PORT ANGELES — The provincial capital across the Strait of Juan de Fuca has a past riddled with quirky, interesting and some not-so-savory characters.
Ross Crockford, editor of Monday Magazine in Victoria, told an audience of about 65 attending Clallam County Historical Society’s January History Tales session Sunday about Victoria’s hidden history — occasionally drawing giggles and gasps.
Talking in tidbits, Crockford gave what he called a “quick and dirty history of Victoria.”
The geological formation of Vancouver Island was important because several smaller rocks smashed into the larger one making up most of the island and creating an earthquake-prone section.
That is the lower portion — where the city of Victoria and most of the population reside.
Crockford said he and other journalists have attempted to get seismic reports on the Parliament Buildings to no avail.
“There is actually special legislation forbidding its release to the public,” he said.
Although a private building, another especially vulnerable structure, Crockford said, could be the Fairmont Empress hotel — one of the city’s most famous landmarks.
The hotel was built on mud flats which were filled in with gravel to raise it above the harbor level to street level, he said.
“They actually drove wooden pilings down into the gravel,” he said.
“If you go into the sub basements of the Empress, you can still see some of those pilings encased in cement — and that is actually what the building sits on.”
As with many other famous landmarks, there are many rumors that fly, Crockford said.
“There are all sorts of stories that there are caverns down [in the areas filled in with gravel],” he said.
“They say the job was not quite completed and some people swear they’ve heard seals barking as they move through those caverns.”
Crockford also talked about some of the characters who have passed through the town — as well as their untimely ends.
The hotel, which was constructed by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1904, was designed by Francis Rattenbury, who also was the architect on several other iconic Victoria buildings, including the Parliamentary Buildings.
Rattenbury had a more sordid end, though, Crockford said.
He left his wife, Florence, for a flapper, Alma Pakenham, in 1923.
They moved permanently to England in 1929.
Pakenham later took up with the couple’s chauffeur, and in 1935 Rattenbury was found bludgeoned to death in his English home, Crockford said.
“The chauffeur was eventually acquitted on appeal and he only died a few years ago — but every once in a while a journalist would ask him what really happened,” Crockford said.
“But he kept quiet until the very end so we’ll never know.”
Crockford also showed on video a film by William Harbeck, who made travel films in the early 1900s.
Harbeck strapped a camera to the front of a streetcar and people milling around town, people in horse-drawn carriages and the construction of the Empress are all visible in the film.
Harbeck and his wife lived in San Francisco and he went to study filmmaking in France.
“But he made the mistake of booking his return voyage on the Titanic,” Crockford said.
Harbeck and a French model he was traveling with were both killed when the ship sank, Crockford said.
Crockford writes regularly about Victoria. His blog can be found at http://unknownvictoria.blogspot.com.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladaily news.com.