As an aside from discovering my father’s service on Vancouver Island, I took the opportunity to visit Fort Rodd. This fort was constructed in the late 19th century, but is unlike the contemporary forts that I have visited in the UK.
Whereas on the southern coast of England the forts were constructed from a fairly standard pattern and the chalk hills were cut to accomodate the forts, in this case the fort was adapted to accomodate the granite landscape.
I hired an audio guide for my tour of the fort which was most useful – even if the “character” voices were at times unbelievable. The fort was upgraded at various time from around 1890 to 1950, with various percieved enemies: USA, Russia, Japan, USSR…
Ironically, considering the initial purpose of the fort, when approaching the forward defences my mobile phone automatically swithed to a foreign (USA) network.
A selection of photographs is attached below:
While visiting this site I picked up some beach souvenirs to match the shells, pebbles and detritus found on our last major transaltantic holiday to Floriida I thought a selection of Atlantic beach and Pacific beach collections would make a nice reciprocal set. On returning to the hotel I found that by pure accident the most recent souvenirs could be arranged thus:
General Whiskers' semi-historical wanderings 