When we were growing up, we didn’t have lots of money and things but I can remember treats that didn’t cost money-wise but were extremely thrilling and entertaining. For something exciting on very windy and stormy days, mother would take us five children in the car. We would have on our rain slickers and our rain hats and our gum boots. She would drive us down Douglas Street to Dallas Road, the waterfront in Victoria. It was a cliff and the Strait of Juan de Fuca was the waterway or the ocean between Vancouver Island, Canada, and Washington State, USA.
On very windy and stormy days, fishing boats, tug boats and cargo ships had a very hard time buffeting the wind. Sometimes they were warned to take shelter. I remember hearing of one shipping boat that sank out in the Strait.
Towards Ross Bay, the land lowered and there was a cement retaining wall put in to preserve the earth from the violent wind storms. They tell us that often from those early days, graves from Ross Bay Cemetery were washed off and the bones were carried many blocks away. Today, with all the modernizations, I’m told that it is very protected.
Mother would park the car in a safe place and we children would get out and run into the splashed up waters from over the retaining walls. It was a game of DARE!, hoping we wouldn’t get soaked or knocked down by the wind. We would also stand there when we knew the next big wave would come crashing over the retaining wall. I loved those stormy days in Victoria!
