BRINGING WATER TO VICTORIA

SRHS#3519 Flowline, Sooke Hills, 1913

THE FLOWLINE

The Sooke Flowline was a 44-kilometre concrete pipeline that brought water to Greater Victoria, it was decommissioned in the 1970s, while the Sooke portion continued until 2009. Between 1911 to 1915, over 400 workers built and installed 36,000 concrete sections for the Flowline. In 2010, the Museum obtained a permit to extract sections of the Flowline, some are on display at the Museum while others around Sooke.

SRHS#8280 Bake Oven, Sooke Hills, 1998

BAKE OVEN

While working the Flowline, bake ovens were constructed near workers’ camps. The morning before workers’ shifts, a coarse-grained dough was placed in the oven to bake while they worked on the Flowline. At the end of a long day, workers came back to camp with the smell of fresh baked bread.