Flower count

Victoria's annual flower count started the other day. It's our way of rubbing snow in the faces of all those Canadians who are still suffering under sub-zero temperatures. In fact, although this time we've had a bit more 'winter' than the last few years, my own little excursion through Beacon Hill Park on a sunny Sunday afternoon turned up numerous showings of daffodils, crocuses both purple and white as, well as lots of rhododendrons...right on schedule. According to Greek myth, daffodils were originally white but when Pluto abducted Persephone to make her queen of the underworld she dropped some white lilies which turned yellow as burnished gold. Pluto not only rules Hades, he is also the god of wealth.
Of special note in Beacon Hill Park on my walk was the rock and alpine garden maintained by a volunteer association. What a wonderful job they have done. When you walk on the rocky spine of the park you could well believe you were on a mountain top, with craggy bed rock jutting out on either side of the path. And yet you are only a few minutes away from the ocean.
As a small city bounded on three sides by water, there is really no room for Victoria to grow outward and so it's an imminently walkable city. Every neighborhood has it's own character and ambience. The older neighborhoods were built before tract housing was invented and the history of Victoria's growth means that every area has a rather diverse collection of housing stock. Originally settled around the Inner Harbour, various early arrivals to these shores founded farms and estates scattered all over which were connected by roads and later filled in. The roads became our notoriously illogical street system and the filled in estates became our neighborhoods. However it happened the result is a feast for the eyes that's best enjoyed at a walking pace.
There is an unfortunate advertising campaign on that tries to make Victoria look like sin city north. Well we do suffer from the presence of a sizeable drug culture just like every place else these days, and in the winter 20,000 university students, many of them not potty trained, do their best to emulate the inmates of Animal House, but I can say with absolute confidence that people do not come to Victoria to get drunk and chase whores. They come because they can walk around the Inner Harbour, and just sit and look out of their eyes.
In fact, the prostitutes and drug dealers, and the many drug users who infest our streets (usually referred to as 'homeless') are the ones who discourage the kind of visitors who have historically enjoyed coming to our city.
Last week a story appeared in our local rag. It seems a certain young lady, originally from Victoria, had returned from Montreal after a number of years and was shocked- shocked- to discover how much poverty there is in Victoria. The story was followed up by a letter writer who blamed all this poverty on the heartless cutbacks to social services made by the provincial government. Poverty? I think these folks should pay a little more attention. Victoria has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world- in the 3% range. Jobs go begging. Anybody who wants to work can find a job. What else can a government do? During the ten years when the other outfit was in, the ones who supposedly champion the poor, unemployment hovered at a steady 10% while an economic boom was taking place in the rest of North America. There are a lot of things I don't like about this government, but they do understand that if you want to pay for social programs you will need a functioning, prosperous economy. And they have succeeded admirably in restoring our formerly sick economy.
Excuse me, I didn't really want to get into politics.