Oak Bay, British Columbia


Oak Bay is a municipality incorporated in 1906 that is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, in the Canadian province of British Columbia, Canada. A member municipality of the Capital Regional District, it is a community east of and adjacent to the city of Victoria. It is one of the 13 municipalities of Greater Victoria.

Notable features

Oak Bay has several notable features which include:
Oak Bay's motto, from its coat of arms, is Sub Quercu Felicitas, Latin for "happiness under the oaks".

History

Oak Bay is the unceded territory of the Coast Salish people of the Songhees First Nation. Evidence of their ancient settlements has been found along local shores, including Willows Beach, where an ancient Lkwungen seaport known as Sitchanalth was centred around the mouth of the river commonly known as Bowker Creek. Sitchanalth is hypothesized to have been destroyed by the great Tsunami of 930 AD.
Oak Bay takes its name from the Garry oak tree, which are found throughout the region, and also the name of the large bay on the eastern shore of the municipality, fronting onto Willows Beach.
John Tod in 1850 built on a 109-acre farm what is today the oldest continuously-occupied home in Western Canada. John Tod was HBC Chief Fur Trader for Kamloops, one of the original appointed members of BC's Legislative Council.
Originally developed as a middle class streetcar suburb of Victoria, Oak Bay was incorporated as a municipality in 1906. Its first Council included Francis Rattenbury, the architect who designed the Legislative Buildings and Empress Hotel located on the inner harbour in Victoria. Rattenbury's own home on Beach Drive is now used as the junior campus for Glenlyon Norfolk School. In 1912 the former farm lands of the Hudson's Bay Company were subdivided to create the Uplands area, but development was hampered by World War I. After the war, development of expensive homes in the Uplands was accompanied by the construction of many more modest dwellings in the Estevan, Willows and South Oak Bay neighbourhoods.
The Victoria Golf Club is located in South Oak Bay. It was founded in 1893, and is the second oldest golf course west of the Great Lakes. It is a 6120 yard links course on the ocean side, and claims to be the oldest golf course in Canada still on its original site. The course is reported to be haunted.
The Royal Victoria Yacht Club was formed on June 8, 1892, and moved in 1912 to its current location, at the location of the old Hudson's Bay Company cattle wharf.
The Victoria Cougars won the 1925 Stanley Cup at the Patrick Arena in Oak Bay, the arena was destroyed by fire in 1929, the Victoria Cougars are today the Detroit Red Wings.
The Oak Bay Marina was built in 1962 and officially opened in April 1964. It replaced the Oak Bay Boat House built in 1893. The breakwater was built in 1959 and funded by the federal government.
There have reportedly been sightings of a sea monster known as the Cadborosaurus off Oak Bay, with modern-day accounts and ones dating back to first nations accounts.

Demographics

Film studio

During the 1930s, Oak Bay, British Columbia was the original "Hollywood North" when fourteen films were produced in Greater Victoria between 1933 and 1938. In 1932 Kenneth James Bishop leased an off-season exhibition building on the Willows Fairgrounds was converted to a film sound stage to produce films for the British film quota system under the Cinematograph Films Act 1927 and films were produced with Hollywood stars such as Lillian Gish, Paul Muni, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Edith Fellows, Charles Starrett and Rin Tin Tin Jr. Film production was curtailed when the Cinematograph Films Act 1938 specified only British made films would be included in the quota.
The Willows Park Studio films include:
1933
1935
1936
1937
1938
1942

Education

Oak Bay is the home of the University of Victoria, a public research institution in the Capital Region District. While much of the University of Victoria campus is located within the District of Oak Bay, parts of it are also located in the adjacent municipality of Saanich.
Oak Bay also hosts a number of academically focused public and private secondary schools which are part of School District 61. There is one public elementary school, Willows Elementary, one public middle school, Monterey Middle School, and one public high school, Oak Bay High School, with the largest student population in the Greater Victoria School District. Residents in the South Oak Bay area may also register their children at the nearby Margaret Jenkins Elementary. In addition to public schools, there are two private schools located in Oak Bay, Glenlyon Norfolk School and St. Michael's University School.

Neighbourhoods

Parks