Day 38 - UVic

Hello friends, today was a wonderful day with a lot of wonderful people, and there's a lot to talk about. If I can summarize it all, I would saw that Victoria is such an amazing city and I loved every moment of today!

Our first stop of the day was by the British Columbia Legislature Building, which was a fantastic looking building (with not 1, but 2 fountains), where we met up with Eric and Rebecca, some of Vanessa's old friend from Mac. They came by with their 8-month-old daughter Thea and showed us around a substantial amount of DT Victoria. We walked by the ocean side for a while, and then stopped by the Mile Zero monument. The significance of this monument is that it is Mile 0 (i.e. the beginning) of the Trans Canada Highway, meaning that at this point I have driven the entirety of the highway on my journey, which is surreal to think about. We then walked into Beacon Hill Park, and the first thing I saw was the World's Tallest Totem Pole (127' 7"); very great start to the day so far. The park itself was beautiful, with so many colourful flowers, pretty fountains, and just an overall great landscape. As we were walking through the park, we made it to the Tyre Petting Zoo, where we saw a lot of goats, peacocks, chickens and herons. At this point, a friend of mine named Ram joined us on our adventure. We continued walking until we stopped by the Royal BC Museum and checked out the replica whale skeleton, before walking Eric and Rebecca home. After all that walking and exploring, we arranged to go have lunch with a bunch of friends at a place in Chinatown called "Jam Cafe". We met up with some old friends (Darren Gervais-Harrison and Brock Poesiat), and I also made a new friend (Leanne Farmer), and we had such a good time. The food was also amazing, I had one of the best omelettes of my life! Random fun fact: Victoria has the oldest Chinatown in Canada.

After a full morning, we made it to the University of Victoria (UVic) and met up with Eric Power and Liam Scott-Moncrieff, who were nice enough to show us around. They were both really great about informing me about so many things at UVic, and I learned so much about their school. I learned that back in the day, part of their Student Union Building used to be the Engineering building, but now they have 3 of their own. I also learned that, because of the environmentally friendly mentality of the university, the only thing that is preventing them from expanding one of their buildings is that there is a single tree in the way that the university is not willing to remove, which shows ridiculous dedication by the university (to a fault in my opinion). There is also a "Wall" of buildings that basically separates the Engineering buildings from the rest of campus, and there is only a single path that allows you to go to the Engineering side of campus through The Wall called the "Breezeway". As we were walking through the quad, I was amazed at the tremendous amount of green space that UVic has; there are gardens all over the place, a lot of open areas, and just so much nature all around. UVic apparently has a policy in place regarding their green space, indicating how seriously the university takes it. A fairly well kept secret on their campus is a garden called Finnerty Gardens, which is open to the public (despite the fact that it looks sealed off) and has several endangered species that are protected inside. On a wholesome note, they have an observatory on their campus with a smiley face on it.

Similar to Waterloo though, UVic has a road that surrounds their entire campus called Ring Road. Another very strong similarity that UVic shares with Waterloo is their co-op system (which is significantly less strict than Waterloo's, but is based off of it), meaning that they also have 2 Societies (Stream A and Stream B). We stopped by their EngSoc office, and they just have a lot of fantastic things in there. They let me try on a hardhat with viking horns on it (for context, their mascot in called Victor the Viking), and carry a giant wooden hammer called "Debugging Tool". They also had stolen the UBC-O's flag, so I managed to sneak a picture with it and wear it as a cape for a solid part of the tour. Our last stop on the tour was on the 6th floor of their Engineering and Computer Science Building, which overlooked a platform where students had made an airport floor plan out of masking tape (there was also a Christmas tree there for some reason). The significance/tradition with this is that by the end of the term, students would make paper airplanes out of their assignments and throw them at the platform. One funny thing though is that the walls around the platform were slightly perforated, so a lot of paper planes would get stuck to the wall and it would eventually be covered with them, which is awesome. Vanessa and I then hung out with a bunch of cool UVic students in their EngSoc office and had some chats, watched some YouTube videos, and Ram even serenaded Vanessa and I by playing "You Got a Friend in Me" on the guitar (Vanessa almost cried). It was just a lot of fun hanging out with them all.

I then dropped Vanessa off at home so she can rest, and I went to visit Fisherman's Wharf, which is a floating pier with a bunch of restaurants, stores, and some pretty unique looking boats. The main goal of visiting this place was to see the seals, but after spending 2 hours there I unfortunately never saw any; despite that, I had a lot of fun hanging out there and I even got some ice cream, so it wasn't too bad. I went back home for a bit to pick up Vanessa and Emily, and we all went for a walk on the Songhees Walkway overlooking the ocean. This was a gorgeous location and had some amazing views of the water and the mountains. We then went to meet up with some friends for wings night at the Flying Otter in DT Victoria, and it was such a fun time having most of the people that we'd interacted with today with us at dinner. After eating, we walked through a good chunk of DT on our way to Phillip's Brewery where we hung out for about an hour of so, and then we went to a place called "The Churchill". On our walk, I actually managed to see a seal swimming through the water, so I now felt like my day was complete. I also saw Bastion Square, which is apparently where a lot of the lynching used to happen back in the day. Darren had been telling us ghost stories that he had heard about Victoria over time, which were pretty entertaining and a bit scary for some of us (cough cough Vanessa).

After a long day hanging out with friends and exploring the city, we called it a night and started making our way to the car. It was at this moment that I realized that Victoria isn't just a beautiful city during the day, but at night it's a whole other level. The legislature was completely lit up at night, and so much of the city was shining so vividly, and it was just breathtaking. Today was fantastic, and it was really a result of everyone that was involved in it, so I am very thankful to everyone who came to see us today. Tomorrow we get back on the ferry and make our way to Burnaby/Surrey for the day!

UVic: www.instagram.com/p/Bjt8e3vFZkO