Olive the Senses - Victoria Public Market 2

Here's another of the shops that have just opened in the new Victoria Public Market. This one is called Olive the Senses. This is a very specialized shop that sells only vinegar and olive oil, but it sells those two items in more varieties than you ever dreamed were possible and promises to open your taste buds to a whole new range of flavors. Click the photo to the left to read a bit more about this shop.

Victoria Public Market 1

I mentioned last week that Victoria's new public market just opened recently in the ground floor of The Hudson on Douglas Street. Here are a few glimpses of what's happening there. The directory above gives a good idea of the current tenants - a mix of trendy fast food purveyors and equally trendy condiment and deli style shops. On the left, some Pie Co. staff prepare take-away lunches for customers. On the right are a few of the delicious breads available at the French Oven Bakery. I'm going back there to get some of the pain au chocolat, fresh croissants too. Below, diners line up for Roast beef sandwiches from Roast. Other lunch stalls were just as busy. Tomorrow we'll have a look at Olive the Senses, a shop that sells only oil and vinegar.

The Hands of Time 4 - Carrying Point Blankets

Here's the final instance of The Hands of Time sculpture series, a dozen small sculptures by Crystal Przybille that depict life-size hands engaged in activities symbolic of Victoria's past. The hands above are carrying Point Blankets, a kind of blanket that was much treasured by indigenous peoples when the Hudson's Bay Company first began to trade on this coast. The placement of this particular sculpture is very fitting; it is located on The Hudson, a building that formerly was occupied by the Hudson Bay Company store, the retail descendant of the trading giant that brought these blankets to this coast. The sculpture is on one side of the entrance to what has just opened as Victoria's new public market on the ground floor of this building. We'll have a look inside the market next week. Click The Hands of Time if you want to see all twelve of these small sculptures.

Demolition

For most of my life I've assumed that when builders wanted old buildings destroyed they used a wrecking ball like I'd seen in cartoons. Recently I've realized that I've never actually seen a wrecking ball being used. I don't even know if they exist any more. I know that for big buildings they use explosives. And now I know that for small buildings such as this, they just knock it down with machines. This machine was picking up that big piece of cement and rebar, holding it above the building and then dropping it. In the photo it has just dropped the big chunk of cement. (This makes a lot of noise and dust and looks like it would be fun to do, for about an hour. Then it would be nice to go and have some milk and cookies and a nap....) The building being demolished here was a parking garage attached to what is now becoming "The Hudson" (inner city heritage restoration condo/loft living).

The Hudson

While I'm on the subject of residential initiatives here I'll post these pictures of The Hudson, currently under construction on the corner of Fisgard and Douglas Streets (i.e. downtown). It's called The Hudson because for many years it was the Hudson's Bay Company department store, known as "The Bay." For those of you who may not know, the Hudson's Bay Company was responsible for the exploration/exploitation of much of Canada, especially for the fur trade.

Victoria founder James Douglas arrived here in 1843 to set up the Hudson's Bay Company Trading Post that became Fort Victoria. Such trading posts were widespread throughout Canada. In more recent years the company was represented by a chain of department stores across the country. With the decline of department stores and their replacement by suburban malls, this building became vacant for some years since it was too nice to demolish but no longer usable as originally intended.

In its transformation to The Hudson, most of it has been demolished except the façade and interior flooring. Those creamy columns are terracotta, a kind of ceramic. Saving attractive old buildings, rebuilding them and increasing the residential areas within the city are initiatives I'm happy to see and I will be watching The Hudson as it develops. And, while not as revolutionary as Dockside Green, The Hudson is nevertheless being rebuilt with some sensitivity to environmental concerns. Below is a wider angle shot of the building in context.