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. 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.