Ladysmith-Oceanside.
3 candidates, one seat.

Stz'uminus First Nation calls itself a Coast Salish People who have lived around the Salish Sea for thousands of years. The Nation says its traditional territory on east Vancouver Island includes four reserves of more than 1,200 hectares, much of it bordering the Strait of Georgia and Ladysmith Harbour. It reports 1,300 members, with about half living on its reserves. The Province's 2022 news release describes the Nation's territory as a collective assertion with the member Nations of the Quw'utsun Nation, extending along eastern Vancouver Island, the southern Gulf Islands and the lower Fraser River.

Snaw-naw-as (Nanoose) First Nation says its name means the way in the harbour and comes from the Island Halkomelem word Naus. Its people speak Hul'q'umi'num' and live at Nanoose Bay. The Nation says the Joint Reserve Commission established its reserve at Nanoose Bay in 1876, that the reserve measures 63 hectares and that the territory remains unceded. BC Geographical Names records that Captain Richards of H.M.S. Plumper applied the name Nanoose to the harbour in 1859 to 1860, taking it from the Snaw Naw As.

The Qualicum First Nation says the pentl'ach language was traditionally spoken within and beyond its territories. It says the language has been declared extinct since the 1940s, calls that description inaccurate and began a formal language project in 2017. The Qualicum Beach Museum devotes an exhibit to the Pentlatch peoples, whom it describes as the people of the local area. BC Geographical Names records that the name Qualicum comes from a Nanaimo term for the place of the dog salmon, and that Dr. Robert Brown documented the area in 1864.

BC Geographical Names records that the Spanish naval officer Jose Maria Narvaez named Lasqueti Island in July 1791 for Juan Maria Lasqueti. Spanish charts of 1792 print it as Isla de Lasqueti, and maps of the middle of the 19th century call it Sangster Island. The official name Lasqueti Island was adopted on 18 December 1906. The island's community society gives the Coast Salish name of the island as Xwe'etay.

The same society reports that archaeological surveys found large settlement sites in almost every bay on the island. It dates the longhouse villages to within the last 2,000 to 3,000 years, says artifacts suggest people camped in the interior 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, and dates inland refuge sites to the last 1,000 years.

Three bodies govern the island, the society says: the Islands Trust for land use, the qathet Regional District for services and bylaws, and School District 69, which runs False Bay School. The Islands Trust says its Lasqueti local trust area includes more than 23 associated islands and three provincial parks, Jedediah Island, Sabine Channel and Squitty Bay.

European farming began in the 1880s at Nanoose Harbour, according to BC Geographical Names, and the Arlington Hotel post office opened there in 1906. The same office records that the four Parks brothers claimed land at the place that became Parksville on 5 October 1885, and that the post office opened on 1 February 1887 with Nelson Parks as postmaster. The City of Parksville says a wagon road from Nanaimo to Englishman's River, reaching on to Comox, was finished in 1886, and that the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway extension of 1901 sped the town's growth.

Canada's Historic Places register records that William Rath, a gold prospector, founded a homestead in 1886 on the land that is now Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park, and that his family later allowed recreational use of the land, which became a campground. At Qualicum Beach, the museum says a Canadian Pacific Railway employee, H.E. Beasley, took charge in 1905 of extending the island's railway north from Nanaimo. The train station was built in 1913 and the railway reached the town one year later. The Qualicum Beach Hotel was built in 1913, and BC Geographical Names records that the town's post office opened on 1 November 1913.

Cassidy takes its name from Thomas Cassidy, who settled in the Oyster District in the 1870s and supplied milk and vegetables to the crews building the railway. BC Geographical Names records that the Cassidy post office opened on 1 June 1919 and that the community lies between Nanaimo and Ladysmith.

The Ladysmith and District Historical Society tells how the town began. Robert Dunsmuir found a coal seam near Diver Lake in 1869 and the Wellington seam in 1871. Later Ephraim Hodgson found a continuation of that seam, which became the Extension mine. After a dispute with the Western Fuel Company over land for the railway, access to the existing wharves was denied, and James Dunsmuir chose Oyster Harbour as the shipping port. In 1898 work began on a railway extension, a coal washer, bunkers and wharves. Most miners moved from Wellington and brought their homes, shops, hotels and churches, which were loaded on rail flat cars and reassembled at the harbour. BC Geographical Names records that the Oyster Harbour post office opened on 1 October 1899.

