First of all we decided to have a closer look at Parliament House...so the walk took as past all those lovely gardens we saw the night before and a rather lovely sculpture.
This piece was made to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Canadian Navy in 2010. Before that, the Royal Navy took care of Canada.
I just loved this sculpture of a navy dad home on leave greeting his daughter and the pet dog looks pretty excited too!
Not a good photo unfortunately, but in his bag he has a teddy poking out of a side pocket and a small gift box...presents for the little girl and her mum??
In the next block from Parliament House, we came across this...
So then it was time to stroll back at Parliament House for the Vignette Presentation.
And we were soon seated on the front steps ready for the hourly vignette presentation. This gave us lots of information about the building and some of the history of British Columbia. It was very entertaining!
The actor on the left was playing Francis Rattenbury, the architect of this building; he was 25 when he designed this grand place. The actor in the rather dashing full length red cape is playing Mary Ellen Smith, the first woman to be elected to parliament in British Columbia.
The look of sheer joy on his face! Beautiful!
As we continued walking we also passed by a large mooring area...
There were even seaplanes!
We saw a number of totem poles like this one, dotted around the park surrounding Parliament House.
Statues...this one is Queen Victoria...
And even Captain James Cook has a statue in this area...
Some more gardens!
We noticed that there was a vignette presentation outside Parliament House in 45 minutes time...so we wandered off to fill in time.
We saw the horses that are used for the 'carriage rides'...
Each of those shield/crests represent the Provinces of Canada.
It's quite an impressive building.
By then it was time to wander back to the carpark before our paid up time expired! So then Nik drove us to Craigdarroch Castle a stately home built by a 'coal baron'.
It was late in the day so we just enjoyed the house by walking around the outside of it. It was pretty impressive looking.
Our next stop on Vancouver Island was a visit to the famous Butchart Gardens...but that deserves a post all of its own. So that will come next!
Looks like a fabulous day out, thank you so much for sharing your wonderful photos.
ReplyDeleteSo much to see Maria, and so much variety. I loved your next post too about the Butchart Gardens.....what an impressive place. It looks like somewhere you could go back to again and again, and enjoy it all over.
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