Fairfield (Greater Victoria)

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Fairfield is a neighbourhood of Victoria, BC. It is bounded by the James Bay, Downtown, Harris Green, Fernwood, Rockland, and Gonzales neighbourhoods, and meets the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the South (.pdf map).

Contents

[edit] Community

Fairfield is the southern-most neighbourhood in the city of Victoria, British Columbia, at Vancouver Island's southern-most tip. It is Victoria's largest community by population and area, when considered together with the adjacent Gonzalez neighbourhood.

Fairfield is a pleasant, residential community with a mix of low-rise apartments and single family homes on well-maintained, tree-lined streets. It is bounded to the east by the Oak Bay, to the north by community of Rockland, to the west by Beacon Hill Park and to the south by the ocean shoreline of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Fairfield features the historic Ross Bay Cemetery, as well as many heritage buildings dating from the late Victorian and Edwardian periods.

The largely volunteer run Fairfield Community Association (FCA) serves "to enhance the quality of life in Fairfield by involving community members in identifying and acting on the needs of area residents"[1].

The FCA operates from and maintains the Fairfield Community Place, Fairfield’s only neighbourhood centre. Its various committees help organize special events, recycling programs, beach cleanups, emergency preparedness programs, review and publicize planning and zoning changes, increase public awareness of community impacts from development, etc.

Significant population growth and demographic shifts are expected for southern Vancouver Island. The City of Victoria has prepared a neighbourhood profile from 2001 data: [2]

[edit] History

Having founded the Hudson Bay Company's (HBC) Fort Victoria in the 1850s, Sir James Douglas acquired for himself a large property between Fort Street and Clover Point, which he called Fairfield Farm. To the east lay the lands of Joseph Despard Pemberton (which stretched into what would become Oak Bay) and Isabelle Ross, BC's first female land owner (the location of Ross Bay Cemetery, land mistakenly thought to have been owned by her husband and HBC chief factor Charles Ross).

"Fairfield", at 601 Trutch Street, was built in 1861 by Joseph Trutch, who would later become the first Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia. Although some houses in the western areas of Fairfield date from the 1880s, it was shortly after the turn of the century that much of the neighbourhood was developed, in a residential housing boom that ended in 1913. It was in the early part of the twentieth century that the original Sir James Douglas Elementary School and the present Margaret Jenkins Elementary School were built to serve the community.

One of the oldest structures in central Fairfield is located at 1263 Richardson Street, a gothic gabled building from the 1860s (now strata-titled) that was moved down the hill from Rockland Avenue in the Rockland neighbourhood to make way for a much grander residence that today stands beside the Langham Court theatre.

[edit] Landmarks and Parkland

City Parks in the Fairfield neighbourhood include:

  • Beacon Hill
  • Clover Point
  • Ross Bay Cemetery
  • Moss Rock (Fairfield Hill) Park
  • Robert Porter Park
  • Brooke Street Park
  • Eberts Street Park
  • Pioneer Square

as well as several other smaller parks, playgrounds and greenspaces.

The popular scenic destination Clover Point offers views south to Washington State's Olympic Mountains and east to the impressive snow clad Mount Baker, a dormant volcano. Clover Point is also the site of one of Victoria's two sewage pumping station's and a possible location for a sewage treatment plant mandated for the city by the BC government in July 2006.

Landmarks and areas of special interest include:

Fairfield is the site of popular commercial hubs, Cook Street Village, Five Corners and the Fairfield Plaza.

Cook Street Village, a commercial area characterized by sidewalk-flanking Horse Chestnut trees, low-height buildings and the absence of bisecting roads, is a popular shopping and social strip in Fairfield, with cafés, restaurants, small boutiques and grocery stores. The locally-renowned Pic-a-Flic video store, Moka House, and Café Fantastico can be found here. Currently (August, 2006), proposed developments within this part of Fairfield have are sparked concern and debate among local residents [3].

Another small neighbourhood centre, known as Five Points, is located at the intersection of Moss Street and Fairfield Road, featuring Sir James Douglas Elementary School, Fairfield United Church, Fairfield Bicycles, a general store, vetrinary clinic and other services. This location has historically been a hub of community activity since the community's earliest days.

The Fairfield Plaza, a compact strip mall, is another, somewhat more prosaic shopping area, situated near the Fairfield/Gonzales border. It is worth noting however, as having the first Thrifty Foods of the Thrifty Foods grocery store chain[4], as well as the Ross Bay Pub, the Fairfield Medical Treatment Centre, government liquor store, Home Hardware and other enterprises.

Across Fairfield Road from the western entrance to the Fairfield Plaza is Emily Carr’s grave, in the Ross Bay Cemetery.

[edit] References

  • Terry Reksten, "More English than the English": A Very Social History of Victoria, 1986: Victoria, Orca Book Publishers
  • Martin Segger and Douglas Franklin, Victoria: A Primer for Regional History in Architecture Victoria: 1979: Heritage Architectural Guides

[edit] External links

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