Gordon Head is a seaside neighbourhood in the municipality ofSaanich inGreater Victoria,British Columbia,Canada. Gordon Head lies north of McKenzie Avenue and east of the Blenkinsop Valley. TheUniversity of Victoria is located partly within Gordon Head along the southeast boundary. Finnerty Road separates Gordon Head from the adjacent neighbourhood ofCadboro Bay. The local area is dominated physically byMount Douglas (SENĆOŦEN: PKOLS), a coastline alongHaro Strait, and the central plateau.
For 4,000 years theSonghees people inhabited the lands betweenSooke and theSaanich Peninsula, which includes Gordon Head.[1]
In 1852, with the signing of theDouglas Treaties, farmers began settling the hitherto densely forested Gordon Head area. By 1860, thirteen men, including Michael Finnerty andJohn Work, owned all of the land. The region would become famous for its strawberries and later its daffodils. City water service was introduced in 1921, leading to a proliferation of greenhouses and vegetable farming. Agriculture dominated the landscape until about the 1950s, when Gordon Head began gradually developing into a residential neighbourhood.[2]
During World War II, a Special Wireless Station was established at Gordon Head in June 1940. It played a significant role in the Royal Canadian Navy's radio intelligence operation against the Japanese. Messages were intercepted here and bearings on enemy transmissions were provided using direction finding techniques. The station closed in 1946; however, the building that housed the station still stands in a remote corner of the University of Victoria, having been moved from its original location.[3]
Today, many homes in Gordon Head have secondary suites or are rented out entirely to students at theUniversity of Victoria.[4][5]
The neighbourhood shares its name with the small strip of land that juts out into Haro Strait, east of Margaret Bay, in the community's north-east corner. Gordon Head is named afterAdmiral John Gordon, who in 1845 commandedHMS America in theNorth Pacific.[6][7]
Gordon Head has 28parks ranging in size from the minusculeBalmacarra Park to the magnificent 184-hectarePKOLS (Mount Douglas Park, the largest park in Saanich.
Several parks offer beach access. The half-rocky, half-sandy beach that spansArbutus Cove Park andHollydene Park is Gordon Head's most frequented beach.
Six schools in theGreater Victoria School District (SD61) call the community home:
Elementary
Middle
Secondary
Maria Montessori Academy is an independent school located in Gordon Head.
GHRCArchived 2021-01-06 at theWayback Machine is centrally located and features a pool, sauna, steamroom, whirlpool, weightroom, dance and fitness studio, as well as a skateboard/rollerblade park.
Recent eco-friendly updates to the centre include UV pool filtration (in addition to the existing chlorine-based system) and solar-powered showers.
Sprinkled across the community are dozens of pedestrian shortcuts. (The adjacent neighbourhoods ofCadboro Bay and Cordova Bay have relatively few shortcuts by comparison.)
Amap showing the shortcuts (in dotted red) is available onOpenStreetMap.
48°29′00″N123°19′00″W / 48.48333°N 123.31667°W /48.48333; -123.31667