Sixty years ago, Saanich and by extension Victoria, came extremely close to having its very own medieval theme park complete with a castle, torture chamber, dungeon, and a museum.
It was 1962, the swingin’ sixties, and a Vancouver-based company called Sherwood Forest Playland Ltd. wanted to build what it called a “medieval encampment” on 4.5 hectares of public land on Gorge Road near Tillicum Road for a grand total of $3.5 million — $33.2 million in today’s money.
Sherwood Forest Playland’s plan was so bold that not only did they include a moat and drawbridge, a children’s park and a village shop, but they were also planning on using Viking longboats to ferry guests from Victoria’s inner harbour to the park.
“Everybody would be in costume. You’d have to exchange your dollars at the gate for some medieval coins,” Dorothy Mindenhall, the author of Unbuilt Victoria, explained during a recent episode of MicCHEK with Joe Perkins.
Fantastic and imaginative was their proposal, that a company spokesperson declared the park would be as “big a tourist-pulling attraction as Disneyland” but on a smaller scale, according to a 1960s article in the Daily Colonist.
So what happened? Why didn’t Saanich end up with a medieval theme park that would’ve put Medeavil Times and The Excalibur to shame?
Listen to Episode 131 of the MicCHEK podcast to find out. To listen, click here.
October 11th 1962. Daily Colonist readers wake up to see the proposal for a Medieval Amusement Park along the Gorge waterway in #Saanich. Plan even had Viking boats that would bring people from the inner harbour. The story in Ep. 131 of MicCHEK: https://t.co/fZxgucHYkq #yyj pic.twitter.com/ANhmbX91mJ
— Joe Perkins (@JoePerkinsCHEK) May 6, 2022
CHEK News
