Pacific Undersea Gardens          

(250) 382-5717

490 Belleville Street  (Located in the Inner Harbor of Downtown Victoria)

Victoria, BC

Canada  V8V 1W9                

The Pacific Undersea Gardens are reached by a gently sloping stairway that leads down to this unique marine observatory's glass-enclosed viewing area, where visitors can observe the the underwater world of the Pacific Northwest.  Some 5,000 creatures reside in these protected waters. Sharks, wolf eels, poisonous stonefish, sea anemones, starfish, sturgeon, and salmon are just a few of the organisms that make their homes here. Every hour there is an underwater show in which a diver-naturalist explains a variety of the undersea dwellers.  Injured seals and orphaned seal pups are cared for in holding pens alongside the observatory as part of a provincial marine-mammal rescue program

Centre of the Universe         

(250) 363-8262

5071 West Saanich Road

Victoria, BC

Canada  V9E 2E7     

The Centre of the Universe is the new interpretive centre at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory offering spectacular views of Victoria and the sky. It features interactive exhibits that contribute toward an understanding of the world of astronomy. The Centre of the Universe is part of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, the scientific institute within the National Research Council of Canada.

British Columbia Forest Discovery Centre 

(250) 715-1113

2892 Drinkwater Road

Duncan, BC

Canada  V9L 6C2     

Museum and interpretive center focus on the history and development of a positive relationship with the forest.   The BC Forest Discovery Centre offers interactive and educational activities for the whole family. Ride a 1920s steam train. Explore 100 acres of indoor and outdoor exhibits and walk the forest and nature trails. Spend a day of discovery.

Beacon Hill Park and Children's Farm

The city's showpiece garden dating from the 1890's features formal gardens and wildflower meadows, a bandshell, a wildfowl sanctuary, picnic tables, tennis courts, playgrounds, a 100-year-old cricket pitch, and a children's petting zoo.

Victoria Bug Zoo     

(250) 384-2847

631 Courtney Street

Victoria, BC

Canada  V8W 1B8     

The Victoria Bug Zoo is home to arachnids scorpions, tarantulas, mantids, centipedes, Giant stick insects, beetles, huge grasshoppers   Tour guides provide interesting facts and commentary.

Craigdarroch Castle

1050 Joan Crescent

Bus 11

250/592-5323

The four-story, 39-room Highland-style castle is topped with stone turrets and chimneys and filled with the opulent Victorian splendor of the period.   Persian carpets, stained-glass windows, paintings, and sculptures are all displayed.   The nonprofit society that runs Craigdarroch does an excellent job showcasing the castle. Visitors are provided with a self-tour booklet; every floor also has volunteer docents to answer questions. 

Point Ellice House 

(250) 380-6506

2616 Pleasant Street  

Point Ellice was the 19th century home of Peter and Caroline O'Reilly and their 4 children.. The house became a provincial historic site in 1974. Point Ellice is considered to have Western Canada's finest collection of Victorian homes in their original setting. High Tea Service daily. Reconstructed Victorian Style gardens dating back to the 1850's, Ferry Service is available from the Inner Harbor.

Helmcken House 

 (250) 361-0021

10 Elliot Street

Victoria, BC

Canada  V8V 2P8     

The oldest historic house in the Province of British Columbia.  Built in 1852, Helmcken House belonged to Dr. Helmcken, pioneer doctor and Legislator. The house rests on its original building site and is the oldest house in the province. Audio tours take visitors back in time, traveling through the originally furnished rooms.

Anne Hathaway's Thatched Cottage           

 (250) 388-4353

1- (866) 388-4353 (toll free)

429 Lampson Street

Victoria, BC

Canada  V9A 5Y9     

William Shakespeare’s wife’s birthplace, located on 5 acres of the English Inn & Resort country garden estate. and authentically furnished with period pieces. The Enhanced Cottage Tour Experience is a theatrical production, which incorporates the cottage tour with live vignettes of Shakespeare’s most popular literary works.

Fort Rodd Hill National Historic Site    

(250) 478-5849

603 Fort Rodd Hill Road

Victoria, BC

Canada  V9C 2W8    

A working lighthouse - Canada's oldest west coast lighthouse original guns, underground bunkers, and camouflaged searchlight emplacements

Capilano Suspension Bridge Ltd.      

 (604) 985-7474

3735 Capilano Road

North Vancouver, BC

Canada  V7R 4J1      

 This historic theme park is Vancouver's oldest visitor attraction.

