17 Must-See Pieces of Public Art in Victoria, BC
We like to think of Victoria as an art gallery without walls. Public art helps define a city. It shows you who we are. Buzzing urban spaces, water views and quiet squares make cool backdrops for Victoria’s diverse and inspiring public art, including vivid murals, majestic totem poles and modern sculpture.
We’ve put together an Instagram-worthy sampler tour that can be done on foot or by bike (plus four can’t-miss pieces for your arrival). Follow the route to see some of our favourite public art in the heart of the city. This is just a start. You’ll find many more pieces just by looking around as you explore Victoria and its many neighbourhoods.
Welcome to YYJ
You’ll be greeted by four significant pieces of public art as you exit newly expanded Victoria International Airport. The trio of colourful totem poles by Coast Salish master carver Charles W. Elliott includes a Salish welcome figure, an orca and thunderbird totem and another depicting the raven, wolf and bear. Illarion Gallant’s joyful “Bouquet of Memories” is a conceptual grouping of flowers that Gallant says celebrate the memories created by travellers as they begin or finish a journey. It’s fitting for a city known for its lush gardens and early spring blooms.
Chinatown Gate
Victoria is home to the oldest Chinatown in Canada and the second oldest in North America, after San Francisco. The striking “Gate of Harmonious Interest” is a great place to start your downtown public art tour. Designed by Mickey Lam, who spearheaded the Chinatown renewal project as Victoria’s city urban design planner in the late 1970s, the impressive gate at Fisgard and Government streets was unveiled in 1981. Walk a block over to Pandora Ave. to admire the marvellous mythical “Red Dragon” by B.C. artist Ping Tsing.
To learn more about Chinatown’s fascinating history, join a guided Chinatown Walks tour.
Four Winds
Stroll through Chinatown and down to Mermaid Wharf to find flowing resin composite sculpture “Four Winds” by Chris “IceBear” Johnson (Mikwamii-makwa). The powerful piece, which depicts Mother Earth is based on Indigenous mythology. It’s located beside Tug Eatery, where it was unveiled on National Aboriginal Day 2001.
Two Brothers
Walk back up Pandora Ave. to enter Spirit Square in Centennial Square, a public gathering space next to Victoria City Hall. A pair of Spirit Poles named “Two Brothers” are centrepieces. Lekwungen master carver Clarence “Butch” Dick (Yux’wey’lupton) created the traditional pole on the right and his son, Mamalilikulla carver Clarence Dick Jr., made the contemporary pole across from it.
The Hands of Time
This delightful public art project commissioned to mark Victoria’s 150th anniversary in 2012 is made up of 12 bronze sculptures by British Colombia artist Crystal Przybille. It’s a bit of a treasure hunt to find them and that’s part of the pleasure in discovering these pieces.
Each depicts life-sized hands engaged in activities symbolic of Victoria’s past. “Carrying Books” is on the west wall of Victoria City Hall at the Pandora Ave. entrance. It’s a nod to Victoria as British Columbia’s capital and the city’s role in education and governance.
“Holding Binoculars,” a pair of spyglasses trained on the Inner Harbour beside Finn’s Seafood Chops & Cocktails, is also a popular find. A walking tour brochure helps guide you around the sculptures. Note, one of the 12 sculptures, “Holding a Railway Spike,” is under repair and returns to its home on a Wharf St. lamp standard in summer 2023.
Commerce Canoe
Another inspiring piece of public art by Victoria’s Illarion Gallant, “The Commerce Canoe” is on the edge of Chinatown where Store St. crosses Pandora Ave. by the Johnson Street Bridge. The impressive piece symbolizes the canoe as the vessel of commerce for Indigenous people for generations before European contact. Make sure you check out the modernist white bridge in the evening, when it’s illuminated by bright blue lights. The nod to its “Blue Bridge” predecessor can also be called a work of public art.
Woven Together
Head up Johnson St. to see the eye-catching work of Vancouver-based mother and son Musqueam First Nation artist team, Susan Point and Thomas Cannell on the exterior of the Johnson Street Parkade. The contemporary, powder-coated aluminum piece “Woven Together” uses eye motifs and butterfly images, along with shapes often seen in Coast Salish art.
