Shot from the rugged, gorse-blanketed bluffs of Oak Bay on Vancouver Island, this hand-tinted panoramic postcard sweeps the eye across the steel-grey waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca toward the snow-capped Olympic Mountain Range shimmering on the Washington State horizon — a view that residents of Victoria, B.C., have treasured for generations as their own private window into another country. The foreground bursts with warm amber and gold tints applied to the native Scotch broom and coastal scrub, a colourization technique that gives this Gowen-Sutton production its characteristically dreamy, painterly warmth. A small rocky islet with what appears to be a navigation light sits in the middle distance. Published by the Gowen Sutton Co. Ltd. of Vancouver, B.C., this card is numbered 78 in their landscape series and exemplifies the photochrome-style tinted cards that dominated the Canadian souvenir trade in the 1920s–1940s. Oak Bay, an affluent seaside municipality bordering Victoria, was a premier postcard subject for its unobstructed cross-border mountain vistas.