- Ever since the Hudson’s Bay Company selected this sheltered bay for its fur-trading fort in 1842, Victoria Harbour, in what is now Victoria, British Columbia, has been a gathering point. Crowds once assembled to eagerly check out the single women arriving from the United Kingdom on “bride ships” in the 1860s; to greet the Victoria-based fleet of North Pacific sealing schooners, the workhorses of the fur-seal industry that peaked in the 1890s; or to say farewell to troops departing for the two world wars.