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The history of Oak Bay is an interesting one and dates back to the late 1800's when Oak Bay was a collection of large farm acreages. As a result of railroads and tramways, mooted and operating, houses were in the early 1900's going up everywhere, not only in Sidney but in Esquimalt, Saanich and in Oak Bay which had been previously a reserve for the summer homes of the better-to-do. The Greater Victoria Muncipalities were incorporated in these years, Esquimalt in 1912, Oak Bay and Saanich in 1906.

One of the biggest landowners was Joseph Despard Pemberton who owned a large part of Oak Bay, the Gonzales district (including Gonzales Heights) and Fairfield (see map). Fairfield Road was put through in 1857. Joseph Despard was an outstanding example of an immigrant who combined an official position with an eye for future land values. He had to wait a long time but made his fortune in the end. Like so many of our pioneers he came from Ireland where opportunities were few in the depression which followed the hunger years.

With Joseph Despard opportunities may have been fewer than average because his grandfather, a mayor of Dublin, had 18 sons and three daughters. Such large families were a main cause of the starvation which followed the failure of the potato harvests. Pemberton arrived here in 1851 as a surveyor for the Hudson's Bay Company and after undertaking on their behalf many dangerous missions in the Interior, bought in 1858 a five-acre plot, the nucleus of his Gonzales estate, known then as Pemberton Farm. Joined by his sister in 1856, Joseph Despard went to England, got married and lived with his wife in a 30-foot by 20-foot log cabin on the north side of Fairfield Road. Frederick Pemberton put through Oak Bay Avenue at his own expense.

It was a move of enlightened self-interest as the road also gave better access to the Pemberton holdings. The potentialities of Oak Bay as a residential area were seen as early as 1891 when the Oak Bay Land and Improvement Co. was incorporated with 3,000 shares of $1.00 each. Shareholders included Major Dupont of Victoria, two big timber operators and John Paterson of New Westminster. Biggest owners of property in Oak Bay were the Hudson's Bay Company, who owned 1,118 out of the municipality's 1,922 arable acres; next came John Tod (407 acres), Wm. Henry McNeil (200 acres), Joseph D. Pemberton ( 188 acres) and Isabella Ross ( 10 acres).

The single-storey dwelling of John Tod, a Hudson's Bay employee, still stands at 2564 Heron Street in Oak Bay. Its low doorways and undulating floorboards are typical of the carpentry of the 1850's. John Tod's acreage included Mary Tod Island. Mary married John Bowker and her home still stands in Bowker Place, which was on her father's property. The fine trees along 1900 block Beach were planted, it is believed, by John Bowker. Mary Tod Island is sometimes called Jimmy Chicken Island. An Indian named Jimmy Chicken lived on it at one time. Whether he was so named because he kept chickens, sold chickens, looked like a chicken or was "chicken" is not revealed in Oak Bay's history. Nor does Jimmy Chicken appear in any national biographies.

In any case he must have had a very pleasant location with an island all to himself until Rattenbury, son of the architect, whose house (now Glenlyon School) was on the mainland opposite, built a swimming pool there, the remains of which can still be seen. John Tod is often referred to as a Hudson's Bay "factor," but people seem to have been rather free with high-sounding titles in the early days. In fact John Tod was very disillusioned with the Hudson's Bay Company. Like most of our pioneers he came from a poor family, lost his job in a Glasgow grocer firm and enlisted with the fur company for 8 pound; 20 a year. In his diary he refers to some of the hardships he suffered including meals on the emigrant ship which at first consisted entirely of porridge ( without milk or sugar) . The captain improved the diet only when some passengers swam ashore rather than endure it any longer.

He served in several very unpleasant Hudson's Bay forts (or warehouses) before coming to the coast and frequently complained of the slow promotion in the Company's service. He had four wives at different times, but little is known of numbers one, two and four who were Indian. His third wife was from Wales. He bought his land in Oak Bay from the Company and ploughed up 100 acres which included Willows Farm. Rumor has it that some very lively parties occurred in his Heron Street home and that there was a tunnel from the house to the beach through which he smuggled in Chinese who at that time were subject to a head tax. His hardships and four wives do not appear to have done him any harm for he lived to the ripe age of 88, dying in 1882.

Bowker Creek used to be called Tod's stream. Wm. H. McNeil, who owned 200 acres with Shoal Bay as the shoreline, was captain of the Hudson's Bay Company S.S. Beaver. He had a large farm running to the shore, which used to be known as McNeil Bay. Isabella Ross, by the way, who owned 10 acres, was a daughter of McNeil. The map in annex shows the boundaries of these properties imposed on a current map of Oak Bay. North of Oak Bay, McKay owned all of Ten-Mile Point and W. F. Tolmie, whose farm was at Cloverdale and North Quadra Street, owned 1000 acres bounded on the northeast by Mt. Tolmie, joining with the Work property on Hillside.