Surfacing
This seasonal garden display of a mother and baby orca gracefully arcing above a wave is at the southeast corner of Government and Humboldt Streets, beside the Fairmont Empress Hotel and across from the Destination Greater Victoria Visitor Centre. It’s an impressive six metres long — a bit shy of the eight metres females typically measure. Each fall, the living artwork’s frame goes back to Beacon Hill Park nursery, ready to be restored to its wild ocean beauty by nursery staff who rebuild the orcas using 10,000 colourful plants in time for their spring debut.
Our Emily
VictoVictoria is proud to say legendary Canadian artist and author Emily Carr is one of our own. Born here in 1871, you’ll find Barbara Paterson’s bronze sculpture “Our Emily” outside the Fairmont Empress Hotel. It captures Carr’s personality, passions and her love of animals. She’s depicted sitting on a rock with her sketchbook, pausing to interact with her pet monkey Woo, who’s perched on her shoulder. Devoted dog Billie seems to be waiting for its turn for some attention. You can learn more about Carr and see some of her work at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and visit her grave in Victorian-era burial ground Ross Bay Cemetery, where several notables are laid to rest.
Signs of Lekwungen
The Inner Harbour is a culturally significant site to the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. Cross Government St. and take the stairs to the Lower Causeway to see one of the Seven Signs of the Lekwungen. These bronze casts of intricate cedar carvings by Clarence “Butch” Dick (Yux’wey’lupton) are located at points around Victoria to honour the art, history and culture of the Coast Salish people. Learn more with authentic Indigenous cultural experiences led by knowledge keepers and cultural guides at Explore Songhees.
Thunderbird Park
A continuing site for First Nations cultural practice in the heart of Victoria, Thunderbird Park houses a magnificent collection of totem poles by several master carvers. It’s no surprise the site beside the Royal BC Museum is so popular with visitors to Victoria curious to see these fine examples of Indigenous art and culture.
Known as Mungo Martin House, the colourful Wawadit’la, a Kwakwaka’wakw (big house) at the heart of Thunderbird Park was created by Martin, a Kwakwaka‘wakw singer, songwriter, teacher and master carver. He and others also worked on restoration and replicas of original poles that were moved inside the museum.
BC Parliament Buildings
Cross the street Belleville Street to explore public art on a grand scale at the BC Parliament Buildings. Designed by Francis M. Rattenbury, who also had a hand in neighbouring buildings now known as the Canadian Pacific Railway Steamship Terminal and the Fairmont Empress Hotel, the seat of B.C. government was built to impress.
The dramatic Upper Rotunda seems to live up to the provincial motto carved at the top: Splendor sine occasu — Splendour without diminishment.
See for yourself with a free self-guided tour Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Or join a public tour. Check leg.bc.ca for dates and times. Fun fact, the buildings have 33 domes. And no, you don’t have to count them all.
The building looks especially fine after dusk and from 6 a.m. to sunrise, when lights outlining the front and dome are illuminated.
Centennial Fountain
Walk around to the back of the Parliament Buildings to discover a lovely piece of public art that visitors may otherwise miss seeing. Cast bronzes of a bear, eagle, raven and wolf, representing Indigenous peoples within British Columbia, are joined by gulls and sea otters that represent the ocean.
The fountain was designed by Robert Savery in 1962 to mark the 100th- anniversary of the creation of the last of the four British colonies and territories that would later become British Columbia.
The Moss Lady
The Moss Lady has been slumbering for seven years in a quiet corner of Beacon Hill Park. Pay a visit to this earthy sleeping beauty who will never wake from her mossy bed. City of Victoria gardener Dale Doebert was inspired by the Mud Maid in the Lost Gardens of Heligan in Cornwall to create the 11-metre-long public art piece covered in green moss for Victoria. The sculpture’s two-metre-long cement head was made by City of Victoria employees Louie Macedo and Jamie De Amaral.
Granite Avocados
Made of six tons of Campbell River granite with a pair of brightly hued powder-coated aluminum chopsticks, find Illarion Gallant’s piece outside the Hotel Grand Pacific. Peak avocado, indeed.
Heavenly Stairway
A nondescript turret-style concrete staircase to the beach from Dallas Road across from Cook Street took colourful flight thanks for former Victoria’s artist-in-residence, Luke Ramsey. Now a mural with brilliant swirls of shades of green, “Mother Protector — Hawk and Home” depicts a sharp-eyed hawk both welcoming visitors from the ocean and protecting itself from the elements.
Beach Menagerie
The beachfront park across from the Esquimalt Lagoon is home to a host of whimsical, colourful driftwood birds made by Paul Lewis.
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