Qualla: Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse

Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Haemo, CC BY-SA 3.0. On March 8, 1855, workers hung a ship's bell at the end of a new schoolhouse on the Gorge Waterway near Victoria. The bell had come off the steamer Major Tompkins, which had run aground off Macaulay Point and been picked apart by salvagers; the school bought it for ten pounds. Three days earlier, eight boys and six girls had walked in for the first day of classes. That bell called children to lessons in a building that still stands, and Craigflower Schoolhouse is now the oldest surviving schoolhouse in Western Canada.

Image: Haemo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse: Kosapsom

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blpollock, CC BY-SA 3.0. The ground here is much older than anything the Hudson's Bay Company built on it. Around 13,000 years ago, retreating glaciers gouged this landscape into a chain of lakes and streams that the sea eventually reclaimed, producing the saltwater inlet now called the Gorge Waterway. T...

Image: Blpollock | CC BY-SA 3.0

Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse: A Scottish Name on a Colonial Farm

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Haemo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Craigflower Farm was an act of provisioning. The colony of Vancouver Island needed food, and the Hudson's Bay Company needed its employees fed, housed, and settled enough to stay. The farm took its name from the Craigflower Estate in Scotland, owned by Andrew Colville, who served...

Image: Haemo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse: "Growing Up in Ignorance"

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Haemo, CC BY-SA 3.0. McKenzie commissioned the schoolhouse, originally called Maple Point School, to educate the children of farm employees. It was the third school built in the colony, answering Governor James Douglas's call "to give a proper moral and religious training to the children of the settl...

Image: Haemo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse: The House Agnes Asked For

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ToadHollowPhoto, CC BY-SA 3.0. The manor went up shortly after the school, on the opposite bank, to serve as both residence and office for the farm's management. Agnes McKenzie asked that it be built as a Scottish manor house in the Georgian Revival manner, and it was: two storeys, dining room, sitting room, o...

Image: ToadHollowPhoto | CC BY-SA 3.0

Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse: Two Hundred Metres Apart

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Haemo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The manor stands in View Royal and the schoolhouse in Saanich, separated by 200 metres of water and joined by the Craigflower Bridge. Both are National Historic Sites of Canada. They have stayed useful in a way that historic buildings often do not: the schoolhouse is cared for by...

Image: Haemo | CC BY-SA 3.0