Churchill Drive Is Reopening at PKOLS. The Park Around It Already Changed.

Walk up to the gate at the base of Churchill Drive this month and you will notice two things before you notice the view. The first is the construction signage and restricted-access notices still posted around the summit, the last visible trace of a project that has kept crews and equipment moving up and down the mountain since January. The second, further down the slope on the trails locals call the south end, is something more permanent: a run of page-wire fencing with chicane gates cutting through Glendenning, Whittaker and Maddock, the leash-optional trails that used to be open ground.

Both projects started in the same window. Only one of them was ever supposed to take this long.

Three Months, Announced in January

Saanich's contractor, TEP Canada, began work on a new telecommunications tower at the PKOLS summit on January 19, 2026, replacing a tower more than 20 years old that no longer met updated federal regulatory standards. At the time, the district's language was specific: Churchill Drive would be closed to vehicles for approximately three months while the tower was built. Local coverage from Saanich News, CHEK News and Victoria Buzz all repeated the same figure that week. Three months meant an April reopening.

April came and went without one. Somewhere in that stretch, the district's own PKOLS page quietly revised the timeline to approximately five months, pushing the estimate to June. Then came a full closure of the base parking lot from June 8 through 12 while crews physically moved the tower components up the mountain, with the district noting the gate itself would likely stay locked until the end of June regardless of how that week went.

June came and went too. As of this fall, Saanich's parks landing page lists Churchill Drive at PKOLS as closed until October 2026, nine months after a project that was announced as a three-month job.

None of this stopped people from using the park. Saanich was clear from the first announcement that other trails and parking lots within PKOLS would remain open during the closure, and they did. The Irvine Trail up from the beach lot, the routes through the Garry oak meadows, the loop around the base, all of it stayed accessible on foot the entire time. What closed was the paved road to the top and the ability to drive up for the view. If your routine has been walking up rather than driving, you may not have noticed the tower project at all. If it's been the other one, you've had nine months to find a different route.

The Fencing Nobody Voted Against, Until They Did

The tower was never really the story that divided the neighborhood. The fencing was.

At that same April 14 meeting, Saanich council approved an additional $515,000 for its People, Pets and Parks Strategy, the multi-year plan governing off-leash access across the district's parks. Of that, $244,000 goes toward implementing the broader strategy and $270,000 is earmarked specifically for fencing, most of it completing partial fencing on PKOLS's leash-optional trails in the park's southern end.

The vote was unanimous. The reaction wasn't. The CRD DOGG Society, a Capital Regional District group that advocates for off-leash space, called the decision simply unacceptable. Its president, Eulala Mills, argued that PKOLS covers 182 hectares of green space and that roughly 90 percent of it is inaccessible by trail in the first place, and that the money would have been better spent elsewhere. She described the chosen fence style as inconsistent with the character of the park.

Councillor Karen Harper, who moved to support the funding, framed it differently.

"PKOLS has been significantly degraded over the past number of years. And every year I go in, it's even more amazingly degraded."

The district's position is that the fencing protects specific stretches of sensitive habitat, particularly rocky outcrops and Garry oak understory, from the kind of off-trail wear that comes from dogs cutting their own paths. It's a smaller intervention than what happened at Cuthbert Holmes Park, which is getting a fully fenced leash-optional area. PKOLS gets partial fencing instead, page wire along the edges of Glendenning, Whittaker and Maddock rather than an enclosed run, which the district says is meant to define the trail corridor without converting the whole south end into a dog park.

The construction itself finished quietly. Saanich's own update in April noted that the partial fencing project had been completed as planned, with staff still working out timing on completing the remaining sections. If you've walked those trails since spring without knowing any of this, the fence probably just looked like fence. The fight over whether it should exist happened almost entirely at the council table, not on the trail.

What a Fall Walk Up PKOLS Actually Looks Like Now

A few things are true at the same time this season, and they're worth separating.

• Churchill Drive itself has been closed to vehicles since January, with the district's current page listing it as closed until October.
• When it does reopen, the old rule returns with it: the gate stays locked to motorized traffic until noon most days, opening the road to walkers and cyclists in the morning before vehicles are allowed up in the afternoon and evening.
• The beach lot near Cordova Bay Road has functioned as the practical main entrance all year and remains the recommended parking spot if you're driving in at all.
• Seasonal dog restrictions near the beach and playground, which run from May through August, have already lifted for the year, so beach access with dogs is back to normal through the fall and winter.
• The Glendenning, Whittaker and Maddock trails carry new page-wire fencing along their edges, a change from the open ground those trails offered before this year.

None of this requires a special trip to verify. It's just different from what a longtime visitor to PKOLS would remember from two years ago, and different enough that "the park reopens" undersells what's actually happening this month.

The Older Problem the Tower Didn't Touch

One thing hasn't moved at all. The Cordova Bay shoreline at the base of Mount Douglas has been eroding for decades, and Saanich has commissioned studies and attempted stabilization work going back to the 1980s. None of the remedial projects has fully solved it. The bank continues to slip, and the district has said as much on its own PKOLS page, framing the shoreline as a problem that still needs a plan that weighs ecological, social and economic tradeoffs before any permanent fix gets built.

It's a useful contrast to the tower and the fencing, both of which did get finished this year, however slowly. The erosion at the beach is the reminder that not every problem at PKOLS resolves on a council calendar. Some just keep going.

What This Adds Up To

None of this changes what PKOLS is. It's still 183 hectares of forest and shoreline in the middle of Saanich East, still the place people in Gordon Head, Broadmead and Cordova Bay drive or walk to for a view of Haro Strait on a clear day. But if you've been away from Churchill Drive since the start of the year, the road you're walking back onto isn't the same road you left. The tower behind the fence is newer. The trails at the south end have edges they didn't have in December. And the argument over how much of the park belongs to leashed dogs, unleashed dogs, or neither is very much still open, with a fall municipal election ahead that at least one advocacy group says it plans to make an issue of.

Kash Burley lives and works in this part of Greater Victoria and keeps an eye on the small changes that make a familiar park feel different from one season to the next. If you're heading up to PKOLS this fall and want to compare notes on what's changed since your last visit, or you're curious what else has shifted in the Saanich East neighborhoods around it, reach out to Kash Burley.