THE VIEW of Victoria’s Inner Harbour hasn’t changed much since Rudyard Kipling described it as a mix of Sorrento, Hong Kong and the Isle of Wight “with some Himalayas for the background,” during his lengthy sojourn at the grand Empress Hotel in 1908. Ships still dock beneath the massive columns of the Canadian Pacific Railway terminal, though the steamships have been replaced by high-speed ferries on the three-hour run to Seattle.
For years, mainlanders dismissed the city on Vancouver Island’s south coast as a picturesque...