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mikejpc
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| | | Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels. < Reply # 2850 on 11/23/2009 5:09 AM > | Reply with Quote
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| KublaKhan
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland Total Likes: 207 likes
With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.
| | | Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels. < Reply # 2854 on 11/23/2009 5:22 PM > | Reply with Quote
| | | Posted by yellow_wallpaper
Awesome picture! From my understanding, they were passages from business basements to the docks. They made transporting things *cough* Opium *cough* a lot easier. I am curious though... Was the water level different back then? I'm guessing this was built before the bog was filled & subsequent Empress built?
| Once again, there was no need to smuggle opium into the city, as it was perfectly legal to produce it. Opium was made in Victoria. There were legal opium dens. It was not a crime to manufacture/possess/sell/use opium. That came later, and after much of the tunnels system was already in place. Given the volume of cash currency/bonds/certificates for exchange, etc. that came into and out of the city, and given that it was not exactly safe to move said items above ground from point A to point B, the tunnels were most certainly used to move this stuff underground. There was also a pretty decent trade in indentured labour...human smuggling was reasonably common (as it is to this day...here, in Victoria. Yes...human trafficking in Victoria in this present day and age). However, given that as a port city people were coming and going at all hours...ships were sailing into harbour on every hour of the day going for months...thousands of people passed through Victoria with no intention of staying...it's doubtful that the tunnels would have been used solely for this purpose. There's the story of men getting drunk in the saloon, and then waking up hours later way out at sea. Imagine that...you're at the bar sucking back pints, getting tapped on the bean, being shuttled underground from the saloon to a waiting ship. And then off you go to some other port. And you wake up with a hangover, and the floor is rolling around under your feet, and you look out the window and there's nothing but water as far as the eye can see. You're in the Navy now, sailor. The location of this entrance (wall pic) is interesting in that it generally offers point A in a straight line all the way up to what was then the Fort Victoria enclosure, the old courthouse, etc. Also, the hole in the wall is a right-angle entrance from a 'rumoured' tunnel that begins 'somewhere' on Store Street and carries on down Warf Street. You can see evidence of this tunnel plainly enough, and with little effort, and that this tunnel eventually makes it's way to the old Customs house. And so on and so on.
| "The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible." --Don DeLillo PICS |
| KublaKhan
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland Total Likes: 207 likes
With Satan, it's always gimmie, gimmie.
| | | Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels. < Reply # 2857 on 11/24/2009 6:15 PM > | Reply with Quote
| | | Posted by Mowgli-dog Surely there would have been roadwork between the time of building construction and these photos. I don't think they would leave an unused cavity under the road. Similar to unused under sidewalk areaways they would have been filled in during road works/repairs. I would think the easiest way to find out would be to check the basement of the building directly behind, see if theres an old door. Who occupies that building anyway?
| I think it's occupied by a condo developer. Show room sort of deal. Also, in/around that building stands the oldest water well in the city (maybe I'm mistaken on this detail, but there's a pretty fancy-looking historical thingy in the lobby of one of these buildings) I digress... John Adams told me of a summer of his youth (one might consider him Victoria's first modern era urban explorer) where he and a friend actually made their way INSIDE this place. The real kicker is the restaurant immediately beside that wall...the Warfside (or whatever it's called...I've never been into tourist cuisine, even when I was cooking it) and the various stories that float around re: spooky basement full of rats and vermin and filth and ghosts and mysterious Chinese calligraphy posted on the entrance to some sort of tunnel system, etc. Anyway...stand directly over the spot where this hole-in-the-wall thing exists, and follow the line of the road, and note that it corresponds with a tunnel directly under the sidewalk that extends from the old Customs House to what would have been the Johnson Creek Ravine. Carry on.
| "The truth is knowable. But probably not, ever, incontrovertible." --Don DeLillo PICS |
| SteamPunk
Location: Sailing the seas of sleaze. Gender: Neither Total Likes: 17 likes
| | | Re: Under the Garden City: Victoria B.C. secret tunnels. < Reply # 2858 on 11/24/2009 7:32 PM > | Reply with Quote
| | | Posted by Mowgli-dog I don't think they would leave an unused cavity under the road. Similar to unused under sidewalk area ways they would have been filled in during road works/repairs.
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Not always, one of my old squats under ..er...Vancouver was a large cavity under an industrial roadway. I used it for several years, on and off. It was eventually burnt down, buy some unruly asshole squatter who thought it would be a good idea to have a fire under there. Well...the road above was shut down for days, while repairs were made, and the city filled the space in...and has been sealed since. I remember reading about it in the paper, and being delighted that a reminder of a place in my trouble past was gone.
| I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too! |
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