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    Hand Drawn Victoria: An Illustrated Tour in and around BC's Capital City
    Hand Drawn Victoria: An Illustrated Tour in and around BC's Capital City
    Hand Drawn Victoria: An Illustrated Tour in and around BC's Capital City
    Ebook136 pages40 minutes

    Hand Drawn Victoria: An Illustrated Tour in and around BC's Capital City

    By Emma FitzGerald

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    About this ebook

    For locals and visitors alike, these sketches and stories highlight both the historic monuments and everyday moments that make Victoria shine.

    You never know quite what you’ll come across in British Columbia’s capital city. With its unmissable landmarks that attract people from around the world, Victoria is also rich in forested beauty, charming houses, and curious people, and is steeped in local history.

    Following the charm of her previous book, Hand Drawn Vancouver, in this memorable book, Emma FitzGerald captures the coastal city of Victoria and its surrounding communities in over 100 sketches of:

    • Iconic Landmarks: It wouldn’t be a visit to Victoria without stopping by the Empress, Munro’s, or Butchart Gardens.
    • Local Favourites: The longstanding Beacon Drive In and James Bay’s Birdcage Confectionary are some beloved spots honoured within these pages.
    • Beautiful Architecture: Journey back in time by admiring historic buildings, like Queen Anne–style homes and the spiraling Belfry Theatre.
    • Stunning West Coast Landscape: Explore natural wonders, from culturally significant fields of camas flowers to Mystic Beach’s stunning shoreline.
    • Overheard Conversations: What really makes a city are the people who live there—Emma documents snippets of passersby’s conversations as she sketches.

    Structured by neighbourhood, Hand Drawn Victoria is a beautiful keepsake for both locals and visitors, and a lovely way to celebrate the city—its buildings, its people, and its essence.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAppetite by Random House
    Release dateApr 23, 2024
    ISBN9780525611059
    Hand Drawn Victoria: An Illustrated Tour in and around BC's Capital City
    Author

    Emma FitzGerald

    EMMA FITZGERALD was born in Lesotho to Irish parents, did most of her growing up in Vancouver, and calls E’se’katik (place of clams), also known as Lunenburg, home. She wrote and illustrated Hand Drawn Halifax, Sketch by Sketch Along Nova Scotia’s South Shore, Hand Drawn Vancouver and most recently Hand Drawn Victoria. Her love of cities came in handy when illustrating City Streets Are for People (Groundwood Books 2022). Emma illustrated the Ann Connor Brimer Award–winning EveryBody’s Different on EveryBody Street and A Pocket of Time, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Canadian Picture Book Award. When she isn’t sketching, she enjoys dancing and getting lost in new places. 

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      Book preview

      Hand Drawn Victoria - Emma FitzGerald

      INTRODUCTION

      In March 2020, when I left my home at the time in Halifax, temporarily relocating to Victoria to work on this next book in my Hand Drawn series, I couldn’t have known just how much the world was about to change. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country, I had already chosen British Columbia’s vibrant capital as the next subject for my collection of sketches and stories. New to the city, after careful self-isolation I walked and biked its streets, sketching on location, and began to notice the quirks and special characteristics of each neighbourhood. I started where I lived in the verdant and stately Rockland neighbourhood just east of downtown. Gradually I increased the circumference of my daily jaunts, until, after my fourteen months in the city, I felt the satisfaction one feels upon completing a puzzle, all the pieces fitting together in my mind’s eye.

      My only other significant time in Victoria was a two-week summer dance intensive when I was eleven, ferrying over from the mainland. The lasting impression of the city was a British-style sweet shop that sold candies tasting of perfume. Many people have the impression that this is all Victoria is: a candied facsimile of olde England. However, returning as an adult, I found it to be so much more. Not only does its downtown core boast the oldest Chinatown in Canada, a testament to the contributions of new settlers from that country, but the city is also host to independent Mexican, Filipino, and Korean grocers.

      Victoria is filled with notable architecture, from the impressive Empress Hotel to charming beach cottages. But the city’s flora and fauna became an equal focus for me. Each day held a new discovery: a serpentine spine surfacing on the water (was it a seal or an otter or maybe a porpoise?) or the jagged, heavy breathing of a sea lion swimming off Clover Point as early risers jogged by on Dallas Road, en route to Beacon Hill Park.

      To truly understand Victoria, I went farther afield; the places that rub shoulders with the city are part of its psyche too. Most obvious from a tourist perspective is the Butchart Gardens. By bike, I could easily reach the neighbouring municipalities of Esquimalt and Oak Bay. I joined the local car sharing co-operative and made day trips to North Saanich, Sidney, and the Juan de Fuca Trail. I’ve collected and organized these sketches and stories in clusters that radiate out from downtown Victoria. They may be out of seasonal order, but are still true to the flavour of each neighbourhood in the way I understand them.

      In a year like no other, I had less opportunity to interact directly with people. In some ways, it actually made my job of stopping, observing, and appreciating through the act of drawing feel all the more vital. This book does not seek to focus on the pandemic but rather on the life pulse of the city of Victoria that kept on going in spite of it. The city’s ever-improving active transportation, fragrant gardens, beach walks accompanied by friendly head nods, combined with progressive and creative residents ensured there was always something interesting around the corner. You’ll find my discoveries in the pages of this book. I hope they serve as a starting point for retelling your own stories and new adventures.

      DOWNTOWN

      The Songhees Walkway affords a view of downtown Victoria, including the Johnson Street Bridge dotted with commuters, various brick buildings, and a pocket-sized park occupied by teenagers mostly dressed in black.

      DOWNTOWN

      I can’t sketch Victoria’s charms without including the Empress Hotel, designed by Francis Ratz Rattenbury, the same architect responsible for the

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