Fort Victoria

Fort Victoria began as a fur trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company and was the headquarters of HBC operations in the Columbia District, a large fur trading area now part of the province of British Columbia, Canada and the U.S. state of Washington. Construction of Fort Victoria in 1843 highlighted the beginning of a permanent British settlement now known as Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia. The fort itself was demolished in November 1864 as the town continued to grow as a commercial centre serving the local area as well as trading with California, Washington Territory, the United Kingdom, and others. The original headquarters of HBC operations on the Pacific Coast of North America at the time of Victoria's founding was Fort Vancouver (now Vancouver, Washington) on the lower Columbia River, but its location was difficult to defend, ships often had difficulty entering the mouth of the Columbia, and it was far from the lucrative furs in New Caledonia farther north. With American settlers beginning to come into the region, in 1843 the company sent Chief Factor James Douglas to build a fort some distance north on Vancouver Island and made him its superintendent. The signing of the Oregon Treaty in 1846 settled the matter of Fort Vancouver’s further suitability as the United Kingdom gave up its claims in the area to the United States and in return kept Vancouver Island while the Americans dropped their claims north of the 49th parallel. Erected in 1843 on a site originally called Camosun (a variant of the Lekwungen word "Camossung", the name of a girl turned into stone by the spiritual being Hayls, the Transformer to watch over the resources in what is now known as the Gorge waterway.) The fort was known briefly as "Fort Albert", but on June 10, 1843, by resolution of HBC's Council of the Northern Department, it was officially named Victoria in honour of the young Queen. The Fort was built using labour from local First Nations people, who were paid one Hudson’s Bay blanket for every 40 pickets they cut. The Songhees people soon established a village across the harbour from the fort. The Songhees' village was later moved to the north shore of Esquimalt Harbour. In 1844, a dispute led to a gathering of warriors led by Tzouhalem, a Quamichan chief, who peppered the fort with threats and musket balls for two days until the fort's Chief Factor Roderick Finlayson demonstrated the power of the fort's nine-pounder cannon. Fort Victoria was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1924.