Victoria

Prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the late 1700s, the Victoria area was home to several communities of Coast Salish peoples, including the Songish (Songhees). The Spanish, British and Americans took up the exploration of the northwest coast of North America in earnest in the 1770s. Spanish sailors visited Esquimalt harbour (within the modern Capital Regional District) in 1790 and again in 1792. Founded by James Douglas in 1843 as Fort Camosun (after the "camosack", a type of wild lily native to southern Vancouver Island), a Hudson's Bay Company post, the settlement was later called Fort Victoria. The Songhees established a village across the harbour from the fort. The Songhees' village was later moved north of Esquimalt. When Vancouver Island became a crown colony, a town was laid out on the site and made the capital of the colony. With the discovery of gold on the British Columbia mainland in 1858, Victoria became the port, supply base, and outfitting centre for miners on their way to the Cariboo gold fields. In 1866 when the island was politically united with the mainland, Victoria remained the capital of the colony and became the provincial capital in 1871.

Victoria was incorporated as a city in 1862. In 1865 Esquimalt was made the North Pacific home of the Royal Navy, and remains Canada's west coast naval base.

In 1886, with the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway terminus on Burrard Inlet, Victoria's position as the commercial centre of British Columbia was irrevocably lost to the City of Vancouver. The city subsequently began cultivating an image of genteel civility within its natural setting, an image aided by the impressions of visitors such as Rudyard Kipling, the opening of the popular Butchart Gardens in 1904 and the construction of the Empress Hotel by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1908. Robert Dunsmuir, a leading industrialist whose interests included coal mines and a railway on Vancouver Island, constructed Craigdarroch Castle in the Rockland area, near the official residence of the province's lieutenant-governor. His son James Dunsmuir became premier and subsequently lieutenant-governor of the province and built his own grand residence at Hatley Park (used for several decades as a military college, now Royal Roads University) in the present City of Colwood.

A real estate and development boom ended just before the World War I, leaving Victoria with a large stock of Edwardian public, commercial and residential structures that have greatly contributed to the City's character. A number of municipalities surrounding Victoria were incorporated during this period, including the Township of Esquimalt, the District of Oak Bay and several municipalities on the Saanich peninsula. Since World War II Victoria has seen relatively steady growth, becoming home to two major universities. Since the 1980s the western suburbs have been incorporated as new municipalities, such as the City of Colwood and the City of Langford. The thirteen municipal governments within the Capital Regional District afford the residents a great deal of local autonomy, although there are periodic calls for amalgamation.