Shingled Shed
This boat house is beside a narrow beach access on Harling Point. It is one of 4 ways to get down to the beach – this one leads to bedrock looking over Gonzales Bay towards Clover Point. It is right in front of private houses, and some of them have old concrete boat ramps to the water which make it hard to walk all the way around the waterfront. In British Columbia the intertidal zone is public land (with a few very old exceptions) so waterfront owners are used to seeing strangers on “their” beaches, though some of them don’t like it much. This is one of the spots in Victoria where I feel a bit less welcome on the beach than others, not sure why but perhaps because of the old structures on the beach and looming houses and the generally private feel of it.
Even so, it is possible and pleasant to walk north from this access to another beach access (with stairs) at the gravel beach that is tucked into the NE corner of Gonzales Bay, also accessible from Harling Point. I took this photo at sunset within minutes of taking the ones in this post, as well as my gravatar image on my about page. A successful walk with camera that day.
This boat house is representative of one of the most threatened forms of built heritage in the Victoria area. Waterfront is extremely expensive and old homes are usually torn down by new owners who want a trophy home to go with the trophy view. These sheds often disappear along with the houses, which frequently were built and clad in a similar way. The main impetus to keep these buildings is that they are often non-conforming to modern planning bylaws, and thus cannot be replaced – they are either within the no-build setbacks from the beach, or they are entirely or partly on the beach, and thus sometimes on land that does not belong to the associated house. Thus, some of them are carefully maintained as that is all that the owner will ever be able to have in that location. I don’t think most are used as boat houses any more – tea houses maybe, artist studios, guest rooms and so on. Their use does not matter, that a few survive is important. I would love to live on the waterfront, and I think the view across the garden would be improved by a structure like this.
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burnt embers 
Hi there, the thing I really like is how the weather vane guided me where to look and then my eyes trail back around the right side of the image only to explore the bottom. I also find the walkway to be rather interesting, if it could only tell it’s story… 🙂
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I like that walkway too – you have to wonder how many times a small wooden boat, mast with rolled sail and kapok lifevest were carried along there to the water’s edge. The bird on the water is one of the surprises in the image for me – I think it was too bright on the water for me to see it when I was taking the picture, and I was in any case looking at the building. I only noticed it after looking at other things in the picture for quite a while. But, it is an important part of the scene for me.
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I love this image, it’s gorgeous! Did you shoot it in B&W, or did you change to greyscale in post-processing? Either way, I think B&W is definitely the right choice here, and you’ve captured the light and shadows beautifully.
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Hi Laurie, and thanks. I shot in colour. The building is grey, and it had a strong yellow cast to it from the setting sun, which was very nice. I think it works better in b&w, but the colour version is nice too.
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This is awesome…love these old buildings like this as you can probably tell from my shots…LOL
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Hi Obrien – yeah, I can tell 🙂 And why not, they are interesting in many different ways.
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what a quaint little structure. You captured it well.
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Thank you danita, I really like the hand-split cedar shakes on the side, and the old door, which must be a sliding door I think – probably hanging on steel rails on the inside of the shed. But I have never seen it open, so don’t really know about that.
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I never thought much about the historical significance of these types of small structures, but they definitely denote an era. How old do you think this well maintained shed is? forties? fifties?
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Hi Joseph, that is really hard to say, but this area was cottage country at one time with the nearest readily accessible sand beach to central Victoria being here in Gonzales Bay. Closer to the sand beach, the small beach houses that are shingle clad are, or were since there are very few left, date from the late 1800’s. This boat house or shed has the same feeling as they do and I would not be surprised if its 100 years old, or perhaps 70 or 80.
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