Sidewalking Estevan Village
If you are looking for a destination for a walk, you can’t do much better than Estevan Village. Nearby this little commercial area there are huge parks, a great beach, many quiet streets lined with old houses and a lot of history to take in as well. Estevan Village is located in between Willows Beach and Cadboro Bay Road, just south of the Uplands neighbourhood in Oak Bay.
Despite the evident history in the area, there is actually very little ‘easy to find’ writing on the when Estevan Village came to be. That said, I can make an educated guess as to why it came to be. Like many areas in Victoria, if you find a collection of commercial businesses surrounded by single family dwellings, you can bet that the streetcars used to run nearby. This applies to Estevan Village as well, when you look at this map you can see that the #9 used to run just to the east of where the village is today. On one map, it lists the road as Uplands Road, but that is also a current road north-west of here. I would guess that the streetcar actually ran on Dunlevy Street. In any event you can be certain that there was a station here and that led there to be some businesses nearby.
While the streetcars have been gone from the city for many decades, I can’t even imagine this city without the imprint that they left across it. We can only imagine what the city could have been like if they had been kept and improved on over the years. Hopefully at some point we will see some sort of new rail transit across the city, until then we are left with these ghosts of the lines that used to exist.
It was a crisp winter afternoon on the day we visited the area. Starting near the village we walked down Estevan to Willows Beach and then walk along to Cattle Point. After looping through Cattle Point we walked back along Beach Drive before turning back to the west on Dorset Road. Right here is the main entrance to Uplands Park which is one of my favourite summer destinations for a walk. It is not my one of the best place in my opinion to visit in the winter due to the mud. Maybe next summer I will get around to doing a post on that little oasis. On the walk back to the village we turned down Heron Street, which gives you the chance to pass by the Tod House. This house was built in 1850 by John Tod who worked for the Hudson Bay Company. It is apparently the longest continuously occupied home in Western Canada and also one of the oldest buildings in Victoria. The house is not a big home and certainly has a very simple farmhouse look to it but it does give you sense of what Victoria used to look like.
Turning right back at Estevan, you are just outside the actual commercial area. While only a block long, this must be one of the most dense blocks of businesses in the city. There are at least four restaurants, decorating stores, and a jewelry store. It is worth spending some time just walking the block and looking into the windows and seeing what is available. I will mention that amazing building that de Goutiere Jewelers occupies, it has to be one of the best preserved modernist buildings in the city, it is so visually stunning, especially on a cloudy day. The sidewalks are nice and wide along the south side of the street, there is some nice pieces of public art, a few benches and street trees. For such a short urban node, it is packed with everything you would expect on a big city street. On this specific cloudy day we decided to stop in for lunch at the just opened Ruth & Dean Cafe where Sunday’s Child recently closed. While I never went to Sunday’s Child, I can tell you that Ruth & Dean is delicious.
After lunch we stepped into Lokier Gardens, a little triangle of public space that is quite unique and peaceful. Some people, when speaking about Estevan Village also include the little area surrounding Pure Vanilla on Cadboro Bay Road as part of the village as well, and certainly when you think about the fact that there is a butcher, wine shop and now a grocery store, it does give the area a great diversity of services within just a block of each other. That said the two places do feel quite different to me, despite their proximity.
There are few places so close to town where you can have a wonderful peaceful afternoon that includes an ocean-side stroll, a neighbourhood walk and a great little lunch. If you haven’t taken a walk around the area, I strongly encourage you to. If you have and have a favourite place that I haven’t mentioned, please leave a comment below!