James Dunsmuir named the town Ladysmith on 1 March 1900, after the South African town whose siege had just been lifted, says BC Geographical Names. The society adds that ten streets carry the names of generals of that war. The City of Ladysmith was incorporated on 3 June 1904. A copper smelter, supplied with ore by rail from Mount Sicker, ran from 1902 to 1912. The society says a strike of more than a year caused much animosity between strikers and non-strikers, and that the Extension mine closed in 1931 as the seam ran out and demand for coal fell.

In 1933 a windstorm blew down trees in the hills behind the town, and the Rockefeller Foundation, which then owned the forest, agreed to sell it. The Comox Logging and Railway Company began logging and shipping logs through the harbour in 1936. The society says this was the town's main industry until 1986 and that two sawmills still work there. BC Geographical Names records that Ladysmith became a village municipality on 1 January 1958 and a town municipality on 1 January 1965.

Nanaimo Airport says the Department of National Defence bought 522 acres in 1942 for $20,000 and built an airstrip for a Royal Canadian Air Force glider pilot training facility. After the Second World War the City of Nanaimo leased the field from the federal government for $1 a year. The Nanaimo Airport Commission took over operations under a 30-year lease in April 1992, and in 1999 the air terminal was named for the First World War flying ace Raymond Collishaw.

BC Geographical Names records that Qualicum Beach became a village municipality on 5 May 1942 and a town municipality on 7 January 1983. Parksville became a village municipality on 19 June 1945, a town municipality on 30 March 1978 and a city municipality on 1 May 1986. The Qualicum Beach Museum says the Qualicum Beach Hotel, managed with its golf course by Noel Money until his death in 1941, was torn down in 1969. Canada's Historic Places register records that Rathtrevor Beach became a provincial park on 20 April 1967.

The Department of National Defence's Maritime Engineering Journal says torpedo testing at Nanoose Bay began after December 1953, when a senior officer of the Royal Canadian Navy confirmed that the deep, quiet waters of Area WG suited faster torpedoes. Two new torpedoes were being tested there in January 1954. Canada and the United States signed a formal agreement on 18 May 1965 that made Nanoose a jointly operated underwater range, now called the Canadian Forces Maritime Experimental and Test Ranges. The journal says the tracking range doubled in size in 1970 and grew to 44 square nautical miles in 1992. BC Geographical Names records that in 1999 the federal government expropriated 217 square kilometres of ocean floor for the testing.

The Union of BC Municipalities records that the Town of Ladysmith and Stz'uminus First Nation signed a Community Accord in 2007, after a debate over expanding the town boundary and a proposal for waterfront development. The two governments renewed it in 2012 as the Naut'sa mawt Accord, a Hul'qumi'num phrase meaning working together, and signed a Co-operation Protocol that October. In early 2018 they completed a joint Waterfront Area Plan covering over 50 hectares of land and water lots, which received a provincial planning award in 2018.

On 19 July 2022 the Province and Stz'uminus signed a reconciliation agreement. The Province's release says it commits the parties to land transfer agreements worth as much as $28.5 million, gives the Nation $3 million in immediate financial benefits and provides $10 million over five years for Stz'uminus-led remediation of Crown land in Ladysmith Harbour. The Province's page for the Nation says Stz'uminus withdrew from the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group in 2019 and negotiates land and resource agreements outside the BC treaty process. Stz'uminus First Nation is one of four Nations that sued as plaintiffs in Cowichan Tribes v. Canada, decided by the Supreme Court of British Columbia on 7 August 2025.

Snaw-naw-as belongs to the Te'mexw Treaty Association with four other Nations. The BC Treaty Commission records a Statement of Intent filed on 15 July 1994, a Framework Agreement signed on 5 December 1996 and an Agreement in Principle signed in April 2015, and says the association is in Stage 5 negotiations to finalize a treaty.