450 feet across and 230 feet above Capilano River is the world’s greatest suspension footbridge.  It is available for crossing.

Victoria Butterfly Gardens          

(250) 652-3822

Toll Free: (877) 722-0272

1461 Benvenuto Avenue

Brentwood Bay, BC

Canada  V8M 1R3     

Hundreds of exotic butterflies fly free in a 12,000 square-foot indoor tropical rainforest.  Witness the entire life cycle.  Spectacular flowering plants and foliage, fascinating birds, waterfalls and a stream with fish all contribute to make this a truly memorable experience.

Galey Farms   

(250) 477-5713

4150 Blenkinsop Road

Victoria, BC

Canada  V8X 2C4     

This third generation family farm grows over 50 varieties of vegetables and berries. Scarecrow Country Maze, now one of Canada's leading mazes, is in place with more exhibits planned. The maze opens in July and runs through summer.

British Columbia Forest Discovery Centre 

(250) 715-1113

2892 Drinkwater Road

Duncan, BC

Canada  V9L 6C2     

Museum and interpretive center on the history and development of our relationship with the forest offers interactive and educational activities for the whole family. Ride a 1920s steam train. Explore 100 acres of indoor and outdoor exhibits and walk the forest and nature trails.

Art Gallery of Greater Victoria           

(250) 384-4101

1040 Moss Street

Victoria, BC

Canada  V8V 4P1     

The AGGV, Victoria's public gallery, is a keeper of treasures with over 15,000 works in the permanent gallery.  Six contemporary wings feature more than 30 exhibitors a year with associated programs and special events. See the work of Emily Carr on permanent display, a king-sized doll house, North America's only Shinto Shrine which complements the finest collection of Japanese art in Canada, and an impressive range of contemporary art.

Horticulture Centre of the Pacific

 (250) 479-6162

505 Quayle Road

Victoria, BC

Canada  V9E 2J7      

Includes over five acres of gardens set in a conservation park setting with nature trails, wetlands and bird watching sites. Victoria's mild winters allow for year round gardening. Tour the Winter Garden, Japanese style Takata Garden, Zen Garden, rhododendron garden, heather garden and trail dahlia garden.

National Geographic IMAX Theatre  

 (250) 480-4887

675 Belleville Street

Victoria, BC

Canada  V8W 1A1     

The most powerful and involving film experience: six story tall screen with 12,000 watts of surround sound. Call 250-953-IMAX for showtimes. Open daily from 10-8 (9pm June-September).

Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre 

(604) 659-3474

Avison Way, Stanley Park

Vancouver, BC

Canada  V6B 3X8      

Join more than 60,000 aquatic creatures at the Vancouver Aquarium and find out why it was voted BC's best-loved attraction. Arctic beluga whales, giant Amazon arapaimas, tropical reef sharks and the fascinating dolphins, sea lions and otters of Canada's wild west coast.

Miniature World  

 (250) 385-9731

649 Humboldt Street

Victoria, BC

Canada  V8W 1A7       

Miniature World is billed as the greatest little show on earth! Over 85 great little attractions that include the world’s smallest operational sawmill, two of the largest doll houses, and one of the longest model railways.

Gabriola Museum

Gabriola Island

(247-9987)

This community museum tells the story of life on a small island in the Strait of Georgia, the Northwest Coast of North America its climate, plants and animals; its significance to its original Salish inhabitants; its discovery by Spanish explorers; and its later settlement by those who believed that small is beautiful.

Helmcken House

675 Belleville Street

(387-4697)

Former home of J.S. Helmcken, pioneer doctor and contains one of Canada's finest nineteenth century medical collections.

Kaatza Station Museum

Lake Cowichan

(749-6142)

Community museum, housed in a 1913 Esquimalt and Nanaimo railway station. Features include pioneer life display highlighted by a 12' high mural at the "foot" of Cowichan Lake. Displays include a store, post office, mining tunnel and a tribute to the area’s logging heritage. Outdoor display includes a 1918 CN wooden caboose, a 1916 CN wooden boxcar and a 1927 Shay locomotive. Extensive archives for research available in the museum.

Kwagiulth Museum & Cultural Centre

Quathiaski Cove

(285-3733)

Kwagiulth potlatch artifacts and sacred ceremonial regalia; 19th Century photographs of native life, "Touchable" collection. Masks, coppers, whistles, rattles, headdresses, neck rings, costumes, ceremonial props, totem poles and house posts.

