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- VICTORIA DISTRICT CHURCH 151
Cadboro Bay, and was in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. Mr. Leigh was a man of very good attainments, being a good musician and contributing to the various entertainments of those days, when regular entertainments by professionals were few and far between. He subsequently was City Clerk, being the second to hold that position, after Mr. Nathaniel M. Hicks, who was appointed clerk on the city being incorporated. Mr. Hicks is buried in Quadra Street Cemetery, and his headstone is in evidence to-day as a mute appeal to our city fathers to put the place in order. I might say that Mr. Leigh was the father of a numerous family, but I believe, with the exception of a son, Ernest, who resides in San Francisco, and a granddaughter, Mrs. George Simpson, who resides here, all have passed away.
Victoria District church was destroyed by fire in 1869, one evening about 10 o'clock, the alarm being given by a Catholic priest on his way home, who with Mr. James Kennedy (who lived with me), was passing over the hill. Of the early pioneer clergy connected with the church, Mr. Cridge, the incumbent, was first; then Bishop Hills; the Rev. R. J. Dundas, afterward rector of St. John's; Rev. Alexander C. Garrett, now Bishop of Dallas, Texas, and Rev. George Crickmer, who subsequently was sent to Langley or Yale.
The organ used up to 1861 or 1862 was situated in the gallery, and had three barrels, each of ten tunes, so that thirty tunes was the limit. Mr. Seeley, who owned the Australian House, which stood until lately at the north end of the Causeway, was an attendant at the church, and being an organ-builder undertook to improvise a keyboard attachment for this barrel organ. This keyboard was used on Sunday mornings and on special occasions by Mrs. Atwood (Mrs. T. Sidney Wilson of St. Charles Street.) At evening services the
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