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<\/a>\u201cI started reading through the letters and I was just dumbfounded,\u201d says Tolman. \u201cI have lived here most of my life and I did not know that this cousin of mine had ever been in Victoria. He explained how he was taking a job with the city to help build a water supply system in Sooke Lake.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tolman says letters from 1913 and 1915 were \u201ckind of a sketchy history of the building of this water supply system.\u201d From there, he was hooked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was quite fascinated, so I looked into the rest of the papers and I found about 200 photos from this project,\u201d he says. \u201cI also found blueprints of the equipment that they built and, astonishingly, I found entire account sheets that detailed all the money they had spent on the project.\u201d<\/p>\n
Naturally, finding all of this information piqued Tolman\u2019s interest in the project, and he went in search of more information, first at the City of Victoria and then in the provincial archives. At this point Tolman and his wife went on the Capital Regional District (CRD)\u2019s annual watershed tour, where he met Peter Malone, then the manager of CRD water. It was while on this tour that Tolman learned just how secure Victoria\u2019s water supply is.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really quite amazing,\u201d says Tolman. \u201cIf you think of what\u2019s going on now, all the cities that depend on snowpack have been in trouble. Ours depends on rain and we are still over 70 percent of capacity in the reservoir, even though we\u2019ve had no rain for four months.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a time, as Tolman explains, when Victoria faced some serious water issues. In the early 1900s there was a need to upgrade Victoria\u2019s water supply, but there were few possibilities of where to go to get said water.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe closest possible sources were Elk and Beaver Lake,\u201d says Tolman. \u201cWhich was problematic right from the start, because the water from Elk Lake was very good but was being run through Beaver Lake, which at that time was simply a swamp, so the quality of the water was very poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goldstream was considered to be the best option, says Tolman; Sooke was thought of as too expensive. The trouble with the Goldstream proposal was the Esquimalt water company had already laid a claim on it. After losing a litigation attempt, Victoria\u2019s only option was Sooke. A good thing, says Tolman.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Victoria had won and gone to Goldstream I don\u2019t know where Victoria would be now,\u201d says Tolman. \u201cThere wouldn\u2019t have been enough water there to supply the city. In fact, if you put this all together, you realize that the Greater Victoria area has 360,000 residents, and we would never be this size if we had not gone to Sooke. It\u2019s only because we went to Sooke that we had a sufficient water supply to allow the growth of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tolman\u2019s new book details a great majority of the photographs he found, along with a written historical account. Tolman says it\u2019s important that when you turn on the tap and see clean, abundant water to remember that that was not always the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are so lucky,\u201d says Tolman. \u201cIf we think of all the infrastructures that we absolutely need, water is right on top. We cannot survive without water. I think it\u2019s a good idea that people, when they turn on the tap and see that water come out, they know where it comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n