What you have here is most definitely not what I set out to write. I just wanted to compose something about what to do when you come to visit Victoria and maybe share a little something about the history of the place. As happens all too often, I started trying to nail down some of those details and kept stumbling upon missing information, curious contradictions, and surprising, even shocking, details. Suddenly I was hunting down Spanish ship logs and Norse chronicles, emailing geologists and historians, studying plagues, folk medicine, and the history of handwashing, ordering the autobiography of America’s consul to Madagascar, and sending requests for sources and corrections to the Canadian Encyclopedia. Having done all that, I couldn’t then just plunk everything I’d learned into a couple of tangential footnotes. So, instead, you got this weird thing. But what is it? Oh, I don’t know. Is it a travel guide? Not really. Is it a history textbook? It isn’t. Well, is it a coffee table book? Nope. Like Victoria, this book is just this weird mash-up of people and stories and stuff that, well, isn’t what you think and probably has no business existing at all; and yet, against all reason and recommendation, you’re looking at it.