Tillicum Elementary Catchment: Gorge and Tillicum Homes for Sale

About Tillicum Elementary

Tillicum Elementary, listed by the province as Tillicum Community School, stands at 3155 Albina Street in Saanich’s Tillicum neighbourhood, on the traditional territory of the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. It teaches Kindergarten to Grade 5 for School District 61 (Greater Victoria), and the school describes itself as having roughly 450 students in 20 divisions. Tillicum celebrated its 100th birthday in 2016, and a former student marked the milestone by creating a Library Legacy Fund to help keep the library’s collection up to date.

Tillicum belongs to the Spectrum family of schools. Its family-of-schools page names two middle schools, Colquitz and Glanford, with Spectrum Community School as the secondary, so the middle-school pathway can depend on the address; the district’s online School Locator confirms it for a specific home. The catchment was redrawn in the district’s 2019 boundary review, effective for 2020-21, when its northern part went to an enlarged McKenzie catchment and the line with Quadra Elementary was adjusted.

Programs and Learning

As a community school, Tillicum adds programs before the bell, at lunch and after school to the regular BC curriculum, and its grounds were recently greened in a joint project with the District of Saanich. Offerings change from year to year, so confirm details with the school.

School Community and Child Care

Like every SD61 elementary school, Tillicum has before- and after-school care on its grounds, run by licensed third-party providers, with registration through the district’s child care page. The school also runs a nutritional snack program, and the Parent Advisory Council raises money through events such as bottle drives.

Tillicum teaches the English program. French Immersion runs at nine other SD61 elementary schools with its own catchments, so a home’s French Immersion school can differ from its English one. Registration opens online each January and seats are filled by space and enrolment priority, with a random draw when a school is oversubscribed, so a home address alone does not secure that or any other district program of choice.

Living Within the Tillicum Catchment

The catchment is centred on the Saanich neighbourhoods the MLS® system calls Tillicum and Gorge, and it crosses the city line into the western edge of Victoria’s Burnside area around Gorge Road East and Balfour Avenue. In rough terms it runs from the Trans-Canada Highway south to the north shore of the Gorge Waterway, and from the Colquitz River and Cuthbert Holmes Park in the west to the Douglas Street corridor near Uptown in the east, taking in Tillicum Road, Burnside Road West, Tillicum Centre and the Pearkes Recreation Centre. The map search follows the district’s published elementary catchment map, simplified, so homes right on the edge may fall on either side; check an exact address with the district. North of the highway is the McKenzie Elementary catchment, to the west lies the Craigflower Elementary catchment, and for secondary school the area sits in the Spectrum Community School catchment.

Housing here is older and more varied than in much of Saanich. Character houses from the 1910s to the 1940s survive on streets such as Ker Avenue, while elsewhere the detached stock moves through post-war bungalows to 1960s, 1970s and 1980s family homes. Condos fill low-rise buildings from the 1960s to the 1990s along Tillicum Road, Albina Street and Seaton Street, a cluster of early-1980s complexes on Gorge Road West, and 1970s towers on Gorge Road East on the Victoria side. Townhomes date mostly from the 1960s to the 1990s, and a few homes finished since 2024 show infill under way. Saanich’s draft Tillicum Burnside Plan, released in April 2026 and still being refined, proposes Gorge and Burnside villages and a greenway linking the Gorge to the Galloping Goose Trail.

At the start of November 2026 there were about 50 homes listed inside the catchment. Condos were the entry point, from roughly $295,000 to $650,000 with a typical ask near $450,000; townhomes ran from about $620,000 to $1 million; and detached houses asked roughly $750,000 to $1.75 million, with a median near $915,000, alongside one multi-family property at $1.9 million. A land listing near $99,000 sits far below everything else and says nothing about what a house costs here. Compare the wider Saanich market, or read about the school catchment premium in Greater Victoria.

A property’s address inside these boundaries does not by itself guarantee a place at Tillicum Elementary. Catchment boundaries, registration rules and program admission can change, and some programs depend on capacity. Buyers should confirm the current catchment and registration status with School District 61 (Greater Victoria) before relying on school access as part of a real-estate decision. Compare other catchments on the Greater Victoria schools page.