The VicNews Best of the City readers’ choice awards just wrapped for 2026, and Sasquatch has been named Best HVAC, Best Electrician, and Best Plumber (through our sister plumbing brand, Under The Seat Plumbing) on Vancouver Island — a clean sweep of all three trades we work in.
The HVAC win also makes it three years in a row: 2024, 2025, and now 2026. The Electrician and Plumber wins mean the readers have voted the same team the best in every trade we work in, in the same year.
We didn’t run a “vote for us” campaign. There was no discount for a review or a raffle for a ballot. The awards are voted on by the readers of the Victoria News and the community as a whole, without our nudging. We’re a small, family-owned outfit competing against contractors two and three times our size on the Island. Getting picked in one category is meaningful. Getting picked in all three — while three-peating the HVAC award — is the part that doesn’t feel real yet.
What a three-trade sweep actually means
The Best of the City awards are a readers’ choice — an unpaid, unweighted popular vote of who Islanders think does the best work in each category. It’s not judged by a panel of trade insiders. It’s not weighted by revenue or staff count. Every ballot is one household saying, “these are the people who took care of us.”
For a company that spans HVAC, electrical, and plumbing under one roof, winning all three categories in the same year means the Island sees our crews the way we see them: as one team, not three separate businesses that happen to share a logo. The heat pump customer in Sooke who called back a year later for a plumbing issue and got the same standard of service. The Colwood homeowner whose electrical panel upgrade led to a full retrofit and a heat pump swap. The families who watched three of our vans show up over the course of a year and were relieved that it was still the same company behind each one.
Those are the people who voted. That’s what makes a three-trade sweep worth mentioning.
Thank you to the Island
Every family who called us in 2026. Every homeowner who trusted us with an install, a repair, a callback, or an emergency. Every customer who left an honest Google review — good or hard-to-hear. Every neighbour who mentioned us at a barbecue in Langford or a soccer game in Metchosin. You put us here.
Also thank you to the crew who show up in the trucks every day and do the actual work — the HVAC technicians, gas-ticketed field team, electricians, plumbers, and the CSRs who route the calls. Awards get given to the company name. The company name is just what goes on the door. The people who earn the recognition are the ones who take the calls, drive the vans, and finish the jobs right.
The rest of the recognition
Alongside the three-trade sweep, a couple of other 2026 nods worth mentioning:
- Best Clean Energy Company — 2nd place, 2026 (also VicNews Best of the City). Sasquatch won this category outright in 2024; 2nd this year is still a spot we’ll take.
- Times Colonist Readers’ Choice — Heating & Cooling: 2024 & 2025. A separate awards program run by the Times Colonist, voted by their readership. Different ballot, same neighbours.
Together the four awards span two of the Island’s biggest reader-voted programs across three years. That’s what keeps the crew showing up ready to earn it again.
What we’re doing about it
We’re not treating three-in-a-row-HVAC and one-of-each-in-a-single-year as a finish line. A few things we’re building through the rest of 2026 and into 2027:
- The Sasquatch Club — our maintenance membership program, refreshed with three tiers designed around what our customers have been asking for. Launching in the next few weeks.
- Blog + resource library (which this post is a small part of) — honest, Island-specific guides on heat pumps, rebates, and everything we get asked at the kitchen table. No commodity content, no filler.
- More trees — every heat pump install continues to trigger 50 verified trees planted through our Veritree partnership. Live totals at our Impact Hub.
To the neighbours who haven’t called us yet
If you’re on the Island and thinking about a heat pump, a furnace, an electrical upgrade, a plumbing issue, or anything HVAC-adjacent, the door is open. The three-trade sweep doesn’t come with a marketing tagline or an anniversary offer. It just means when you call, you’re calling the same team the Island keeps voting for — whichever trade the job turns out to need.
Family-owned. Island-grown. 4.9 ★ Google Rated across the Island.
Reach us at (236) 361-8293 or through our contact page.
— The Sasquatch Field Team
