Victoria runs on small business — about a hundred thousand of them, most with no employees at all. And downtown, the century-old shops the city is known for are closing, one storefront at a time.
Strip the region's commerce down to the count and it surprises you: roughly 100,000 businesses across the Victoria area, and only about 15% of them have a single employee. This is a city of one-person businesses, makers and one-room shops, not head offices. That's both a strength and a weakness: a city of tiny businesses doesn't collapse all at once, but every closure is somebody's whole livelihood.
The pressure shows downtown. Retail vacancy in the core roughly tripled, from low single digits before 2020 to a record near 11% in 2024, easing to 9.6% by late 2025 — but with nearly half of downtown businesses saying they'd consider closing if their lease came up within a year. A US-facing tech sector worth an estimated $7.9 billion no longer needs downtown floors. And yet, on one 200-metre stretch of Government Street, Canada's densest cluster of century-old shops still trades: Rogers' Chocolates since 1885, Murchie's since 1894, Munro's Books since 1963.
But that cluster is thinning in real time. Old Morris Tobacconist, open since 1892, closed in October 2025 after 133 years when its building sold. W&J Wilson, North America's oldest family-run clothier at 1862, left the downtown store in 2021. Irish Linen, founded in 1910 and a Government Street fixture for over a century, moved around the corner in 2024. This guide walks that street — who's still open, who's gone — and what it says about where the city's business is going. It's a living document: we update it as shops open and close, and when we get one wrong, we want to hear it.
Four numbers frame Victoria's commerce: how many businesses there are, how empty the core has become, what's pulling tenants out of it, and how long the oldest survivor has held its corner.
The peak is the story, but so is the recovery: vacancy is easing even as 48% of downtown businesses say they'd consider closing at lease-end. A core under pressure, not in collapse.
Strip out the ~15% with staff and roughly 85,000 one-person operations remain — the real shape of how Victoria does business.
businesses call the Victoria region home — but strip out the 15% with any employees and what's left is roughly 85,000 one-person operations.
Victoria isn't a city of head offices. Most businesses here are one person.
The survivors on Government Street don't have a secret, but they do have a pattern. Five things the century-old shops tend to share — and the ones that just closed tended to lose.
Rogers' has poured chocolates from its own heritage building since 1903. Old Morris rented — and when the building sold in 2024, 133 years of business had a year to live. Who owns the building often decides who survives.
Hand-dipped creams, loose-leaf tea weighed at the counter, a bookseller's table you can't replicate in a browser tab. The survivors sell experience and expertise — not things Amazon can undercut.
Tourists fill the summer; local regulars pay for the winter. The shops that last are on the postcard and on the weekly errand list. Summer traffic alone won't carry a shop through February.
Tea. Books. Chocolate. Linen. The shops that last are specialists, not general stores — one thing done so well the shop's name becomes the word for it. In Victoria, Murchie's means tea.
Munro's outlived its founders because the staff bought it in 2014 and kept it open. Shops that depend on one founder tend to close when the founder retires. The ones that survive figure out who takes over before they have to.
“A heritage plaque protects the building, not the shop inside it.— Old Morris closed in October 2025, after 133 years
North America's oldest family-run clothier in its original location, opened in 1862 — older than Canada itself. Seven generations across two families dressed Victoria from this corner. In 2021, after 159 years, it closed the downtown store and consolidated to Oak Bay and Sidney. The business lives on, but the Government Street store is gone.
Gone from downtown: a 159-year run, ended 2021.
E.A. Morris opened here in 1892 and stayed 133 years — one of the oldest tobacconists in North America, its interior a registered heritage piece down to the onyx-and-brass fixtures. When the building sold in 2024 for $2.4 million, the clock started; the keys changed hands at the end of October 2025. The heritage designation protected the interior. It couldn't protect the business.
The newest gap on the street: 133 years, closed in 2025.
Tea and coffee weighed at the counter since 1894, in a heritage building that smells of it the moment the door opens. The Government Street shop is the flagship of a name many Victorians treat as shorthand for the city, with a café that runs through lunch. Of the original century cluster, it's the workhorse survivor.
Still here: a 130-year-old counter, busy at lunch.
