Saanich South.
3 candidates, one seat.

Saanich Archives writes that the District of Saanich lies within the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples, and that evidence of First Nations settlement in the area dates back over 4,000 years. It names two Lək̓ʷəŋən nations, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, and five W̱SÁNEĆ nations: W̱JOȽEȽP (Tsartlip), BOḰEĆEN (Pauquachin), SȾÁUTW̱ (Tsawout), W̱SIḴEM (Tseycum) and MÁLEXEȽ (Malahat). The W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council says the W̱SÁNEĆ People are Salt Water People and that on the Saanich Peninsula their land went south as far as PKOLS (Mount Douglas).

SȾÁUTW̱ First Nation says it is one of five communities that make up the W̱SÁNEĆ Nation. It describes its main village, East Saanich IR No. 2, as lying on the east side of the Saanich Peninsula and reached by the Pat Bay Highway, and it lists single family homes, band administration and commercial buildings on the reserve.

The Cordova Bay local area plan of the District of Saanich says the people of the village ȾEL,IȽĆE, written c̓əlíɫč in the Lək̓ʷəŋən language, used Cordova Bay intensively over at least the past 1,000 years. The plan lists hunting, camas harvesting and medicine gathering in what is now Sunnymead and the Ridge, a fish trap, and harvesting of food from the shore along the beach and sandbar toward PKOLS. A Saanich board on Indigenous history in Cordova Bay credits Dr. Brian Thom of the University of Victoria. It reports that salvage excavations in 2008 beside Agate Lane Park found over 40 ancient hearths and cache pits and uncovered over 350 artifacts, with radiocarbon dates of 1065 to 1470 AD.

Saanich Archives records that between 1850 and 1854 James Douglas, Chief Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company, signed treaties with 14 Indigenous groups. The treaty that covers Royal Oak was signed by the South Saanich and by the Kosampson, whose main settlement was around Craigflower Park on Admirals Road. The W̱SÁNEĆ Leadership Council says W̱SÁNEĆ people met Douglas at PKOLS in 1852 to discuss the treaty. The District of Central Saanich writes that W̱SÁNEĆ oral history describes the treaties as a new beginning and says W̱SÁNEĆ people did not sell their land. The District lists among the earlier disputes the W̱SÁNEĆ effort to stop timber cutting by Douglas near ȾEL,IȽĆE (Cordova Bay).

Settlers followed. Saanich Archives says Richard Cheeseman acquired land in the Lake District in 1858 and that his wife Jane is said to have named the area Royal Oak after a large oak tree. The first Royal Oak School was built in 1865 on land donated by the Bailey family. St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Church was dedicated on September 24, 1883. A fire destroyed the school building after a dance that year, and a new school costing $500 opened in 1885. The Cordova Bay plan says 1858 was the first year of Crown land sales on the peninsula, when 400 hectares between Elk/Beaver Lake and Cordova Bay were sold, and that the first permanent European settlers came to Cordova Bay in the 1880s.

Saanich's walking tour booklet for Prospect Lake says the Victoria and Sidney Railway ran Sunday trains for fishermen and cottage owners from 1895, and that the BC Electric Railway set up the Interurban line in the area in 1913, with several stations. Saanich Place Names says Marigold took its name from a station on the Interurban line at Marigold Avenue. It says Keating Station began at Royal Oak behind the Municipal Hall and was hauled down the track to Keating, and that Keating Cross Road is named after a Mr. Keating who owned land on the Victoria and Sidney line.

Saanich Archives writes that the District of Saanich was first incorporated on March 1, 1906, and that Thomas Brydon was its first Reeve, from 1906 to 1907. Council met in residents' homes at first and then in a converted farmhouse. In 1911 the district built a second Municipal Hall at 4512 West Saanich Road in Royal Oak, designed by John Charles Malcolm Keith and built for $4,364. Municipal offices moved to Vernon Avenue in 1965. The Royal Oak Community Hall was built the same year, 1911, with donated labour and funds. The Royal Oak Women's Institute bought it in 1930 for $1500, and it received heritage designation in 1979.

