Stop 1 Inner Harbour Walkway

Begin your tour at Bastion Square, once the location of the city’s jail and courthouse that opened in 1853. This historic site served as important social and cultural centre for settlers at the time and was part of the former Fort Victoria founded by the Hudson’s Bay company in 1843. The plaque is mounted outside the old Victoria Customs House on the west side of wharf street. The first Legislative assembly met at the fort in 1849.

Adjacent to Bastion Square is the Victoria Harbour tide station, established in 1905 to monitor and collect data on tide and water levels at regular intervals. The station provides valuable information on environmental factors such as water temperature, salinity, current speed and direction, in addition to monitoring tides. The highest recorded water level of 3.76 metres was recorded on January 1, 2003, while the lowest recorded water level is –0.46 metres recorded on June 20, 1951.

The tide station’s Information collected is an important resource to generate tide tables and forecasts for boaters, the general public and scientists alike. With future projections of relative sea level rise, the site estimates an increase of 84 cm in water level by the year 2100. This gauge has recorded 32 historic tsunamis. The highest recorded event was generated from a Mw 9.2 earthquake in Alaska in 1964 with a maximum recorded a wave crest of 70cm and a trough of 77cm