Saanich North and the Islands.
4 candidates, one seat.

The W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council writes that the W̱SÁNEĆ People are Salt Water People. Its History and Territory page says W̱SÁNEĆ homes stood throughout the San Juan Islands and on the east and north coasts of the Saanich Peninsula, and that the land went east through the Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands to Boundary Bay. The territory included Saanich Inlet. On the peninsula itself the land went south as far as PKOLS (Mount Douglas), W̱QENNELEȽ (Mt. Finlayson) and SELE₭TEȽ (Goldstream). The Council says the peninsula was the headquarters because the permanent winter homes stood there.

The Council's page of September 30, 2026 says the name W̱SÁNEĆ means the emerging people. It lists the winter villages as W̱SÍKEM (Tseycum, Place of Clay), W̱JOȽEȽP (Tsartlip, Land of Maples), SȾÁUTW̱ (Tsawout, Houses on the Hill) and BOḰEĆEN (Pauquachin, Land of Cliffs and Bluffs). Tsartlip writes W̱JOȽEȽP on its own site, and its administration office is at Brentwood Bay. Tsawout says it changed its logo to show the SENĆOŦEN spelling, and it names Tsartlip, Tseycum, Malahat and Pauquachin as the other communities of the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation. Pauquachin welcomes visitors to BOḰEĆEN.

BC Geographical Names records that the site of the Town of Sidney is called SET,TINES, meaning chest sticking out, and that the area was used for launching boats to travel to the Gulf Islands. The Town's heritage page adds that Bazan Bay was a gathering site for camas and urchins and that Tsehum Harbour was a historic village called W̱SI,I,KEM.

On January 8, 1987, the chiefs of the Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tseycum and Tsawout bands signed a Saanich Territorial Declaration, which the Council publishes. It states that the Saanich Indian People hold the rights and title to their territorial homeland. It recognizes treaties of peaceful co-existence with the early settlers and says they did not involve the sale of rights or land.

The Town of Sidney's heritage page says the Hudson's Bay Company obtained two large tracts of land on the peninsula in 1852, which became known as the North and South Saanich Districts. The W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council says the written Douglas Treaties came from two meetings in February 1852 between representatives of the company and the W̱SÁNEĆ, and that they are the North and South Saanich Treaties. It adds that each written treaty is just over 200 words and that the treaties are the only written agreements between Canada and the W̱SÁNEĆ people. The Council says it is seeking to correct the record so that the meaning and intent of the treaties is respected.

A text on Tsawout's governance page, credited to Nick Claxton and dated 2007, says James Douglas completed fourteen purchase agreements with Vancouver Island nations in the four years after 1850. It says the agreements promised that the nations could carry on their fisheries as they formerly had, and that the Saanich people have never surrendered title to the Gulf Islands.

Tsawout's page on Saanichton Bay says the bay was one of the main winter village sites of the Saanich peoples and is the reason its reserve lies there. It records that in 1987, in Claxton v. Saanichton Bay Marina, Louis Claxton and the Tsawout people won a permanent injunction in the BC Supreme Court against building a marina in the bay. The page quotes the finding of Mr. Justice Meredith that Douglas had implemented a policy to protect the right of the Indians to pursue their traditional economy of hunting and fishing.

BC Geographical Names records how the islands got their English names. Saturna Island was named in 1791 after the Spanish schooner Saturnina. Galiano Island was named in 1859 by Captain Richards of HMS Plumper after Dionisio Alcalá Galiano, a Spanish naval commander who explored the channels in 1792. The record dates the naming of Mayne Island to c1860, after Lieutenant Richard Charles Mayne of the Royal Navy. Hudson's Bay Company officers called Sidney Island Sallas Island circa 1850, and Captain Richards named it Sidney Island in 1859.

The same office records that Hudson's Bay Company officers named Saltspring Island for the fourteen briny springs on it. In 1859 Captain Richards renamed it Admiral Island and named Ganges Harbour after the flagship and Fulford Harbour after its captain. The island kept the name Saltspring in local use, the Geographic Board of Canada adopted it on 1 March 1910, and the record says local preference is divided between Saltspring and Salt Spring.

Active Pass, between Galiano and Mayne, is recorded as named in 1855 by Lieutenant-Commander James Alden after his ship Active. Parks Canada's heritage record says the Active Pass lightstation was established in 1885 and that the present lighthouse, the third on the site, was built in 1969. North and South Pender were once joined by a narrow neck of land. The Encyclopedia of Raincoast Place Names says a canal was cut in 1903 and a bridge built in 1955. BC Geographical Names records the traditional SENĆOŦEN name of North Pender Island as S¸DÁYES, meaning wind drying, in reference to drying salmon.