Saanich Archives says R.P. Rithet owned Broadmead Farm from the 1890s and that it once spread over 825 acres. The farm was named after Rithet's racehorse, the stallion Broadmead. Under the foreman George McMorran, clearing with oxen, horses and explosives enlarged the workable area, and the farm became one of the largest grain suppliers on Vancouver Island. After Rithet died in 1919 his land was placed in a company called Rithet Consolidated. A plan by the planner Gordon Rolston was accepted, and the first houses of the Broadmead Estates were built between 1965 and 1967.

Royal Oak Burial Park opened in 1923 as a public cemetery funded by the municipalities of Saanich and Victoria. The Royal Oak Inn opened as an English style tearoom on May 30, 1939, and John and Katharine Maltwood later bought it. John Maltwood donated it to the University of Victoria in 1964, and the university ran it as the Maltwood Museum until 1981. The Archives says construction of the Patricia Bay Highway in the early 1950s linked the farmland of the peninsula to the rest of Saanich and to Victoria. Saanich Commonwealth Place was completed in November 1993 at a cost of $22 million, and its pool hosted the aquatic events of the Commonwealth Games, which the Times Colonist dates to August 18 to 28, 1994.

BC Geographical Names records that the Spanish officer Manuel Quimper named Esquimalt Harbour Puerto de Cordova on 30 June 1790, and that officers of the Hudson's Bay Company moved the name to its present place circa 1842. Captain Kellet charted the bay as Cormorant Bay in 1846. The Geographic Board of Canada adopted Cordova Bay on 30 June 1910 after a proposal from Captain John Walbran.

The Cordova Bay plan says the Canadian National Railway laid tracks along what is now Lochside Drive in 1912, with a station at Haliburton Road. George McMorran opened the first grocery store in the village in 1911, then a tearoom and a dance pavilion. In 1928 he built a 14 unit auto court, and by the 1930s he rented 72 summer cabins. Bill Mattick began farming in 1940, opened a roadside stand in 1958 and developed a nine hole golf course in 1962. The plan describes a mix of farmland, single family homes and a few shops by 1975, and says the installation of sewers led to extensive building of detached homes. Saanich Council endorsed a new local area plan at a public hearing on March 15, 2022. The previous plan dated from 1998.

BC Geographical Names adopted the name Elk Lake on 6 November 1934 and the name Beaver Lake on 16 January 1958. It says the two were separate lakes until circa 1895, when the water level of Beaver Lake was raised for Victoria's water supply. Saanich Place Names dates the Beaver Lake Dam to 1875. The Capital Regional District gives 1966 as the year Elk/Beaver Lake became a regional park and 1970 as the year of Bear Hill Regional Park. On November 2, 2023 the District announced that it had bought the former Royal Oak Golf Course, 10.92 hectares beside the south-east boundary of Elk/Beaver Lake Regional Park, for $8.5 million.

The Prospect Lake booklet quotes an 1866 article in the Colonist newspaper describing the lake as thronged with anglers. It says Albert and Nellie Whitehead farmed beside the lake from circa 1923 until 1960, when they sold the land to Saanich on condition that it become a park. Samuel McCullough built the Prospect Lake General Store in 1913. The booklet lists the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory at 5071 West Saanich Road among its stops. Parks Canada says astronomer John Stanley Plaskett recorded the first stellar spectrum on its 72 inch telescope on May 6, 1918.

Camosun College's 50th anniversary site says the B.C. Vocational School on Interurban Road merged with the Lansdowne campus in 1971 to become Camosun College. The school had offered trades and technical programs in professional cook training, electrical, plumbing, welding and carpentry trades, automotive repair and map drafting. The Interurban campus is one of the 18 places where Elections BC's 2024 results file records people voting inside Saanich South. On February 25, 2016 the college opened the Centre for Trades Education and Innovation at Interurban, a building of 80,000 square feet that cost $30 million. The college says it serves over 2,500 trades students and that a fundraising campaign from 2014 to 2016 raised over $7.5 million.