Painted wood Victorian houses stand on small lots behind the stone Parliament Buildings, with an open road along the strait on the other side.
What James Bay looks like
The run a five hundred foot stone facade along Belleville Street, cut in andesite with a central dome and two end pavilions. The stands further along the same street, a lower grey panelled building added in the 1960s. The former Canadian Pacific steamship terminal, a low Greek temple shaped building from 1924, is a few blocks past that.
Behind the civic frontage the streets are residential, painted wood houses on small lots, one and a half to two and a half storeys under steep gabled roofs. The largest is a turreted Queen Anne mansion known as the , built in 1897. It sits behind clipped hedges and a monkey puzzle tree. Plainer houses nearby carry the same wraparound porches and bay windows in a smaller size, with white or pale clapboard siding. An earlier Italianate house a few streets over, the , was built in 1863 and faced in Californian redwood.
runs open along the south side, a two lane road with a grass verge and no buildings between the pavement and the rocks at the shoreline. Ogden Point's breakwater and cruise ship terminal sit at its western end. A cluster of brightly painted float homes is moored at , tucked into the harbour entrance to the north.
Shot in James Bay
The stone exterior of the Parliament Buildings has stood in for a storybook kingdom and an American college campus without changing anything about the building itself. Descendants and American Dreamer both shot here within a few years of each other, using the same dome and colonnade for two different fictional settings.
Descendants, 2015
British Columbia Parliament Buildings
Played the royal coronation ceremony, Auradon, the fictional kingdom of the Descendants films, present day
Descendants used the building's exterior for the villains arrival and the coronation ceremony. The dome and the colonnade are visible through both sequences, filmed from the lawn facing Belleville Street. Street View
American Dreamer, 2022
Played Brockton University, a fictional American college town, present day
American Dreamer, a 2022 comedy starring Peter Dinklage, used the same exterior to double as the fictional Brockton University campus. The columned portico and dome stand in for an East Coast college building with no dressing needed. Street View
What James Bay can double for
Thorndon in Wellington, New Zealand
Thorndon pairs the same two elements, a national parliament building and streets of small painted wood villas within a few minutes walk of it. The Tinakori Road villas carry verandahs, bay windows and decorative vergeboard from the 1870s through the 1900s, close to the scale of the houses behind Belleville Street. Wellington's villas run in continuous terraces more often than these standalone houses do, so a wide shot works best on a block with gaps between buildings. Try searching painted wood villas now.
Alamo Square in San Francisco, California
Alamo Square's row of identical painted Victorian houses, built between 1892 and 1896, is the closest match for a block of bright single colour facades. Each house there carries the same gabled rooflines and bay windows found on the largest houses on Belleville Street. The San Francisco houses are attached in a continuous row rather than standing on separate lots, so a frame that includes the side of a building gives away the difference. Try searching painted Victorian row houses now.
Queen Anne in Seattle, Washington
Seattle's Queen Anne occupies a hillside above the water and carries the same name as the Victorian architectural style, with a mix of turreted mansions and smaller detached houses. Many of Seattle's houses have been altered with added storeys and vinyl siding, so a production needs to scout for an unaltered block rather than assume one. Try searching hillside Victorian houses now.
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