Oak Bay-Gordon Head.
4 candidates, one seat.

The Songhees Nation introduces itself on its website as the Songhees Nation of the lək̓ʷəŋən People and describes its land as unceded lək̓ʷəŋən territory. The Nation's page on the Signs of Lək̓ʷəŋən says the land of the lək̓ʷəŋən People is known today as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. The Esquimalt Nation gives its traditional name as Xʷsepsəm and says its members are part of the Lekwungen peoples. It adds that its ancestors signed the Douglas treaties in 1850. The District of Oak Bay acknowledges the traditional territory of the Coast and Straits Salish Peoples and names the Lekwungen peoples known today as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

Saanich Archives writes that the District of Saanich lies within the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples. It reports that the treaty covering Gordon Head was signed by the South Saanich tribe north of Gordon Point and by the Checkonein tribe south of it, including Cadboro Bay. The W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council, whose board has representatives from Tsartlip, Tseycum and Tsawout, says that in SENĆOŦEN the name PKOLS means White head or White rock. Saanich Archives calls the mountain that carries this name the most prominent topographical feature of Gordon Head.

Saanich's planning boards for Cadboro Bay say Songhees people lived at what is now Cadboro Bay for thousands of years and had a name for the bay that means snow patches. The boards say they lived there until 1911, when the last Songhees people were moved to the reserve in Esquimalt. The Songhees Nation's own site gives the same year for the Nation's move from its earlier reserve to its current one. The boards also record archaeological sites around Cadboro Bay and the remains of fortifications that protected the village.

BC Geographical Names records that Manuel Quimper named Gonzales Point in 1790 after his first mate aboard the Princesa Real, Gonzalo de Lopez de Haro. The same office records that officers of the Hudson's Bay Company named Cadboro Bay in the early 1840s, giving the date as c1842, after the company's brigantine Cadboro, the first vessel to anchor in the bay. A 1968 history of Oak Bay by G. Murdoch, hosted by the District of Oak Bay, says the company kept 1,118 acres of arable land in the north of what became Oak Bay, including its Uplands Farm, which was founded between 1843 and 1850. It calls the company's buildings the first structures in Oak Bay.

The same history says John Tod, a Chief Trader of the company, built the first private residence in the territory in 1850, at 2564 Heron Street, and that it is the oldest building still standing in Oak Bay. In Gordon Head, Saanich Archives names James Todd, a son of John Tod, as the first registered landowner. He bought two sections in 1852 and named his farm Spring Farm after the springs on the property. The Archives dates the Douglas treaties to the years 1850 to 1854. It says the one signed by the Checkonein tribe covers the lands between Point Gonzales and Mount Douglas.

Saanich Archives says Michael Finnerty moved to Gordon Head in 1872, when forest ran unbroken from Cedar Hill Cross Road to the sea. He farmed 300 acres in the area that became the University of Victoria and sold milk, first to the Royal Jubilee Hospital and later to 250 homes in Victoria. Gordon Head School opened in August 1891 after parents petitioned for a school closer than Cedar Hill.

William Charles Grant was the first to grow strawberries in Gordon Head, in the 1890s. The Archives says his first pickers were First Nations people, some of them Songhees, and that a dozen or more canoes might be drawn up on the beach at Margaret Bay each June. When the value of the crop fell, growers formed the Saanich Fruit Growers' Association in 1914. City water reached Gordon Head in 1921, and so did electricity. By 1945 daffodils had become an important crop. The Archives writes that single-family houses have gradually covered the area since the 1950s, helped by the sewers introduced in the late 1960s.

The District of Oak Bay's heritage statement for the Prospect area records that the Oak Bay Land and Improvement Company was formed in 1891 to develop land near Oak Bay Beach, and that the Oak Bay tramway line opened in the same year. The Mount Baker Hotel opened in 1893. In 1898 the architects John Gerhard Tiarks and Francis Mawson Rattenbury bought 15 acres running from Oak Bay Avenue north to present day San Carlos Avenue. BC Geographical Names records that Oak Bay was incorporated on 2 July 1906 as The Corporation of the District of Oak Bay.

The 1968 history says a building boom ran from 1910 through 1912. It says the laying out of the Uplands subdivision on former Hudson's Bay Company farmland was completed in 1912, planned by a firm from Chicago. In the same year the Royal Victoria Yacht Club began its clubhouse on the Uplands shore beside Loon Bay, and the club held its opening celebration in early spring 1913.

Parks Canada says the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association established a cemetery at Harling Point in Oak Bay in 1903, and that the Association still owns and maintains it. The site covers 3.5 acres and slopes to the shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Parks Canada describes it as the largest concentration of pre-1950 Chinese mortuary features in Canada. After the Sino-Japanese war began in 1937, remains could no longer be shipped to China. The cemetery was formally closed in 1961 with the burial of the remains of 849 Chinese pioneers, and it then became a memorial to Chinese-Canadian pioneers.

Saanich's Cadboro Bay planning boards say Victoria's first telegraph cables came ashore in 1866 at Telegraph Cove, which was then called Telegraph Bay, after crossing Haro Strait from San Juan Island. In 1895 the Giant Powder Company opened an explosives plant at Telegraph Bay. The plant stayed there until 1920, when it moved to James Island. The house at 3565 Telegraph Bay Road, built in 1911 for the works manager, still stands.

The Cadboro Beach Hotel was built in 1909 and operated from 1920 to 1931, until a fire destroyed it on 18 August 1931. The boards date the start of today's commercial Cadboro Bay Village Centre to 1915. In that year Frank Hobbs, who had bought a store built by Fred Patton in 1914, moved across Sinclair Road and built a new grocery store and post office. He ran the store and post office for 31 years and served 14 terms on the Saanich School Board. Frank Hobbs School opened in 1951 with 88 pupils.

The University of Victoria Archives say an airfield was added to the rural land of Gordon Head in 1931. Its two long runways formed an X where the University Centre and Centennial Stadium now stand. The Gordon Head Army Camp became operational in the autumn of 1940, and from 1940 to 1943 it was known as the Officer's Training Centre of Western Canada.

The university's historical outline says Victoria College moved in 1946 from Craigdarroch to the Lansdowne campus of the Provincial Normal School. In 1959 the University Development Board bought the Gordon Head Army Camp and adjoining property from the federal government for $115,500. Judge Joseph B. Clearihue turned the first sod on 20 January 1962. The Clearihue Building opened on 18 January 1963 and the Student Union Building on 30 March 1963. The historical outline says Victoria College became the degree granting University of Victoria on its new Gordon Head campus on 1 July 1963. The McPherson Library opened on 14 November 1964.

The 1968 history of Oak Bay records that in 1950 the Cadboro Bay and Gordon Head Ratepayers Association asked to join its areas to Oak Bay. A petition signed by 75% of the ratepayers of those districts made the request. Oak Bay put the question to its own ratepayers in December, and the bylaws were defeated. Gordon Head and Cadboro Bay stayed in Saanich.

The W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council's page of 12 September 2022 says the Council brought a proposal to change the official name of Mount Douglas Park to include the original SENĆOŦEN name, and that the District of Saanich Council approved the request on August 15. The park is now known as PKOLS (Mount Douglas Park). The page says PKOLS was a significant gathering place for SENĆOŦEN and Lekwungen people.