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Fisherman's Wharf project evokes Heron Bay memories

Randy Bouchard has fond boyhood memories of digging up sea worms to use for bait from Heron Bay, then using them to catch lots of fish off the breakwater. Many Victoria residents didn’t know the small bay near Fisherman’s Wharf even had a name.
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Randy Bouchard: "This was a very special place to me."

Randy Bouchard has fond boyhood memories of digging up sea worms to use for bait from Heron Bay, then using them to catch lots of fish off the breakwater.

Many Victoria residents didn’t know the small bay near Fisherman’s Wharf even had a name. Mayor Dean Fortin announced last week that the small corner of the Inner Harbour would be redeveloped as the first of 11 “special places” along a seaside footpath renamed David Foster Way.

A bridge will connect the walkway on the east side of the harbour with the sidewalk at Fisherman’s Wharf.

Bouchard, 70, grew up in James Bay and says the southeast corner of the bay, which is shrouded in large maple trees and other vegetation, has changed very little over the years.

There’s a century-old house huddled among the maples that Bouchard and his friends thought was haunted.

The biggest change to the land is that Kid Island no longer exists. The gap between it and what’s now Fisherman’s Wharf’s parking area was filled in years ago.

“This was a very special place to me, which is why I got so excited when there was a chance to get involved in the [redevelopment] project,” Bouchard said last week.

“I spent a lot of time here,” said Bouchard, who arrived in Victoria as a four-year-old in 1947 and lived in the area until 1961.

A grassy area he knew as “the dump” has since been beautified with rain garden features.

“As kids, we really weren’t supposed to play there, but we went there anyways,” Bouchard said.

There used to be a Texaco tank farm on land east of the bay, property now inhabited by large hotels and condominiums.

It is the site also of a First Nations midden that dates back 600 to 1,200 years.

Bouchard has made a 45-year career of researching First Nations’ activities and oral history of the area and has heard that others too have fond stories of Heron Bay.

Bouchard stepped forward to sit on an ad hoc committee of folks who cared about Heron Cove and had concerns about its redevelopment.

“I was just concerned as a person who has documented history for all these years, but this wasn’t native history, which was what I worked with all these decades. This was my own,” Bouchard said. “This is part of my history, which is why I was so excited to know this was happening.

“I followed the evolution of the walkway over the years, and the idea of a bridge, I thought, was spectacular,” he said.

Being able to walk above one of his favourite childhood places “is pretty neat,” Bouchard said.

“I think one of the places that resonates so much with me is the bay has not changed.

“I ended coming back to James Bay in the late ’70s and early ’80’s and living on the ninth floor of Harbour Towers.

“I ended up looking out over this area, and Harbour Towers ended up being built a few yards away from where I went to kindergarten and Grades 1, 2 and 3. Again, it was like coming back to it all.”

He now lives in Fairfield but often finds himself walking back to Heron Bay with his dog, Chaco, “because it would never be out of my blood.”

smcculloch@timescolonist.com