History, survey, conservation and repair of the Royal Naval Magazine of Cole Island, Esquimalt Harbour, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

This paper is a brief summary of the history of the evolution of the magazine in Esquimalt Harbour that served the Royal Navy’s Pacific Squadron, based in the same harbour after 1862 and which was intimately entwined with the development of the British colony of Vancouver Island after its foundation by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) during the 1840s. It also chronicles the conservation, repair and informed restoration of the magazine site over the last ten years, in which latter endeavour the author became periodically involved after 2014, culminating in a five-month stay upon the island, as resident mason-conservator and default caretaker, between July and November 2021. The paper draws upon the author’s original 2014 condition survey, and upon a paper ‘Lime in Canada’ written by the author for the Building Limes Forum Journal in 2020, while incorporating subsequent research and additional material and correcting some of the errors and omissions in both earlier accounts. The project was driven by the deployment of traditional skills and like-for-like materials within the modern western Canadian context, within which such skills and such an approach are scarce, seeking to demonstrate the benefits of these to the built heritage across the province of British Columbia and to encourage their widespread use for the conservation and repair of traditional buildings in the province.