Uplands, Greater Victoria

Uplands, Victoria (known locally as "the Uplands") is a 188.17-hectare (465.0-acre) neighbourhood located in the north east part of the District of Oak Bay, a suburb adjacent to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, and situated between the neighbourhoods of Cadboro Bay and North Oak Bay. Uplands is a prominent example of a garden suburb designed in the early part of the 20th century.

Map of Uplands, where the yellow line indicates the boundary. Source: The Corporation of the District of Oak Bay.  “Consolidated Zoning Map, as of November 13, 2012” Bylaw 3531, Zoning Bylaw, 1986.  

In 1907, the developers of Uplands, John A, Robert and Dawson Turner previously cattle and horse ranchers from Turner Valley Alberta and originally Scotland purchased the area for the sum of $275,000 and hired the leading landscape architect John Olmsted as the designer. Olmsted designed famous neighbourhoods and parks in North America. The Uplands of today is faithful to Olmsted's vision: an elegant neighbourhood with estate-sized lots, serpentine streets and the signature green, globed, ornate lamp posts. The houses are built to impress and the sprawling gardens are carefully manicured. For John Olmsted personally, of all his subdivision projects, Uplands was “unquestionably the best adapted to obtain the greatest amount of landscape beauty in connection with suburban development.”[1]

Uplands has a seaside setting and has within its boundaries the large Uplands Park. Uplands Park is not the manicured park of flower beds and walks that might be expected in such a meticulously designed garden suburb. Rather, it is a wild, seaside expanse of jagged rock crags, trees stunted and shaped by the wind, lonely heaths and dramatic ocean vistas. The wildness of Uplands Park contrasts sharply with the manicured lawns and flower beds in front of the mansions that line Beach Drive, the main road through Uplands.

In keeping with its seaside location, the Royal Victoria Yacht Club is located within the Uplands, and is the oldest yacht club in British Columbia.[2]

National Historic Site Designation

On 19 August 2019, the minister responsible for Parks Canada announced that the Government of Canada had designated Uplands (Oak Bay, BC) as a National Historic Site.[3][4] Parks Canada says that Uplands “is an exceptional example of subdivision design and planning”.  John C. Olmsted's design is “among the finest works of a renowned landscape architect” which “changed the way suburbs were planned well into the 20th century.”  It also notes that a number of the houses in Uplands were designed by Canada's and British Columbia's leading architects.[5]

Oak Bay council voted on 13 October 2020 to install at Midland Circle a commemorative plaque to be provided by Parks Canada, in recognition of Uplands as a National Historic Site.[6]  

Physical environment

The bedrock under Uplands is quartz diorite gneiss.[7][8] Soils are well drained sandy loams of the Cadboro and Langford series (Cd-L or Lsl), or poorly drained sandy clay loams of the Tolmie series (Tscl); all have thick dark topsoils. In near-shore areas the soils are more stony and are mapped as Langford-Rough Stony complex(L-Rs).[9]

References
  1. "Brighton Press — Imagining Uplands". Archived from the original on 2018-01-14.
  2. "A Brief History of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club".
  3. Canada, Parks (2019-08-23). "Government of Canada Announces Seven National Historic Designations". gcnws. Retrieved 2021-02-18.
  4. "Uplands neighbourhood designated a national historic site". Oak Bay News. 2019-08-19. Retrieved 2021-02-18.
  5. Parks Canada, Government of Canada (2020-07-23). "Uplands, Oak Bay, British Columbia - History and culture". www.pc.gc.ca. Retrieved 2021-02-18.
  6. "Council Meeting". The District of Oak Bay. Retrieved 2021-02-18.
  7. http://geoscan.nrcan.gc.ca/starweb/geoscan/servlet.starweb?path=geoscan/fulle.web&search1=R=100510 Geology of the Victoria and Saanich Map Areas, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. C.H. Clapp, 1913
  8. http://geogratis.gc.ca/api/en/nrcan-rncan/ess-sst/9a560996-5e0d-5fea-b0dc-330a7509f574.html Geology, Victoria, west of sixth meridian. J.E. Muller, 1983
  9. http://sis.agr.gc.ca/cansis/publications/surveys/bc/bc6/index.html Soil Survey of Southeast Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, British Columbia. J.H. Day et al, 1959

48.4485°N 123.3051°W / 48.4485; -123.3051


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