The Martlet

The premiere website on local history during the Victorian era grew this month, thanks to the continuing research by UVic history students under the guidance of Professor John Lutz.

Victoriasvictoria.ca details the city’s rich history, from its humble beginnings as a fur trading post in 1843 until the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, which coincided with the end of the city’s economic dominance on the west coast.

The new additions include historical findings on the prestigious buildings of St. Anne’s Academy and St. Andrew’s Cathedral, as well as research on cycling in Victoria, and a “secret order” known as the Freemasons of Victoria.

The four new additions join dozens of others created over the past seven years, making up a detailed canvas that embodies Victoria during its most dynamic time period.

On the site, each topic is presented as a separate website containing its own character and style. The result is a comprehensive database of facts, and well-researched articles on local topics.

What began in 2002 as a showcase of students’ work is now possibly the most comprehensive resource for researching the city’s history.

“If you try and go to a bookstore to find [a book about] the history of Victoria, you wouldn’t find one — there’s none in print right now,” said Lutz. “The world is moving on, and less and less of us get [our history] from print media. When people want history, they go to the web.”

In his class “Microhistory and the World Wide Web,” Lutz introduces students to web design, which he feels is an essential medium for historians.

Microhistory takes an historical event, place, or person that might only be of minor importance, but packs the historical context around it to create a larger historical theme.

After Lutz’s students work together to research a topic that is both Victorian in time-period and location, they tailor a site to organize the information.

“Making a website these days is a basic literary skill. Nobody should graduate from the university without being able to build a website,” said Lutz.

Victoriasvictoria.ca also presents an opportunity to make university-caliber research more available. Lutz says there is currently very little content regarding Victoria’s history on the web, and what is out there isn’t always accurate. By working out of UVic, his students get a stamp of credibility that comes from being peer-reviewed and edited.

Lutz’s goal is to communicate with groups in the community to find the topics that mean the most to them. For instance, two years ago Lutz was approached by the Francophone Heritage Association in order to collaborate with students to create a page dedicated to the only French Lt.-Gov. in B.C.’s history, Sir Henri Gustave Joly de-Lotbinière. It can be found in the “politics” section of the site.

Other topics that can be found in the site include alcohol consumption (“Spirits in Victoria,” “The Victoria Brewing Company”), crime (“Race, Class and Murder,” “Airing Victoria’s Dirty Laundry”) and gardening (“Shaping Nature: the Pemberton Family’s Construction of Victoria’s Landscape”).

Ultimately, Lutz wants Victorians to benefit from the research of his students.

“Normally in a course, you hand in your paper and your professor is the only one who gets to see it,” he said. “I thought this was a chance to share that great work with the community.”