A day of fun in Victoria

A beautiful morning in Victoria.

Up bright and early for my day of fun in Victoria, I made my way down to the British Columbia Parliament building, for a free tour. Unlike in Ottawa there's no need to sign up for this one, you can just rock up and spend the next 45 minutes being guided round the building, with a very interesting commentary from the guide  (Georgia, in our case). Did you know, for example, in historical painting, an animal with it's tongue out signifies the greater power? She also told us all about how the constitutional monarchy works (which, yes, I should already know). And about the history of Victoria and how it was once its own province before joining with British Columbia and then joining the country of Canada three years after it was inaugurated. Also about how, if you peeled all the gold leaf off the walls in the state entrance chamber, the total would only be enough to make you a single gold coin. Yada yada yada... I do love a good factoid, though!

And I particularly enjoyed the exhibition about suffrage in Canada, celebrating 100 years of the women's vote and what women in Canada have achieved in politics since.

After lunch (a long, lazy lunch at a local sushi tapas bar, oops), I dallied with the idea of going back to the Parliament for question time, just because it had been so interesting (and banterous) at the national Parliament in Ottawa. But I'd left it too late so instead continued my day of fun at the Royal BC Museum (fact: given the Royal designation by Liz during her visit in 1992).

This museum is awesome. I really regretted having taken so long over lunch as I kind of had to rush round it and the exhibitions were so good! I started with the exhibition curated by First Nations peoples, which begins with a tutorial in the many languages they speak or have spoken. Sadly some of the languages are currently "sleeping". One of the impacts of colonisation, and the policies of assimilation in the 19th century, meant that native languages, among many other aspects of First Nation culture, were repressed, so many of them are not currently spoken.

The stories and stats from this period in history were numbing to me. Funnily enough, we are taught nothing about our colonial history at school in the UK and it is rarely discussed. It is only through my travels that I've begun to have a small understanding of the impacts of the imperialist British conquerors, and they are sobering and frankly something I feel deeply ashamed of. I struggle with it really, because what I do know is hardly comprehensive but definitely at odds with my otherwise strong sense of pride in being British and the good values that we expound today. But I feel I would be much prouder if as a country we were taught more about colonialism and its atrocities. Our generation shouldn't feel guilty about it but when you find out what today's society has grown from, and some of the perpetual consequences... well, I think we would all benefit from lessons learned.

One of the museum's current temporary exhibitions is in Terry Fox and his Marathon of Hope. Oh. My. God. Yes. More people need to know about Terry Fox! So let me tell you what I learned.