Save Our Saanich swept all six seats, and two 25-year veterans are out

The region's new mayors and councils are set, and the biggest shakeup landed in Saanich. Rishi Sharma, running with the Save Our Saanich slate, took 45.3% of the vote to beat former councillors Zac de Vries and Karen Harper, and every one of the slate's five council candidates won a seat.

That sweep cost Saanich a lot of institutional memory. Judy Brownoff, first elected in 1993, and Susan Brice, on council since 2005, both lost, leaving a council where six of nine members have never governed a municipality. Sharma wants to launch a 100-day core review of district spending and says he'd rather start even sooner. "They said they're not swearing me in till Nov. 2, but I want to be there Monday morning," he said.

Familiar faces held on elsewhere. Marianne Alto won a second term in Victoria with 44.69%, 9.5 points clear of Bruce McGuigan, though incumbents Krista Loughton and Susan Kim are off council and three newcomers are in. Stew Young reclaimed Langford with 64%, unseating Scott Goodmanson four years after Goodmanson ended Young's 29-year run. Oak Bay's Kevin Murdoch and Colwood's Doug Kobayashi both cruised to another term.

The open-seat races drew their own surprises. Volker Dammann, a retired physicist with no signs and no social media, edged two-time former View Royal mayor David Screech. In Highlands, three-term councillor Gord Baird narrowly unseated three-term mayor Ken Williams over how to develop a former landfill site.