When we were in Vancouver the previous summer, someone told us that Victoria was worth going to. Several someones. The recommendation was consistent enough that we wrote it down, which is the first step in actually doing something. The second step is deciding you're already in Vancouver and you might as well go. The third step is the BC Ferries terminal at Tsawwassen at 8am, which is where we found ourselves in May with all four kids and a sufficient quantity of snacks.
The ferry from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay takes about 90 minutes on the water. This is not an approximation of a ferry crossing — it is the kind of ferry crossing that makes ferry crossings worth taking. The Gulf Islands are between the mainland and Vancouver Island, and the route passes through them. Active Pass, where the ferry threads between Galiano Island and Mayne Island, is narrow enough that you can see the shore on both sides clearly, which creates a particular kind of attention in everyone on the deck. We stood outside for the full crossing.
Vancouver (Tsawwassen) → Victoria (Swartz Bay) by BC Ferries · 90 min · Gulf Islands passage
On the Ferry
BC Ferries runs large vessels — the Coastal Celebration class is over 160 meters, carries 2,100 passengers and 370 cars — and they are organized around the crossing as an experience rather than just transit. There are cafeterias, a gift shop, sun decks, enclosed seating with large windows. The kids explored every deck within the first fifteen minutes and reported back on their findings.
The Gulf Islands are part of the Salish Sea, a network of inland waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland. The ferry route through Active Pass was the thing I hadn't anticipated. The channel is narrow — maybe 400 meters at its widest — and tree-lined cliffs rise on both sides as you enter. The scale of a 160-meter ferry moving through that passage creates a strange perceptual experience: you're on something enormous, and the things on either side are also large, and yet the distance between them is small enough to feel intimate. We watched it for the full twenty minutes it took to transit.
Active Pass from the ferry deck — the narrow channel, tree-lined cliffs on both sides, the water ahead. Shoot from the bow with the passage visible ahead and the cliff walls framing both edges. The scale of the ferry itself is only implied; what you capture is the intimacy of the passage.
Butchart Gardens
Butchart Gardens is 22 hectares of landscaped gardens north of Victoria, built on a spent limestone quarry starting in 1904 by Jennie Butchart, whose husband operated the quarry. She planted the exhausted pit with topsoil and flower beds, and over the next hundred years it became one of the most visited gardens in North America. The premise is that obvious: take a hole you dug in the earth and fill it with living things.
I am not someone who attends gardens. I photograph gardens occasionally but I wouldn't say I go to them. I went to Butchart Gardens and I would go again. The Sunken Garden — the original quarry pit, now terraced and planted — has a particular quality that is difficult to name precisely. You descend from the rim into what was industrial extraction, and the walls of the old quarry are now covered in hanging baskets and climbing plants, and the floor of what was a hole in the earth is a formal garden with a central fountain and pathways threading through beds of flowering things arranged with real thought. The contrast between what it was and what it is now is available to you the whole time you're there.
The Sunken Garden from the rim viewpoint — shoot down into the quarry with the terraced beds and central fountain below. Include the near rim in the foreground to give depth. If the light is even and overcast, even better — the colors saturate without harsh shadows.
The Rose Garden is quieter — a formal arrangement of beds with the roses in early-May form, not at peak but close. The Italian Garden is symmetrical and geometric and stands in contrast to the loose abundance of the Sunken Garden in a way that makes you appreciate both. The Japanese Garden is small and composed with the kind of restraint that requires long thought to achieve.
We spent three hours. The kids, who are not at the age where botanical gardens hold their attention, were engaged for most of it. The Sunken Garden held them the longest. They wanted to know how the quarry worked, how long it took to dig, why someone decided to fill it with flowers. The questions were better than what I'd expected, which is often how children work in places that are genuinely interesting rather than designed to entertain them.
The Inner Harbour
Victoria's Inner Harbour is the face of the city — the basin where float planes land, water taxis cross, whale-watching boats depart, and the Fairmont Empress sits on the north shore watching all of it. The Parliament Buildings are to the west, their copper dome visible from the water. The whole ensemble is the kind of thing that photographs compulsively. You have to work not to take photographs of it.
We walked the harbour promenade in the afternoon and the activity was continuous: a float plane coming in low over the basin, a whale-watching RIB heading out under the bridge, a busker playing something classical on the west side of the causeway. The harbour is designed to be watched from, and the city seems to understand this and uses the promenade accordingly.
The Inner Harbour from the causeway — the Empress in the left third, the Parliament dome in the right third, the water and float planes in between. Shoot in the late afternoon when the Empress facade catches the golden light. Include something in the foreground — a bollard, a railing — to give the depth layers.
Afternoon Tea at the Empress
The Fairmont Empress opened in 1908 and has been serving afternoon tea since 1908. This is not a service they added to attract tourists; it was there at the beginning and it has been continuous since. You book in advance, you are given a seating time, and you sit in a room designed for exactly this purpose and you are brought sandwiches and scones and small pastries and tea in a sequence that occupies ninety minutes and leaves you not quite full but satisfied in the way that requires precision to achieve.
I want to say something honest about afternoon tea in a grand hotel: it is, obviously, not something you do for the food. The cucumber sandwiches are good. The scones are genuinely excellent — dense and warm, served with clotted cream and house-made jam. The pastries are precise small objects made by people who care about the execution. But you are paying for the room and the ritual and the specific quality of an experience that has been done the same way for over a hundred years without needing to be updated because it was right to begin with.
The kids were quieter during tea than during anything else in the entire trip. Whether this was the effect of the formal service, the architecture of the room, or the scones is not something I can determine with certainty.
The tea service at the Empress — the tiered stand with the sandwiches and pastries, the teapot, the room behind. Shoot with a long lens from across the table to compress the layers. Or a tight close-up of the scone with the clotted cream and jam. The room light is warm and indoor; you'll need to compensate.
The City on Foot
Victoria is smaller than Vancouver — about 90,000 people in the city proper — and the downtown is designed for walking. Government Street is the main commercial corridor, lined with shops and restaurants in historic buildings, and Chinatown is the oldest in Canada, preserved well enough that the buildings look as they were designed to look rather than as they've been renovated to look. Fan Tan Alley — narrow enough that two adults have to walk single file — is the kind of passage that makes a city feel like it's been lived in long enough to acquire the kind of details that take a long time to accumulate.
Beacon Hill Park is a 75-hectare park adjacent to the downtown that ends at the cliff above the ocean. We walked there in the late afternoon and stood at the edge of the cliff looking south across the Strait of Juan de Fuca toward the Olympic Peninsula. The mountains of Washington State were visible from here, low and blue against the far horizon. The marker at the southern tip of the park announces the start of the Trans-Canada Highway — Mile 0. It felt like the right place to end a trip that started in Calgary and moved west through the Rockies and ended here, at the edge of the continent.
Beacon Hill Park cliff edge — the kids at the Mile 0 marker or standing at the overlook facing south toward the strait. Include the Olympic Mountains in the far background if visibility allows. The sky and the water and the mountains are the composition; the people are the scale.
We took the afternoon ferry home — Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen, then drove to the hotel near the airport for the morning flight. The crossing going back was as good as the crossing coming. The kids stood on the deck for Active Pass again. Meghan said it looked the same as in the morning, which is true, and also the point. There are things that are worth seeing more than once in the same day, and a narrow channel between two forested islands with the light at a different angle is one of them.