Malaspina University College Museum

900 5th Street, Nanaimo

(753-3245 local 2315)

Nonvascular and vascular pressed plants of Pacific Northwest; invertebrate and vertebrate animals with special emphasis on seashells of world; Birds and Mammals of Vancouver Island. Open display area. Reference collection available for student, community and inter-institutional use.

Royal British Columbia Museum

675 Belleville Street, (387-3701)

One of the world's best regional museums, the Royal B.C. 's mandate is to present the land and the people of coastal British Columbia. The Natural History Gallery shows the coastal flora, fauna, and geography from the Ice Age to the present; it includes dioramas of a temperate rainforest, a seacoast, an underground ecology of giant bugs, and (particularly appealing to children) a live tidal pool with sea stars and anemones.  The museum also has an I-Max theater showing an ever-changing variety of large-screen movies. In Thunderbird Park (beside the museum) is a cedar longhouse which houses a workshop where Native carvers work on new totem poles.

Saanich Historical Artifacts Society

7321 Lochside Drive (652-5522)

A fascinating Museum/Farm on 20 acres demonstrating artifacts from the region’s Pioneer past.

Gardens

Butchart Gardens

800 Benvenuto Avenue, Victoria

Bus 75

Driving:  Take Blanshard St. (Hwy. 17) north toward the ferry terminal in Saanich, then turn left on Keating Crossroads, which leads directly to the gardens -- about 20 min. from downtown Victoria

(250)652-4422

These internationally acclaimed gardens came into being after Robert Butchart exhausted the limestone quarry near his Tod Inlet home. His wife, Jenny, gradually landscaped the resulting eyesore into the Sunken Garden, opening it for public display in 1904. A Rose Garden, Italian Garden, and Japanese Garden were then added. The Butchart family gardens now display more than a million plants throughout the year.  Musical entertainment and occasional fireworks displays illuminate some evenings in the summer.

Victorian Garden Tours Ltd.     

(250) 380-2797

2-145 Niagara Street

Victoria, BC

Canada  V8V 1G1     

Year round small group, customized interpretive tours of  beautiful and unique private and public gardens.

Friends of Government House Gardens Society           

(250) 356-5139

1401 Rockland Avenue

Victoria, BC

Canada  V8S 1V9     

April through September

Open dawn to dusk daily. Guided, adult-oriented tours (fee charged) include areas not normally open to the public. The  English style estate garden of Government House showcases a variety of plants, shrubs and trees that will grow in Victoria's Zone 8 Mediterranean climate.

A Japanese Garden

Set next to the ocean shore on Victoria's Outer Harbor, the Laurel Point Inn's Japanese garden contains an acre of trees, flowers, rocks and water, representative of the esthetics of Japanese garden design. Just as the famous Japanese technique of garden design, called shakkei (borrowed scenery), involves the incorporation of adjacent and distant landscapes, the Laurel Point Inn's garden features panoramic views of Victoria's Outer Harbor and Sooke Hills.

Willows Beach

Located off Beach Avenue at Dalhousie in Victoria. Sheltered, sandy beach with concession stand and a play area for children.

Cadboro Bay Beach

Located at the foot of Sinclair Avenue in Victoria, a favorite with families because of the playground facilities at Gyro Park. Popular with windsurfers and small sail boats.

Goldstream Provincial Park

Contains an extensive network of hiking trails winding through old-growth temperate rain forests, majestic waterfalls and a fascinating diversity of plant and animal life. The park is also famous for the run of spawning salmon in the fall. You can walk along the river to view the salmon At the height of the run in mid-November, eagles arrive to sample the salmon,  and more than 250 can be present in a single day.

Matheson Lake Regional Park

Located at Matheson Lake Park Road in Sooke and Metchosin. Activities include hiking, swimming, fishing, horse riding, and cycling. Facilities include parking, trails and pit toilets.

East Sooke Regional Park

Located off East Sooke Road in East Sooke. Features hiking, birdwatching, nature study, photography, beachcombing, picnicking, and scuba diving. Facilities include parking and picnic tables.

French Beach Provincial Park

Provincial campground and picnic area an hour's drive west of Victoria. Search the horizon for gray whales or the forest for black-tailed deer. Free interpretive programs provided throughout the summer.

China Beach

15-minute walk to a magnificent beach and a spectacular spot for family outings and day trips.