Skip to main content

Mile Zero Monument of the Trans-Canada Highway - Victoria, British Columbia

Image
By

 


I recently had the opportunity to visit the beautiful city of Victoria, British Columbia. While being the location of provincial capital, Victoria has a number of gems waiting to be discovered. Whether it is the totem poles of the First Nations past in Vancouver Island, a well-preserved Chinatown, stunning gardens, a picturesque harbor and one of Canada's grandest hotels, Victoria has a lot going for it. But during my research of things to see and do within the few hours I had to devote to this charming city, I found that there is a Mile Zero monument for the Trans-Canada Highway.

The mainline of the Trans-Canada Highway stretches 4,860 miles (7,821 kilometers) from Victoria, British Columbia to St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, and is one of the longest continuous roads in the world. As for the Mile Zero monument, it can be found at Victoria's Beacon Hill Park, at the corner of Douglas Street and Dallas Road. From here, the Trans-Canada Highway goes north on Douglas Street towards downtown Victoria and ultimately across Canada. While it is not known when the monument was put up, my guess is that the monument was put when the Trans-Canada Highway was opened in 1962. This would have been before the time when Canada went to the metric system. It is a relatively simple monument, but it tells you simply what it is, the beginning of the Trans-Canada Highway. There is another Mile Zero monument at the highway's eastern end in St. John's.

You can find other monuments nearby as well. There is a Terry Fox statue right behind the Mile Zero monument. Terry Fox was a young man stricken with bone cancer and as a result of the cancer, his right leg was amputated above the knee. In 1980, Fox began the Marathon of Hope, where he would run the length of the Trans-Canada Highway from St. John's to Victoria to raise money for cancer research. Unfortunately, he never achieved his goal of running all the way to the Mile Zero monument in Victoria, having to stop near Thunder Bay, Ontario after 143 days on the road because cancer had spread to his lungs. If he had made it to Victoria, he would've been greeted by views of the scenic Strait of Juan de Fuca, which is across the street from the Mile Zero Monument.


The Mile Zero Monument is simple, yet beautiful. In the summertime, there's plenty of flowers surrounding the monument.

Only 4,860 miles to St. John's, Newfoundland.

Fundraising for causes have been noteworthy events along the Trans-Canada Highway and they all have a grand finale in Victoria.

Terry Fox statue.

The Mile Zero monument can be found at the southwest corner of Beacon Hill Park, where Douglas Street and Dallas Road intersect.

The Trans-Canada Highway ends or begins across the street from the Strait of Juan de Fuca. There was an anchor honoring Victoria's maritime heritage that was installed across the street from the Mile Zero Monument.


How to Get There:



Sources and Links:
Tourism Victoria - Mile 0
Atlas Obscura - Mile 0
Roadside America - Mile Zero of the Trans-Canada Highway
Labels:
Location: 18 Douglas St, Victoria, BC V8V 2N6, Canada

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

By
  There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population.  The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t
Post a Comment
Read more

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

By
The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two
1 comment
Read more

Huey P. Long Bridge (New Orleans, LA)

By
Located on the lower Mississippi River a few miles west of New Orleans, the Huey P. Long Bridge is an enormous steel truss bridge that carries both road and rail traffic on an old-time structure that is a fascinating example of a bridge that has evolved in recent years to meet the traffic and safety demands of modern times. While officially located in suburban Jefferson Parish near the unincorporated community of Bridge City, this bridge’s location is most often associated with New Orleans, given that it’s the largest and most recognizable incorporated population center in the nearby vicinity. For this reason, this blog article considers the bridge’s location to be in New Orleans, even though this isn’t 100% geographically correct. Completed in 1935 as the first bridge across the Mississippi River in Louisiana and the first to be built in the New Orleans area, this bridge is one of two bridges on the Mississippi named for Huey P. Long, a Louisiana politician who served as the 40th Gove
1 comment
Read more