Founded in 1963 by Jim Munro and his then-wife Alice — who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature — and housed since 1984 in a 1909 former Royal Bank hall under a 24-foot coffered ceiling. Routinely ranked among the most beautiful bookstores in the world. Jim retired in 2014; his staff bought it and kept it open, which is the whole point.
Still here: employee-owned, one of the world's loveliest rooms.
Irish linen sold from the same designed shelves and glass cases on Government Street for over a century — the shop dates to 1910 and barely changed in all that time. In March 2024 it moved around the corner to larger premises at 665 Fort Street — alive and still trading, but no longer part of the Government Street row it helped define.
Moved, not gone: off Government after a century-plus, now on Fort St.
The oldest of them all, and the one still firmly in place. Charles “Candy” Rogers sold his first chocolates in 1885, and the heritage shop has poured Victoria Creams from this storefront since 1903 — its stained-glass-and-mahogany interior protected since 1991. Western Canada's oldest chocolatier, open seven days a week. The anchor the rest of the street is measured against.
Still here: 141 years and counting.
The old shops in one table — when each was founded, and where each one stands in 2026. Three are still open on Government Street; three have closed, left, or moved since 2021.
VerifyThree open, three gone or moved in five years — on one short block. Status checked against local reporting and store listings in June 2026. If a shop has changed since, tell us. Spot something that’s changed? Tell us.
A few things to keep in mind before you judge the street by its pretty windows.
A heritage designation protects the building and the fixtures, not the shop inside them. Old Morris had a registered heritage interior and still closed when the building changed hands.
A sidewalk packed in July tells you almost nothing about February. The shops that last are carried by residents on the off-season errand, not the cruise-ship afternoon.
Downtown went from ~11% to 9.6%, which is real progress — but 6.3% of storefronts changed hands in 2025, and 48% of businesses say they'd consider closing when their lease ends. The turnover matters as much as the headline number.
As the core reprices, new independents cluster on the edges — Fernwood, Quadra Village, Oak Bay Avenue, the Cook Street and Estevan villages. The Atlas isn't only downtown anymore.
This block lost three of its oldest shops in five years. Check the hours and the address before you make the trip — and especially before you send a visitor.
VerifyStorefronts open, close, and move without notice. Confirm a business is trading before you plan around it — this guide is a map, not a guarantee.
Keeping these shops alive is mostly a matter of showing up — in person, in the off-season, and beyond the postcard blocks. Tap a box to check it off.
“Victoria isn't a city of head offices. Most businesses here are one person — roughly 85,000 of them.— What the business count actually shows
Storefronts connect to rents, demographics, and even the fault line. Here are four threads from our research worth knowing.
Downtown retail vacancy tripled to 11% while the best sub-$25 dinners cluster on low-rent streets — Chinatown, Quadra, Yates. The same land scarcity pushing Oak Bay to $1.84M pushes restaurant rents up too.
Where commercial rent is still low, food is still cheap. Watch the vacancy map and you can guess where the good cheap meals are.
A $7.9B tech sector is export-facing and remote-friendly, and no longer needs downtown floors. The Province shed 61,000 sq ft of office in 2024; federal departments issued ~1,144 layoff notices across five departments in January 2026, the first tranche of a planned ~10% cut by 2028–29.
As downtown offices empty out, the action moves to the neighbourhood streets — exactly where the independents and the cheap dinners already are.
Rogers' (1885), Murchie's (1894) and Munro's (1963) still trade within 200m on Government St — even as Old Morris (1892) closed in October 2025 — on ground next to the liquefaction-prone Inner Harbour.
Canada's densest cluster of century-old businesses sits on some of the city's most earthquake-vulnerable ground.
Victoria has the oldest average age of any large Canadian metro (44.8) and the highest share of residents over 80. BC faces a 16,858 long-term-care-bed shortfall by 2036 even as Oak Bay home prices soften and older owners start selling.
Care is the next boom industry, older owners selling is housing's biggest variable, and the group that anchors local spending is aging out of it at the same time.
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What’s changed
Storefronts open, close, and move. If a business here has changed, we’ve missed a century-old room that belongs, or a detail is wrong, we want to fix it.
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