia
Canada IMG 5640 (211348807)
Canada IMG 5640 (211348807)

Beacon Hill Park is a 75 ha (200 acre) park located along the shore of Juan de Fuca Strait in Victoria, British Columbia. The park is popular both with tourists and locals, and contains a number of amenities including woodland and shoreline trails, two playgrounds, a waterpark, playing fields, a petting zoo, tennis courts, many ponds, and landscaped gardens. The traditional name of the hill is Meeacan (sometimes spelled Meegan) to the Songhees people, meaning "belly."The land was originally set aside as a protected area by Sir James Douglas, governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1858. In 1882, the land was officially made a municipal park of the City of Victoria, and given its present name. The name is derived from a small hill overlooking the Strait, upon which once stood navigational beacons. The hill is culturally significant, having been a burial site for the First Nations Coast Salish people, who are the original inhabitants of the Greater Victoria region. It provides scenic vistas of the Strait and the Olympic Mountains of Washington. Although much of the park has been landscaped into gardens and playing fields, and populated with various structures, a great deal of the native flora has been preserved. Garry oak, arbutus, Douglas-fir, western redcedar, camas, trillium, snowberry, Oregon grape, and fawn lily still remain in the park. Raccoons, river otters, squirrels, and many types of birds are frequently to be seen. The ponds in the park are noted for their swans, turtles, ducks, Canada geese, and blue herons. The park is notable for a few human-made features, as well. Most prominent is the world's fourth-tallest totem pole, a 38.8-metre (127 ft) work carved by Kwakwaka'wakw craftsman Mungo Martin, and erected in 1956 and was when built, the world's tallest. The pebble bridge over the stream between Goodacre and Fountain Lake is a tribute to renowned BC artist Emily Carr, erected by her sister Alice Carr in 1945. In the middle of the park, the Cameron Bandshell, otherwise known as "The Stage", is the site of concerts from June through September. "Mile 0" of the Trans-Canada Highway is at the south-west corner of the park, along with the old Beacon Lodge and the famous Beacon Drive In.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Beacon Hill Park (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Beacon Hill Park
Circle Drive, Victoria James Bay

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

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N 48.412 ° E -123.364 °
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Beacon Hill Children's Farm

Circle Drive
V8V 2N9 Victoria, James Bay
British Columbia, Canada
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Canada IMG 5640 (211348807)
Canada IMG 5640 (211348807)
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Beacon Drive In
Beacon Drive In

The Beacon Drive In is a restaurant in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Founded and built in 1958 by Bill Pistol and Bob McMillan, it became known as a "Victoria institution" for its soft-serve ice cream, friendly service, and local clientele. Located at 126 Douglas Street, the Beacon Drive In is directly across from the 75-hectare Beacon Hill Park, which does not allow food to be sold within the park grounds — making the fast-food restaurant a destination for picnickers and park-goers. It is also just up the road from the old Beacon Lodge. The most popular item on the menu is the ice cream, which comes in a variety of dips and flavours, as it is known locally as Victoria's soft ice cream headquarters.Part of the Beacon Drive In's appeal stems from the fact that it has been in business for more than 50 years with very few changes. Aside from adding a few awnings, outdoor heaters, and a new colour scheme the building is still the same as it was when it was built. Even the menu is largely unchanged, with current co-owner Peter Loubardeas boasting that "our top 10 items have been the same for, I'm going to say, the past 40 years," Loubardeas, along with his father Gus, bought the restaurant in 2005 from Jim Douglas who ran it for more than 42 years, following in the footsteps of his father, H.W. Douglas. According to Gus, and other long-time employees, much of the credit for the unchanging character of the Beacon Drive In belongs to Jim, who was driven by two mottoes — "the customer always comes first" and "we don't change." The Beacon Drive In's mascot and logo is Beacon Bill, a stylized seagull dressed in rain gear and carrying a life preserver. Beacon Bill was conceived and illustrated by local Victoria artist Bill Hitchcox in 1978 upon the request of a local printer responsible for the menus.

