When I was 21 (and we won't say when that was!) I travelled to British Columbia for the first time. My college roommate was getting married and I was the Maid of Honour.  I stayed with her parents in the lovely Oak Bay neighbourhood of Victoria.  Although I had been warned by my land-locked Manitoba friends that it ALWAYS rained on Vancouver Island, instead I enjoyed two weeks of blissfully sunny, hot weather and was smitten with the lush, flower-bedecked city and the fresh sea air.  I knew then that somehow, someday I would live in BC.  As it happens I married one of the groom's men who was from BC so I got my wish!

During that first visit I explored the Provincial Museum, Craigdarroch Castle and the sights of downtown.  I toured Butchart Gardens, picked blackberries and swam in the Pacific waters at Willows Beach.  But what I didn't know at that time was that, tucked among the trees just around the corner from my friend's home, there stood the oldest continuously inhabited house in BC's capital.

The Tod House was begun in 1850 by John Tod, a retired Hudson's Bay fur trader who went on to become part of the Executive Council for the new Colony of British Columbia.  He built the timber frame house in three phases over the next 20 years. After Tod's death in 1882 his daughter and her husband lived here until the 1890's and over the succeeding years the house has had several owners and tenants.  In 1975 the house was purchased by the Municipality of Oak Bay and designated as a Heritage Structure.  However, the house is not a museum but is rented out as a family home.

In a few days I am going to Victoria to help my 21 year-old daughter move into her first apartment. Like myself at that age she is smitten with island life and I can't wait to show her some of my favourite sights - including Tod House, the next lot in my Historic Canada Series.