Mid Island-Pacific Rim.
3 candidates, one seat.

Parks Canada says Nuu-chah-nulth means along the mountains and sea, and that it names the territories along a 300 km stretch of the west coast of Vancouver Island from Brooks Peninsula to Point-no-Point. The Nuu-chah-nulth are now 14 nations, each with an elected chief and council and with hereditary chiefs. Tseshaht (c̓išaaʔatḥ) says its people were created at c̓išaa, on Benson Island in the Broken Group Islands, and that its lands came to include central Barkley Sound, much of Alberni Inlet and the Alberni Valley. Hupačasath says its territory takes in the Alberni Valley and includes Port Alberni. Its territory page places Ahahswinis IR 1, the main residential reserve, on River Road within the city's boundaries.

Tla-o-qui-aht says its people have occupied Meares Island, Tofino and Long Beach, and the land as far as Sutton Pass on Highway 4 west of Port Alberni. Its administration is in Tofino and it gives its membership as more than 1200. Ahousaht (ʕaaḥuusʔatḥ) describes itself as one of fourteen Nuu-chah-nulth Nations, with more than 2,400 members. Hesquiaht First Nation says Hot Springs Cove is its most inhabited reserve. Ditidaht (diitiid7aa7tx) says its territory stretches from Cowichan Lake down Nitinaht Lake and along the coast between Bonilla Point and Pachena Point. Elections BC's 2024 results list voting places at Ahousaht, Ditidaht and Hot Springs Cove.

Huu-ay-aht keeps an office at Anacla and says that diseases brought by colonizers in the late 1700s and early 1800s reduced its people to fewer than 250. Toquaht (t̓uk̓ʷaaʔatḥ) names Toquaht Bay, Mayne Bay and Macoah Passage in western Barkley Sound as its ancestral lands. The Uchucklesaht Tribe Government describes its home as Uchucklesit Inlet of Barkley Sound. The Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ Government is in the community of Hitacu, on the eastern shore of Ucluelet Inlet.

On the east side, K’ómoks First Nation says its ancestors came to occupy territory from the Salmon River in the north to the Englishman River in the south, including Quadra, Denman and Hornby islands. The Islands Trust describes Hornby Island as the traditional territory of the K’omoks First Nation.

BC Geographical Names records that Lieutenant Francisco Eliza named the inlet in 1791 after Pedro Alberni, who commanded the soldiers of the Spanish expedition, and that a sawmill was set up at the head of the inlet in 1860. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says the mill, known as the Anderson mill, was built under Edward Stamp. Construction began in the summer of 1860, the mill was finished in May 1861, and its first export shipment went to Peru.

BC Geographical Names records that the New Alberni post office opened on 1 December 1900, one mile south of Alberni, and was renamed Port Alberni on 1 March 1910. Port Alberni was incorporated as a city on 12 March 1912.

The Village of Cumberland says the Dunsmuir family's Union Colliery Company opened its No. 1 mine in 1888 and brought Chinese workers to build and work the mines and to build the Wellington Colliery Railway to the port at Union Bay. BC Geographical Names records that the settlement was first called Union, with a post office from 1 August 1889, and that James Dunsmuir renamed it Cumberland in 1891 after Cumberland County in England. It became a city on 1 January 1898.

The Village says Japanese miners settled west of Union from December 1891 and that No. 1 Japanese Town lasted from 1893 to 1942. In 1942 thirty-one families of that town were ordered to leave and were sent to internment camps. It dates Chinatown to 1888 to 1968 and says it became one of the largest Chinese communities in Canada by the end of the First World War. The Canadian Encyclopedia says Cumberland became a village in 1958 and that the last mine closed in 1966. In 2002 Weldwood Canada gave 104 acres that hold both sites to the Village, which runs them as Coal Creek Historic Park.

Parks Canada says Canada built the Cape Beale Lighthouse in 1873 and the Carmanah Lighthouse in 1891, and that a telegraph line ran through the traditional territories of the Huu-ay-aht, Ditidaht and Pacheedaht. After the steamship Valencia sank in 1906 with the loss of more than 125 lives, the government built Pachena Lighthouse in 1907, set up lifesaving stations at Cloo-ose and Bamfield, and upgraded the telegraph route to the Dominion Life Saving Trail. In 1973 the lifesaving trail became part of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve as a hiking trail, the West Coast Trail.

The Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre records that the Pacific Cable Board's station at Bamfield, designed by Francis Mawson Rattenbury, was built in 1901 and 1902, and that the first two telegraph messages to go around the world were relayed on 1 November 1902. A new cable station opened in Port Alberni in 1959, and the last messages left Bamfield on 20 June 1959. The property was bought in 1969 and the first summer classes of the marine station ran in 1972. BC Geographical Names says Bamfield is a misspelling of the name of William Eddy Banfield, a trader on this coast who died in 1862.

The District of Tofino says a Spanish expedition in the late 1700s recorded five large settlements in southern Clayoquot Sound, and that the British trader John Meares wrote of visiting Chief Wickaninnish at Echachist in 1788 and seeing 800 people gathered in one building. Tofino's first post office opened on 1 February 1909. BC Geographical Names records that Tofino became a village on 5 February 1932, and that Ucluelet's post office opened on 1 September 1894 and its village municipality began on 26 February 1952.

Horsfield and Kennedy write that on 22 August 1959 all 74 roadworthy vehicles of Tofino and Ucluelet drove together, carrying 300 passengers, over the new road to Alberni, which logging companies and the Department of Highways had taken five years to patch into a usable route. They write that the isolation of Tofino and Ucluelet effectively ended as traffic grew, and that the Tla-o-qui-aht felt the change most because large areas of their territory could be reached by road for the first time. Parks Canada says Pacific Rim National Park Reserve was established in 1970.

The Canadian Encyclopedia says Port Alberni became a major forestry centre after the Second World War and that its paper mill has run since 1947. It says the tsunami from the Good Friday earthquake in Alaska in 1964 moved up Alberni Inlet, washed away 55 houses and caused no deaths. The Alberni Valley Museum says the waves hit the twin cities of Alberni and Port Alberni shortly after midnight, and that dealing with the damage brought the two communities together and led them to amalgamate three years later. BC Geographical Names dates the merger to October 1967 and says the new city kept the name Port Alberni.

The Hesquiaht First Nation says the same earthquake sent waves into its village at Hot Springs Cove, where two of the 18 homes on the shore were not destroyed and nobody died. The people were displaced until 1972, when they moved to the east side of Refuge Cove, where the community remains.

Horsfield and Kennedy write that in November 1983 the province gave MacMillan Bloedel permission to log 90 percent of Meares Island. At the Meares Island Easter Festival in Tofino on 21 April 1984, Tla-o-qui-aht chief councillor Moses Martin declared the island a Tribal Park. The Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht filed for their own injunction, and on 27 March 1985 the BC Court of Appeal froze all plans to log the island until First Nations claims could be resolved. The Tla-o-qui-aht say that since 1984 they have extended Tribal Park designations to all of their traditional territory, and that the Tribal Parks Guardians program began in 2008.

On 13 April 1993 Premier Mike Harcourt announced the Clayoquot Sound Land Use Decision, which let companies log 62 percent of the Sound. The Clayoquot Peace Camp opened on 1 July 1993, and the authors describe the protests that followed as the largest in Canadian history and the arrests as the largest mass arrests in the country. On 5 May 2000 a plaque in Pacific Rim National Park announced that the United Nations had designated Clayoquot Sound a biosphere reserve.

Five Nations negotiated the Maa-nulth treaty: Huu-ay-aht, Ka:’yu:’k’t’h’/Che:k’tles7et’h’, Toquaht, Uchucklesaht and Yuułuʔiłʔatḥ. The Maa-nulth timeline records that the treaty was initialled on 9 December 2006, that the Nations voted to enter it in October 2007, that British Columbia ratified it on 29 November 2007 and that Parliament gave Royal Assent on 18 June 2009. It took effect on 1 April 2011.

On 21 February 2023 Tseshaht First Nation released the first results of its search of the grounds of the former Alberni Indian Residential School in Port Alberni. Global News reported that the school operated from 1900 until 1973, that the Nation's records research showed 67 children died while at the school, and that ground-penetrating radar had found 17 geophysical features representing suspected graves in the area surveyed so far. The Tseshaht lead a project called ʔuuʔatumin yaqckʷiimitqin, which means Doing it for our Ancestors.