Cordova Bay - Victoria's Mini Malibu Beach Community
It is pretty surprising how different a place you can get to on the south island when you travel just 10 kilometres from downtown Victoria. One of those places that seems so far away is Cordova Bay, a small beach community on the north east end of Saanich. On a recent visit to the beach there this week, I was again struck by how quiet and distant it felt from the rest of the city. Even more surprising is how quiet it is given the beautiful beach and the amount of million dollar homes that line it. It is truly our own mini Malibu in so many ways.
I know Cordova Bay very well having worked there for almost a decade spanning the turn of the millenium, I was likely one of the few commuters travelling from near downtown Victoria to Cordova Bay on an almost daily basis to work in a now gone pub-style restaurant. Strangely enough, it seems that little has changed. When we visited this week there were lots of BMWs and Mercedes driving the road and lots of people looking like they may just hit the links at any moment. Like so many places in Victoria, Cordova Bay has always seemed to be just on the cusp of being discovered by a broader community, but by design it is almost impossible for that to happen. It wasn’t always that way of course.
You can’t talk about Cordova Bay without talking about the McMorran family. While by now it is unlikely that development wouldn’t have occurred there without them, it happened early and extensively due to this family. What is now called the Beach House Cafe and Restaurant was the heart of the community for years. I won’t go into a long story about it because Ross Crockford did it so well a decade ago in this piece on the closing of the former McMorran’s Restaurant. When I worked just a block down the road from McMorran’s, they were of course our biggest competition and despite trying many many different things over the years, our restaurant could never compete with it. It truly was a beloved institution. More than just running a restaurant though, the McMorrans created a community and worked to have people from around the region visit the area. In Crockford’s article you will see pictures of the crowds at a regatta which could never occur now.
Today Cordova Bay is in flux, across the street from the Beach House, used to sit the main shopping plaza, which included the grocery store, a great bakery, a bank and a few other shops. Now this is all a massive construction site for the Haro, which is a combination of residential and commercial. This shopping centre has been over two decades in coming. There is a good history of the contamination from the old Payless Gas Station here that provides part of the story, the other half is that the community didn’t really want to see it developed. It will be interesting to see the impact of the shopping at this new development as the heart of shopping has really shifted to Matticks’ Farm over the last couple of decades. Unfortunately, from looking at the drawings it appears that a large portion of the footprint is a surface parking lot which would be shocking to see downtown, but in Cordova Bay, the car is still the main way to move around. It may have changed in the last few years. but when I was working in Cordova Bay I used to be able to take the 32 from James Bay all the way to outside my work. That was discontinued and the reduction in service and the necessity to take two buses meant that I had to buy a car. Then as now, most people in Cordova Bay are not taking transit to get around.
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One great way to get to and from Cordova Bay however, is by bicycle with the Lochside trail running just to the west of the centre and passing right by Matticks Farm. A ride out to Adrienne’s Tea Garden is a common and very enjoyable weekend ride in Victoria, but going into the centre of Cordova Bay is an extra bit of a ride off the trail and likely another reason that even on a beautiful sunny summer day you can find the beach mostly empty.
Walking along Agate Beach with the beautiful homes just beyond the high tide mark, it occurred to me that there was a lot of similarity between these million dollar mansions and those in Malibu, though maybe with less beach erosion. Add to that the insularity of this wealthy community and the comparison becomes even more clear.
On the way to the beach we paused at the old convenience store that is just to the south of the town centre, it is still empty and sitting there with an amazing view which if it is still zoned commercial means that there is a chance for a little bit more business to come in and who knows maybe when the Haro is complete and some of that retail is occupied we may begin to see a resurgence in Victorians flocking to Cordova bay for a beach day and some shopping.
Have a favourite part of Cordova Bay? Let me know in the comments!