The Salt Spring Island Archives publish key dates compiled from Charles Kahn's book on the island. They record that non-Aboriginal settlement began in 1859, when the first settlers came, and that in the same year thirteen Black settlers, with and without families, pre-empted land. In 1868 Kiave, the first Hawaiian to come to the island, settled at Fulford Harbour. Parks Canada writes that by the 1870s Hawaiian (Kanaka) settlers began settling in the Gulf Islands, and that William Haumea held land at Eleanor Point on Salt Spring Island and received a Crown Grant for Russell Island in 1886.

The archives record that Salt Spring Island was incorporated as a municipality in 1873 and that the legislative assembly dissolved the municipality in 1883. They list a reserve, spelled Tsaout there, established east of Fulford Harbour in 1877. The first fall fair was held in 1896 at the newly completed Central Hall, and the Lady Minto Gulf Islands Hospital opened in 1914. In 1966 the island became part of the Capital Regional District.

Central Saanich's history page says the first European settlers arrived in what is now Central Saanich in 1855, and names the Lidgate, McPhail and Thomson families. Early settlers farmed hops, fruit, hay, grain and berries, and in the early days the journey to Victoria was a four-day canoe trip around the peninsula. A limestone quarry and cement plant opened at Tod Inlet in 1904 and closed in 1916. Mrs. Butchart then began turning the quarry into the Sunken Garden, and Parks Canada designated Butchart Gardens a National Historic Site in 2004.

BC Geographical Names records that the Sluggett Post Office opened at what is now Brentwood Bay on 1 August 1892. The railway station was named Brentwood after the English estate of Mr. Horne-Payne, chairman of the board of the BC Electric Railway, and the post office took the name Brentwood Bay on 16 March 1925. The Town of Sidney says that in 1891 fifty acres owned by the Brethour family were divided into lots and registered as the Township of Sidney, and that by the end of 1892 it had a general store, a post office, a boat building shop and a hotel. The Canadian Encyclopedia gives 1894 as the year the Victoria and Sidney Railway opened.

The District of North Saanich says the BC Electric Railway's Saanich Interurban line began service in 1913, which made Deep Cove a popular leisure destination, and that the company built the Deep Cove Chalet in 1913 as a tourist draw. BC Geographical Names gives these dates of incorporation: Central Saanich on 12 December 1950, Sidney as a village on 30 September 1952 and as a town on 1 January 1967, and North Saanich on 19 August 1965.

BC Geographical Names records that an aerodrome and seaplane station was established beside Patricia Bay in 1939 and developed after the war into Victoria International Airport. The record says the bay, once called Union Bay, is also the site of the Institute of Ocean Sciences of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the west coast headquarters of the Canadian Hydrographic Service. The Canadian Society for Civil Engineering says Patricia Bay airfield held No. 13 Operational Training Squadron from October 1940 to October 1942, No. 32 Operational Training Unit from October 1941 to June 1944 and No. 3 Operational Training Unit from November 1942 to August 1945. It says the field had three hard-surfaced runways, each 1,520 metres long, and also took flying boats.

The Salt Spring Island Archives record that the Gulf Islands Ferry Company began operations in 1930, that BC Ferries bought the company in 1961 and that the Long Harbour terminal was created in 1963 for the BC Ferries run from Tsawwassen to the Gulf Islands. The Encyclopedia of British Columbia says the vessels Sidney and Tsawwassen went into service in June 1960 between terminals at Swartz Bay, north of Victoria, and Tsawwassen.

Peter Lamb's history of the Islands Trust, which the Trust hosts on its website, says the provincial government limited subdivisions in the Gulf Islands to a minimum lot size of 10 acres in October 1969. It names Magic Lake Estates on North Pender Island as a development that had created over 1200 lots. It says Bill 112, the Islands Trust Act, was presented on May 21, 1974, passed third reading on June 4, 1974 and was proclaimed the next day, and that local trust committees would decide local matters on the 13 major islands.

Parks Canada says Gulf Islands National Park Reserve was established in 2003, and it lists the reserve's operations centre in Sidney. In 2021 the W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council and the park reserve renamed McDonald Campground to SMONEĆTEN. The W̱SÁNEĆ elder Eric Pelkey explains the name as place of pitch, where people gathered pitch from Douglas fir trees.

The Council says it was incorporated under the Societies Act on May 7, 2018 and that it is made up of Tsartlip and Tseycum. On January 24, 2019 it signed a Letter of Understanding with Canada. The letter lists the Gulf Island National Park Reserve, the recognition and implementation of Douglas Treaty rights, fisheries, the acquisition of lands and education as priority topics.