Fort Rodd Hill open for visitors, despite renos
Parks Canada wants the public to know Fort Rodd Hill is still open for picnics and visits despite the construction fencing and yellow caution tape on the property..
“You have all these old buildings you can walk around and explore, there’s tunnels, stairs down to old underground magazines and you have all this open space and a little beach,” said Kate Humble, curator of Fort Rodd Hill and Fisgard Lighthouse National Historic Sites.
“It’s still open,” said Humble. “It’s actually a cool local spot because you get two national historic sites in one, the fort and the lighthouse.”
Fort Rodd Hill is renovating the last of its three gun batteries. It’s part of $2.4 million in work at the park, a small piece of a $3-billion, five-year plan for renovations and upgrades to Canada’s parks announced in 2015 by the federal government.
The Belmont Battery, with its searchlight tower, is part of the renovations and is expected to be completed by fall 2019. But the upper and lower batteries are open for exploration with repaired stairs and many of its old guns still in place.
People can also visit the lighthouse keepers’ quarters. The lighthouse, at 158 years, is the oldest in Western Canada. It is now automated and still guiding ships.
The park sees about 100,000 visitors every year.
Humble said Fort Rodd Hill became a permanent battery site in the 1890s. It was a time of international and local uncertainties.
B.C. had joined Confederation in 1871, but Victoria was still very much a bastion of the British Empire. The Royal Navy still maintained a Pacific naval base at what is now CFB Esquimalt. International tensions with Russia kept the British on edge. Ongoing Fenian raids from the U.S. made the Canadian government nervous.
There also were widespread anxieties over weapons technology. Steel manufacture was steadily improving, guns were getting bigger and ships were getting faster and more long-ranging.
At Fort Rodd Hill, concerns prompted the British Royal Engineers to build concrete gun emplacements and the British Royal Marines were charged with operating as gun crews. It was one of several gun emplacements around Victoria, including Ogden Point and Macaulay Point, all intended to protect the naval base.
“It was how they were maintaining hold of the British Empire from this far-flung version of the empire,” said Humble.
The entire facility wasn’t turned over to Canada until 1905. After the end of the First World War in 1918 and the start of the Second World War in 1939, Fort Rodd Hill was garrisoned by Canadian militia.
By 1956 it was decided missile and aircraft had made long-range artillery obsolete. In 1958, Fort Rodd Hill was made a National Historic Site, an example of what was once known as the Victoria-Esquimalt Coastal Defence System.
Humble said the renovation work has unearthed unexpected artifacts, including toy tea sets, marbles and the glass eyes of dolls. These have been traced to the children of families whose fathers garrisoned the guns and lived at the base.
“That’s a really compelling story,” said Humble. “The evidence of these children’s lives is starting to come out of the ground.”
“When you are working at an old military installation you expect to find old bullets, chow tins and buttons,” she said. “But when you pull up bits of old dolls, marbles and tea sets over 100 years old, it becomes very visceral.”