Qualla: Ogden Point

Ogden Point: Introduction

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Florian Fuchs, CC BY-SA 3.0. Directly below the berths where cruise ships the size of city blocks tie up in Victoria, there are giant Pacific octopus. Wolf eels too, along with kelp forest, anemones, nudibranchs, and enough fish and crustaceans that divers travel considerable distances to get in the water here. The cold-water diving at Ogden Point is world-renowned and starts at almost no depth at all - which makes this one of the few places on Earth where a passenger disembarking for an afternoon of tea and gardens is stepping over an octopus.

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Image: Florian Fuchs | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ogden Point: Built for a Canal Six Thousand Kilometres Away

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy S, CC BY 2.0. The piers went in during the early twentieth century, built by the City of Victoria on a bet. The Panama Canal was coming, and with it - everyone assumed - a surge of shipping that would want a deepwater stop near the top of the Pacific coast. The point took its name from Peter S...

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Image: Andy S | CC BY 2.0

Ogden Point: Ten Thousand Blocks of Granite

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy S, CC BY 2.0. The breakwater itself is the real structure here: 762 metres of granite and concrete reaching out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, finished in 1916. More than ten thousand granite blocks went into it, quarried on Hardy Island up the coast, some weighing as much as fifteen tons, s...

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Image: Andy S | CC BY 2.0

Ogden Point: Na'Tsa'maht

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy S, CC BY 2.0. The inner face of the breakwater is a canvas. Beginning in 2009 the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority sponsored the Unity Wall Mural - Na'Tsa'maht - honouring the traditions and history of the Salish Nations whose territory this shoreline has always been. Established First Natio...

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Image: Andy S | CC BY 2.0

Ogden Point: The Busiest Port of Call in Canada

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy S, CC BY 2.0. Victoria's position - the southern tip of Vancouver Island, at the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, an easy run from both Vancouver and Seattle - made it inevitable as a cruise stop. In 2001 the Norwegian Sky came in from Seattle as the first weekly cruise vessel to call h...

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Image: Andy S | CC BY 2.0

Ogden Point: Reef Balls and Currents

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jack Adamenko, CC BY 4.0. In 2008 several groups of reef balls were placed off the breakwater to study how species migrate outward from the wall - a quiet piece of marine research sitting beneath one of the busiest working waterfronts on the coast. The diving is genuinely excellent and genuinely demanding...

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Image: Jack Adamenko | CC BY 4.0