St. Ann's Academy (Victoria, British Columbia)
St. Ann's Academy (Victoria, British Columbia)

St. Ann's Academy was built by the Roman Catholic Congregation of Women the Sisters of Saint Anne of Lachine, Quebec. The chapel, designed by Father Joseph Michaud, was built in 1858 as St. Andrew's Cathedral was moved in 1886 to be St. Ann's Chapel and is the oldest part of the Academy. Later a convent was added (1887) to the west side of the Academy and behind the Academy (1910). St. Ann’s Academy was a girls Catholic boarding and day school from grade 3-12, and boys K - 3, as well as serving as the Provincial House, convent and novitiate. The academy also served as a residential school for First Nations orphans and girls.The Sisters of St. Ann closed the Academy and in 1973 sold the property to the provincial government of British Columbia which used it as office space for the public service for a few years, but it was in need of major repairs and had to be closed. Years-long civic debate of diverse proposals for the future of the building and site ensued. Placed under the stewardship of the Provincial Capital Commission, the interior of the building was gutted and rebuilt, basement to attic, providing seismic upgrade and rehabilitation into modern office space. Once completed, the majority of the building was leased to the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, a use consistent with the Sisters' aims. The exterior facade of his heritage building was retained and repaired. The chapel, parlours and infirmary were retained as an interpretive centre and restored to their 1920s decor. The auditorium at the other end of the building was also seismically upgraded and restored and is used for public lectures and concerts. The building was re-opened in 1997. The chapel was deconsecrated when the Sisters sold the property. Since the restoration of the chapel and the adjacent Novitiate Garden, these have been used as a venue for weddings and other functions. An annex behind the main building which had been occupied by the Victoria Conservatory of Music was demolished on September 11, 2001 following the Conservatory's move to the former Metropolitan United Church buildings. The site was cleared and became green space, merging the Academy grounds with the adjacent Beacon Hill Park.

Royal British Columbia Museum
Royal British Columbia Museum

Founded in 1886, the Royal British Columbia Museum (sometimes referred to as Royal BC Museum) consists of The Province of British Columbia's natural and human history museum as well as the British Columbia Provincial Archives. The museum is located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The "Royal" title was approved by Queen Elizabeth II and bestowed by HRH Prince Philip in 1987, to coincide with a Royal tour of that year. The museum merged with the British Columbia Provincial Archives in 2003. The Royal BC Museum includes three permanent galleries: Natural History, Becoming BC, and the First Peoples Gallery. The museum's collections comprise approximately 7 million objects, including natural history specimens, artifacts, and archival records. The natural history collections have 750,000 records of specimens almost exclusively from BC and neighbouring states, provinces, or territories. The collections are divided into eight disciplines: Entomology, Botany, Palaeontology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate Zoology, Herpetology, Mammalogy, and Ornithology. The museum also hosts touring exhibitions. Previous exhibitions have included artifacts related to the RMS Titanic, Leonardo da Vinci, Egyptian artifacts, the Vikings, the British Columbia gold rushes and Genghis Khan. The Royal BC Museum partners with and houses the IMAX Victoria theater, which shows educational films as well as commercial entertainment.The museum is beside Victoria's Inner Harbour, between the Empress Hotel and the Legislature Buildings. The museum anchors the Royal BC Museum Cultural Precinct, a surrounding area with historical sites and monuments, including Thunderbird Park. The museum also operates traveling exhibitions which tour the province of BC, as well as international exhibits Guangzhou, China. On March 26, 2012, Jack Lohman was appointed CEO of the Royal BC Museum. Various groups assist with the development, success, and maintenance of the Royal BC Museum. These include volunteers, who number over 500 and outnumber the Royal BC Museum staff 4 to 1; the Royal BC Museum Foundation (formerly Friends of the Royal BC Museum Foundation), a non-profit organization created in 1970 to support the Royal BC Museum financially and to assist its work by forming links within the community; Security Services, responsible for risk management, emergency response, security services, and business continuity expertise; and Property Management and Operations, who focus on sustainability, recycling, and environment control within the museum.