Colonial Despatches

This hook-ended, rocky headland, which the Songhees First Nation call Tleepet, lies west of Victoria, jutting into the Juan de Fuca Strait.1 Kellett named it in honour of Prince Albert because it looked across, more or less, to the bay that housed a fort named after the Prince’s wife, Victoria.2 Many years before this romantic gesture, Quimper, the first European to land there, arrived in 1790.3

In its European role, Albert Head was the site of British Columbia’s first sawmill, 1853-59, a quarantine station, 1883-93, and a heavily fortified post during World War II.4 Today, it is one of the training centres for Canada’s Department of National Defence.5

• 1. Andrew Scott, The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Placenames (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2009), 38.
• 2. Ibid.
• 3. Ibid.
• 4. Ibid.
• 5. Ibid.