Esquimalt-Colwood.
4 candidates, one seat.

The Esquimalt Nation gives its traditional name as Xʷsepsəm and says its people are part of the Lekwungen peoples, whose territories centred in and around what is now the City of Victoria. Its website names other Lekwungen places and groups, among them Xʷaymiɬ (Colwood/Langford), Sxʷeŋxʷəŋ (James Bay) and Qəqay̓ə́qən (William Head). It says its ancestors signed the Douglas treaties in 1850.

The Songhees Nation introduces itself as the Songhees Nation of the lək̓ʷəŋən People. Its website says the lək̓ʷəŋən people are known today as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations and have hunted and gathered in this area for thousands of years. The City of Colwood says it sits on the ancestral lands of Teechamista and the Lekwungen-speaking people now known as the Songhees and Xwsepsum Nations. The Town of View Royal describes its documented history as beginning in traditional Songhees territory, the home of the Kosampson and Whyomilth families.

The Township of Esquimalt's history says Coast Salish people lived in the area for an estimated 4,000 years before European settlers arrived. It says the name Esquimalt is an anglicized version of the First Nation's word es-whoy-malth, meaning the place of gradually shoaling water. The Township places a village site near Ashe Head on the eastern shore of Esquimalt Harbour and says the Esquimalt Band makes its home there today.

The Township of Esquimalt's history says James Douglas, Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, visited Esquimalt Harbour in 1843 and recognized the agricultural potential of the land. The company's subsidiary, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, started Viewfield Farm in 1850. It started Constance Cove Farm and Craigflower Farm in 1853.

Craigflower lies in what is now View Royal. The Town says work began at its Maple Point farm in 1853 under Kenneth McKenzie, a Scottish farm manager who served as the first farm bailiff from 1856 to 1866. The Craigflower Schoolhouse was completed in 1855, and the Town calls it the oldest surviving school building in Western Canada. The site completed in 1856 ran a sawmill, a flour mill, a blacksmith's shop, a brick kiln, a slaughterhouse and a general store.

In 1851 Captain Edward E. Langford arrived from England to manage a farm at Esquimalt for the same company. The BC Geographical Names Office records that the Langford family named the farm Colwood, to recall the family's 200-acre holding in Sussex, England. That farm is the origin of the name of the City of Colwood.

Fisgard Lighthouse in Colwood was built in 1859 and 1860 and first showed its light on 16 November 1860. Parks Canada designated it a national historic site in 1958 as the first permanent lighthouse on the Pacific coast of Canada. Its position at the entrance to Esquimalt Harbour is part of the reason for the designation.

The Township of Esquimalt's history says Esquimalt replaced Valparaiso, Chile, as the Royal Navy's Pacific headquarters in 1865. The Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway was built through the centre of Esquimalt in 1886. In 1887 a military base was established at Work Point Barracks and the naval dockyard was completed.

Parks Canada's management plan for Fort Rodd Hill and Fisgard Lighthouse describes the Victoria-Esquimalt fortifications of 1878 to 1956 and places the sites in the traditional territory of the Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations. The plan says it draws on input from those two Nations. The Township adds that gun positions at Macaulay Point, Finlayson Point and Brothers Island protected Victoria and Esquimalt harbours, and that the Crown took over larger parts of Esquimalt's land for military use.

The Royal BC Museum says the Old Songhees Reserve existed from 1844 until 1911, across Victoria Harbour from the museum's Thunderbird Park. It included an extensive Lukwungen village and was a gathering place for First Nations visitors from up and down the coast, who came for ceremonies, trade and paid work in Victoria. The museum records that Chief Michael Cooper, who lived from 1864 to 1936, played a prominent role in relocating the reserve between 1892 and 1911. The Songhees Nation's website says the Nation moved from the reserve at Songhees Point to its current reserve in 1911.

In 1912 and 1913 the Canadian Pacific Railway built a repair yard for steam locomotives on Esquimalt Road in Victoria West. Parks Canada's register describes a roundhouse of ten stalls with a turntable 85 feet across, and records that the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway Roundhouse was formally recognized as a national historic site on 4 June 1992. The register calls it the most intact facility for servicing steam locomotives in western Canada.

The Township of Esquimalt's history says the Royal Navy left the Esquimalt base in 1905 and the last British Army garrison left in 1906. The base was revived in 1910 as the West Coast base of the new Naval Service of Canada, which became the Royal Canadian Navy in 1911. The letters patent for the District of Esquimalt were signed on 15 August 1912, and the Corporation of the Township of Esquimalt was incorporated on 1 September 1912. Charles H. Lugrin was acclaimed as the first Reeve, and one of the council's first tasks was a sewerage system.

The Township says shipbuilding and repair had been the main industry since 1893. During the Second World War, Yarrow's Shipyard built ships for the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Merchant Marine Service, and Pacific Command Headquarters was set up at Work Point Barracks. At one point the staging grounds held 10,000 troops and officers in training. A second history page on the Township's website gives the Yarrows workforce as more than 4,300 workers. In 1941 the Old Esquimalt Village was expropriated, along with property in the Naden area, to make room for larger military barracks.

Hatley Park is an estate of 228.84 hectares at 2005 Sooke Road in Colwood, beside Esquimalt Lagoon, according to Parks Canada's Canadian Register of Historic Places. The industrialist James Dunsmuir had Hatley Castle built in 1908 and 1909 to a design by the architect Samuel Maclure, and the landscape architects Brett and Hall laid out the grounds. The Dunsmuir family lived there until 1937.

In 1940 the Department of National Defence bought the property for Royal Roads Military College, which used it for more than 50 years. Parks Canada recognized Hatley Park as a national historic site on 6 July 1995. It describes the estate as a Canadian example of an Edwardian park that remains practically intact in its plan, the extent of its grounds and the quality and variety of its features. The military college added buildings, two sports fields and a parade square between the 1940s and the mid-1970s.

The Town of View Royal says its name was coined circa 1910 by a real estate developer promoting the Royal Views of Esquimalt Harbour. The Esquimalt Lagoon Migratory Bird Sanctuary was established on 12 December 1931. The BC Geographical Names Office records that Colwood was incorporated as a city on 24 June 1985, and the Town of View Royal says it was incorporated in 1988.

The Te'mexw Treaty Association is made up of five Coast Salish Nations: Beecher Bay (SC'IȺNEW̱), Malahat, Snaw-naw-as, Songhees and T'Sou-ke. It says treaty negotiations are in Stage 5 of the BC treaty process. The Songhees Nation's website says the process has reached the final stage, that the treaty will be subject to ratification by Songhees members, and that it will not replace the treaties signed with Douglas in 1850.

On 2 October 2024 the Songhees Nation Council and the City of Colwood Council signed a Relationship Agreement. The City says that if Songhees members approve their treaty, Songhees is expected to hold treaty lands at Hatley Park, which Colwood surrounds. Chief Ron Sam described the agreement as part of getting ready for a potential future where Songhees and Colwood have neighbouring lands.