Nanaimo-Lantzville.
4 candidates, one seat.

Snuneymuxw First Nation describes itself as a Coast Salish People located in the centre of Coast Salish territory, which takes in the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands, the Fraser River, Burrard Inlet and Howe Sound. The City of Nanaimo's history says the Snuneymuxw settled in what are now Departure Bay and Nanaimo. On 23 December 1854 Snuneymuxw and the Crown, the government acting for the British monarch, entered the Snuneymuxw Sarlequun Treaty of 1854. The Nation says the treaty protects its villages, its cultivated fields and its right to hunt and fish, and that section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 protects the treaty. The Nation's language is Island hul'q'umi'num'.

The name Snaw-naw-as, which the Nation also writes with Nanoose in brackets, derives from the Island Halkomelem word Naus and means the way in the harbour, the Nation says. Its people are Coast Salish and speak Hul'q'umi'num'. The Nation's history page says the Joint Reserve Commission set up its reserve at Nanoose Bay in 1876, that the 63 hectare reserve lies 10 km north of Nanaimo between Lantzville and Parksville, and that the territory remains unceded, which means no treaty or agreement has given the land away. The Nation lists its mailing address as 209 Mallard Way, Lantzville.

Snaw-naw-as belongs to the Naut'sa mawt Tribal Council and the Te'mexw Treaty Association. The Province places the Nation in Stage 5 of the treaty process, final agreement negotiations, and lists an Incremental Treaty Agreement of 2013 and the Douglas Treaties of 1850 and 1854 among its agreements. On 9 April 2015 the five member Nations of the Association, Canada and British Columbia signed the Te'mexw Agreement-in-Principle, a step toward final treaties. Dover Bay Secondary School states that it stands on the traditional lands of the snaw'naw'as peoples.

Robert Dunsmuir found a thick layer of coal in 1869 and named it the Wellington seam, says the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, which places the find five miles northwest of Nanaimo harbour. The Nanaimo Museum's timeline dates it to October 1869, at Diver Lake in the Wellington District north of Nanaimo. It says Dunsmuir, Diggle and Company began exporting coal from the Departure Bay wharf and that the town of Wellington developed. BC Geographical Names says the community is named for Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, and places it on the east side of Brannen Lake within the City of Nanaimo.

The Dictionary says the company needed a three-mile transport link from the pit-head to the wharves, which after 1870 meant a steam railway. By the end of 1874 the provincial minister of mines reported that the Departure Bay mines were in full operation, and that year the output was 29,818 tons. In 1881 Dunsmuir employed 547 men, more than half of them Chinese, and the yearly output was 181,048 tons. After 1882 the company sank two more main shafts, and five mines eventually worked the Wellington deposit. The Craigdarroch Castle museum holds a photograph that it dates to circa 1885 and that shows the Dunsmuir company's wharves at Departure Bay, with a steamship tied up beside them.

The Dictionary says Dunsmuir resisted the safety demands of provincial inspectors, as other owners did, and links that to accidents including the disaster of 1876 at Wellington. In 1877, when island miners threatened to strike over wages, he locked out his workers, and the Dictionary says four months were lost before the miners returned at a lower wage. The Nanaimo Museum's timeline records that in 1878 William Wall strung a telephone wire between Dunsmuir's office in Wellington and the loading docks at Departure Bay, the first telephone service in the province. It adds that James Dunsmuir's mansion at Departure Bay was built in 1884.

The Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway was extended into Wellington in 1887, says the Nanaimo Museum's timeline. On 24 January 1888 an explosion in the No. 5 pit of the Wellington mine, on Diver Lake, killed 77 miners, the timeline records. On 26 January 1898 Wellington was recognized as the terminus of the railway.

The Encyclopedia of British Columbia says the Wellington townsite had 5,000 inhabitants and an opera house in the 1890s, that operations were phased out by 1900 and that many buildings were moved to Ladysmith. Other coal mines at South Wellington and East Wellington lasted until the 1950s, it adds. A tramway joined the mines to a wharf on Departure Bay, and the mines had many deadly explosions and fires and several bitter strikes.

BC Geographical Names records the name Wellington (station) as adopted on 28 July 1945 and changed to Wellington (community) on 29 November 1984. It places the community on the east side of Brannen Lake within the City of Nanaimo.

The District of Lantzville says coal was found in the area in 1916 by the Nanoose Collieries Company, run by Jack Grant, who opened Grant's Mine at the shoreline of Jacks Road. In 1920 an American firm, the Nanoose-Wellington Collieries Company, bought the mine, and its director, Fraser Lantz, renamed the area Lantzville. The mine ran until 1926, when the usable coal ran low and the mine closed. BC Geographical Names gives the source of the name as F.H. (Harry) Lantz, an American coal miner who invested in or owned the Nanoose Collieries.

BC Geographical Names records that the Lantzville post office opened on 1 May 1923, closed on 30 September 1926 and reopened on 3 July 1945. The name Lantzville (Post Office) was adopted on 2 September 1948. In 1993 the Lantzville Historical Society advised the Names Office that the community was first called Grant's Mine and that school photographs used that name until 1929. The Nanaimo Museum's timeline says Lantzville School was built in 1921.

After the mine closed, the District says, Lantzville had a limited economy and a number of local residents, and it served as a summer cottage area. Each year residents mark the mining past with Minetown Days at Huddlestone Park.

Frank and Hannah Beban acquired a 160 acre farm in 1930 and built a mansion, gardens and a horse racing track on it, says the City of Nanaimo. The City bought the estate in 1953, and the Nanaimo Museum's timeline gives the price as $50,000. The park first carried the name Exhibition Park and still hosts the Vancouver Island Exhibition. The Grandview Bowl and the Centennial Building were built in 1958, the Beban Pool, Frank Crane Arena and Social Centre opened in 1976, and the Agriplex was built in 1987.

The timeline records a vote on amalgamation in 1970 that failed by thirty-one votes. On 2 November 1974 a second vote, on joining Harewood, Departure Bay, Wellington, East Wellington, Northfield and Chase River to the City of Nanaimo, passed with more than 52 percent on an issue that needed more than 50 percent overall. Only Nanaimo and Harewood voted in favour, and the aldermen for the other areas accepted the change. On 1 January 1975 the city boundary grew to include those areas and Protection Island, and the population rose from 14,950 in 1971 to 40,340 in 1976.

Pleasant Valley Elementary School first opened in 1973 and was expanded in 1976, 1983 and 2000, says the school. Dover Bay Secondary School says it officially opened in 1992. The timeline records that Premier Glen Clark opened the Nanaimo Parkway on 31 May 1997, after a project that began in 1994 and employed 583 workers, and that the highway was built to provide a safer and more efficient drive through Nanaimo.

The Regional District of Nanaimo lists the Lantzville incorporation vote of its 2002 elections under Electoral Area D: 890 votes in favour (63.5%) and 511 against (36.5%), from 1,401 votes cast. BC Geographical Names records that Lantzville became a district municipality, a town with its own council, effective 25 June 2003. The District says it was the first municipality created in British Columbia in the new millennium and the 155th in the province. The 2021 census counted 3,817 people there, and its council has a mayor and four councillors.

On 18 June 2021 Lantzville Mayor Mark Swain and Snaw-naw-as Chief Gordon Edwards signed a memorandum of understanding, a written agreement on how the two governments work together, at a ceremony in Nanoose, reported CKPG Today. The agreement names land use planning, waste and water services, amenities and infrastructure as areas of shared interest. A working group from both administrations brings ideas to each council. Chief Edwards said the process lets the two governments respect each other's interests in the territory, the beaches and the water.