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The story of Victoria’s Craigflower Manor is of major significance to the Canada we know today as a diverse nation stretching between the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific oceans. Built in 1853 and the last remaining example of a Hudson’s Bay Company agricultural settlement, Craigflower is a classic illustration of how colonial Britain ensured that territories such as Vancouver Island would remain British possessions as people settled in the New World. And so the island did until 1871, when the Crown Colony of British Columbia became a province within the new Dominion of Canada.
Craigflower Manor celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2006. This Community Memories exhibition commemorates the event by tracing its history from the millennia long before contact between the First Nations peoples and the Europeans right up until today. It explores how in the 1850s the Puget’s Sound Agricultural Company, an offshoot of the Hudson’s Bay Company, settled Scottish farmers and set up a village in the area and how, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, tenant farmers were leasing the land. The exhibition then follows the site as it became a Hudson’s Bay Company clubhouse, a camp for poor girls during the Great Depression, a motel, a drive-in restaurant, and a private residence. It explains how the manor was restored in the late 1960s and established as a national historic site and concludes with the milestone sesquicentennial year of 2006. Craigflower, today under the stewardship of The Land Conservancy of British Columbia, stands stalwart as a legacy to current and future generations of Canadians.
