Why you'd want to live in View Royal
View Royal was first settled in the 1850s when Dr. John Helmcken purchased 640 acres of farmland from the Hudson’s Bay Company. Incorporated in 1988, modern-day View Royal is a predominantly residential area. At the foot of present-day Helmcken Road, a concrete marker and bronze plaque commemorate the days when crews from passing ships replenished their water supplies from a natural spring. View Royal is one of the West Shore municipalities of Langford, Colwood, Metchosin, and the Highlands, located to the west of Victoria. This region is known as the Western Communities, or West Shore, and stretches from Esquimalt Harbour to Rocky Point, along the shoreline of Juan de Fuca Strait. The Gorge in Victoria is a meandering waterway that leads from Victoria’s upper harbour through a landscaped urban environment, before finally widening into Portage Inlet in View Royal. A daily tidal surge occasionally creates near-whitewater conditions in the narrowest passages, a thrill that kayakers will particularly enjoy. Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse, was one of Vancouver Island’s first European farming communities, established in 1853 along Victoria’s Gorge Waterway. The Puget Sound Agricultural Company, owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company, established farms to reduce the need for importing goods from abroad, and to meet the Hudson’s Bay Company’s obligations to Britain to support colonization. Today, the original Georgian Manor house, partly built on the old post-and-beam design, still stands amid fields and gardens, and across the bridge, the oldest remaining schoolhouse in western Canada gives children re-enactment opportunities to experience Victorian attitudes about schooling! View Royal overlooks Portage Inlet at the end of the Gorge Waterway, a meandering fjord popular with canoeists and kayakers. Peaceful Portage Park was a traditional First Nations shortcut from Esquimalt Harbour to Portage Inlet and Victoria Harbour. Weary travellers have been stopping at the Six Mile Pub for more than 135 years. via vancouveisland.com