It is often said with some plausibility that people don’t die, they Just move to Victoria, or more precisely, Oak Bay. What may pass as proof for this can be found almost any day. "Let me see," an elderly gentleman will say in Anglo-Canadian accents. "You want to find out about so-and-so. Well, young John should still be around the district somewhere; he can probably tell you." It turns out that "young John" is 90 if he's a day, and still golfing. It's the same with the British army colonels: They continue to stride the esplanades, upright, brisk of pace, even as the days of Britain's military glory recede far into the distance. The images persist, durable as an old pair of well-made British shoes Click below to view Real Estate listings and properties in Oak Bay, and to search, browse, save, and view, homes, houses, town-homes town-houses, and condos for sale on MLS ® in Victoria. Search Oak Bay Properties Click to Search Oak Bay Homes, Condos, Townhomes, Real Estate and Properties for Sale

Oak Bay is one of Victoria's most popular and affluent areas, featuring many historical landmark homes, like the Robert W. Gibson's high, impressive home at 1590 York Place. In Georgian revival style, it was started immediately after the end of the First World War to designs started by Francis Rattenbury and finished by Samuel Maclure. Gibson, who founded the Beaver Lumber Company in Winnipeg, built it as his retirement home. After his death in 1946, it was converted into a duplex to provide separate accommodation for his widow, and for their son-in-law and daughter, lawyer J. Howard

Harman and his wife, Doris, who live there now. Several features in the interior designing, including elegant ornamented ceilings and gumwood panelling, reflect Maclure's - and Gibson's - tastes. Now retired, Harman himself has his connections in the English settlement of Oak Bay in the late 19th Century. Some of the oldest houses are naturally on the waterfront, he points out, as Oak Bay was a country resort rather than a residential area. He recalls that in the late 1880s his father, Arthur Harman, bought 1260 Beach Drive (now an apartment house) for his bride-to-be who was on her way from London to "the wilds of Oak Bay".

The Beveridges, who occupied 1256 Beach Drive in the 1880s and 1890s, were very kind to the young bride, and did much to make her feel at home. Further along, at 1512 Beach Drive, is a house, built for Arthur E. Haynes, which is reminiscent of verandahed homes built by the British in India. Set close to the roadway, behind a high hedge, it is unpretentious, pleasing in proportions, much bigger inside than it appears to be from outside, and looks remarkably modern despite its being one of the early permanent homes. The present owner, Walter Stenner, has the original drawings for this "proposed cottage" for Haynes, dated 1898, by Victoria and New Westminster architect J. Gerhart Frank, which were largely followed in the construction. Plans for alterations and additions, proposed in 1925 by Samuel Maclure but never carried out, also survive. Stenner has greatly improved the interior while retaining features such as the 11-foot-high ceilings, so that the house is probably more attractive now than at any time in the past.

This home, plus Tod House which basically long predates all other Oak Bay homes, and the Parsons house at 915 Island Road, are Oak Bay's only homes with heritage designation under the Municipal Act. All the homes mentioned here are but a sampling of landmark homes of Oak Bay. The subject could take up – in fact deserves - a book of its own. Out of another century For what is probably the oldest continuously-occupied dwelling in western Canada, the white cottage called Tod House at first glance looks remarkably in keeping with all the other, much more modern homes on Oak Bay's quiet Heron Street. Only after you open the shaky picket gate and walk past an ancient cherry tree onto the wood-slat, fan-design spandrelled porch and in the front door does the age of Tod House become apparent.

"Watch your head," caretaker Urs Ruegsegger cautions as he leads the visitor through doorways strangely low and wide. The floors are uneven, tilting; the glass in several small window panes is hand-blown, imperfect. The front living room, with its round-stone fireplace, is old enough. But the original part of Tod House is centred further back, in the kitchen, which has a low, slightly concave ceiling and again, a stone fireplace, this one with a small hearth that once served for cooking and heating. It is something out of another century. Deeper still into this extraordinary house, down a nar row staircase and into the crude basement, and the early period of construction is even more obvious.

Under successive ownerships it underwent renovations and additions several times until, finally, it was bought by the provincial government and Oak Bay municipality in 1975 for $65,000. Free of turmoil, the old house settled into companionship with the past. Yet today its charm readily evokes a picture of what it was like when built in 1851 for the Scottish-born John Tod, rough and ready Hudson's Bay Company fur trader who had just retired as chief trader at Fort Kamloops. After long, painfully hard service for his company, Tod became lord and master of this farmhouse and 400 surrounding acres of fields and oak trees.

In Tod House's earliest days, he would have ridden horseback, or driven a cart, from his country home along the cowtrail to Fort Victoria by way of present-day Cadboro Bay Road and Fort Street. Home and fort were five miles apart, but the distance would have meant nothing to a man who had travelled a continent by canoe. To the north of his farm was the Hudson's Bay farm called Uplands, and to the south, three other big private land holdings. In 1864, Tod's second daughter, Mary, was married at "Oak Bay house" to John Sylvester Bowker, and at about this time Tod is believed to have made over a portion of the farm to his daughter. But for years, Tod House stood alone in view of the sea. Today it is one house in a residential street. The neighborhood of Oak Bay Marina on Beach Drive, now ringed with apartment buildings, has long been a place where people come to stay, visit their friends, moor their boats - a hub of hospitality.

More than one hotel has looked across the water from here to Mount Baker. The most notable was the aptly-named Mount Baker Hotel, a palatial, multi-storey wooden edifice opened in 1893. The old Oak Bay Boathouse, demolished to make way for the present marina, actually belonged to the hotel. On the boathouse-marina site was a landmark now remembered in name only, Turkey Head, a point jutting toward Mary Tod Island and which had on its tip a hummock of rock that, in Ainslie Helmcken's words, "looked for all the world like a turkey's head." The Mount Baker was one of the best hotels in the Pacific Northwest, but too far ahead of its time. Oak Bay only began to come into its own as a residential area in the 1890s, and in that pre-auto decade the hotel wasn't close enough to downtown Victoria to attract much business in all seasons. 

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