Victoria is the capital of British Columbia, the western-most province of Canada, and it is located at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, on the Saanich Peninsula (see Figure 1). In other words, it is not connected to the mainland by any overland routes.
Although transportation links are now regular and plentiful, this was not historically the case. First founded in 1843 as a trading post, Victoria was incorporated in 1863.
For more than a century, travel to and from the area was no quotidian undertaking, often requiring an arduous journey through an overland, mountainous pass because boat service was limited, particularly in the winter. A regular, year-round ferry service connecting the Peninsula to the Canadian mainland was only established in 1960, the same period during which affordable air travel became available. Thus, for a significant portion of its history, Victoria was relatively isolated from regular and sustained con- tact with speakers on the Canadian mainland.
Victoria has the second largest metropolitan population in the province (330,000, compared to Vancouver’s roughly 2.5 million), and has an economy that centres on
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48 Alexandra D’Arcy
government, the armed forces, and tourism. The population, however, is remarkably homogeneous. Well over 80% of residents speak English as a mother tongue and English is the home language of over 90% of the populace; less than a quarter of Victo- rians are immigrants and more than 40% of the city’s residents are at least third genera- tion Canadian; and only one in ten Victorians belongs to a visible minority (Statistics Canada 2006). In other words, despite being a major cultural centre in the province, Victoria is small, conservative, and not particularly diverse, either demographically or linguistically.
Victoria is also relatively young. Parts of Canada have had colonial settlements (seasonal or permanent) since the 16th century, but western settlements came much later. At 150 years, the time of English-speaking settlement in Victoria is the same as that of New Zealand, a region that has been central to our understanding of dialect formation and to English historical linguistics more generally (Trudgill et al. 2000;
Trudgill 2001, 2004; Gordon et al. 2004). Thus, the relative youthfulness of Victoria renders it possible (with the right materials) to trace the city’s full linguistic history, both in the written record and in the spoken one.
Figure 1. Map of Canada (Brock University Map Library, 1999)
Free ebooks ==> www.ebook777.comAt the crossroads of change 49 Another element that makes Victoria such an interesting research site is its socio- cultural position as Canada’s “most British city”. The city has a rich substratum of British influence, culturally, socially, demographically, and linguistically.1 It was ini- tially populated by a wave of westward migration from Southern Ontario, largely com- prised of individuals who were lured by the availability of cheap passage, inexpensive free-hold land, and the like, and who brought with them the Loyalist legacy. Illustrated in Figure 2, compiled from historical census information, in the period between 1881 and 1951, it was other Canadians who were the majority demographic in Victoria, regularly comprising roughly half of the city’s population. However, a second constant in Victoria’s historical demographics is that the British have consistently accounted for a non-trivial proportion of residents.
0 20 40 60 80 100
1881 (N=7301) 1901 (N=23,866) 1921 (N=23,688) 1951 (N=50,958)
Canada England other British
Figure 2. New arrival demographics in Victoria, 1881–1951; % of population
In Figure 2, the English are represented by the dark grey bar; the light grey bar collapses the Scottish, the Irish, and the Welsh as ‘other British’. Notably, the English have always been robustly represented, accounting for an average of 20% of Victoria’s population during any period. While these numbers are insufficient to override the founder effect, they create a persistent English influence. The overarching cultural gestalt is Anglo-English, and historically this extended to models of education and linguistic prestige. Until the end of the Second World War, many teachers and virtu- ally all private school headmistresses were English, recruited directly from England.
The English reformed education model guided curriculum and pedagogy, such that even the textbooks were English. This reflects a particular belief about education more generally, but more specifically it reflects a belief system that revolves around norms of etiquette and correct behaviour, of which language is a key component. In Victoria,
1. A sampling of local businesses, for example, returns numerous shoppes and olde towne establishments (e.g. Sailor Jerry Swallow’s Olde Tyme Tattoo Shoppe, Toes N’ Taps Dance Shoppe, Olde Towne Gallery/Shoe Repair/Roofing Ltd, etc.).
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50 Alexandra D’Arcy
these schools ultimately became “the means of transferring the ‘official’ upper-middle and upper-class British culture to children of generations of immigrants” (Trueman 2009: 54). In other words, they allowed these children, born and raised in Victoria, to “grow up British” (Barman 1984). These “British” children may have represented just a small proportion of Victoria’s young, yet the English model of schooling has had enduring consequences in the local linguistic ecology. To this day there are older, locally born and raised Victorians who do not sound Canadian at all. They sound British.