View Royal is a town in Greater Victoria and a member municipality of the Capital Regional District of British Columbia, Canada. View Royal has a population of 11,575 residents. With over of parkland, View Royal includes Thetis, McKenzie, Pike, and Prior Lakes and portions of Esquimalt Harbour and Portage Inlet. History View Royal's history is closely linked to the entire region. The Esquimalt First Nation, a Coast Salish indigenous peoples, have occupied View Royal since time immemorial. It began when early inhabitants of today's Esquimalt Harbour crossed an isthmus, now Portage Park, to harvest seafood in Portage Inlet. European settlement began in the 1850s by Kenneth Mackenzie who established a farm known as Craigflower Manor. In the mid-19th century, Dr. John Helmcken, Vancouver Island's first doctor and later speaker of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly, paid the Hudson's Bay Company $5 per acre for hundreds of acres of land between Esquimalt Harbour and what is now Victoria General Hospital. The land was cleared for Victoria's growth. In 1912, the Island Investment Company bought of land below Four Mile Hill, fronting the harbour, from Dr. Helmcken’s son James. They marketed lots as “View Royal” because of their "royal view", which gave the town its name. View Royal remained unorganized for over half a century. By the 1950s, things had begun to change. In 1959, a group of residents in the Shoreline Drive area circulated a petition urging annexation by Esquimalt. Several studies and referendums came and went, but View Royal continued with its unorganized status. In 1966, the Capital Regional District emerged, bringing with it regional approaches for such service deliveries as sewage collection. Then a Price Waterhouse study presented three options: status quo, union with Esquimalt, or incorporation as a town. The town’s incorporation became official on December 5, 1988. Many historic sites still exist in View Royal, including: Four Mile Pub & Six Mile Pub: two historic "road houses" or pubs that have existed for approximately 150 years. Craigflower Manor & Schoolhouse: one of Canada's National Historic Sites. Completed in 1856, the Manor site was one of four original farms set up by the Hudson's Bay Company as part of their obligations in settling Vancouver Island. The site housed the McKenzie family in the Manor as well as twenty other dwellings, a sawmill, a flour mill, a blacksmith's shop, a brick kiln, a slaughterhouse, and a general store. The