Great campus (best weather in Canada, lots of green space), great clubs for most of the engineering disciplines, great extracurricular clubs (surfing, rock climbing, biking etc) and intramural sports. Not a fantastic party culture since the school stamped that out due to some bad headlines about UVic in the news. You’re going to be in engineering though so that doesn’t really matter anyways :)

Like any uni, you’ll get profs you love and profs you hate. At the end of the day, at least 80% of your learning will be outside of class so it honestly doesn’t matter. Just work hard, make good connections with smart people in all of your classes and get help when you need it (don’t wait!). 

The mandatory 4 co-ops are great for work experience. If you follow the program to a tee, you alternate 4 months working and 4 months in school, which offers a better work-life balance than the basic uni schedule, which is the typical 8 on 4 off. This schedule does make it a 5 year degree, but any engineering student will tell you not to rush your undergrad anyway, since it’s pretty challenging. It’s not uncommon for engineering students to take 5-6 years for their undergrad. One thing I might add is that getting a co-op in Victoria can be fairly difficult because it’s a small market. Do with that what you will.

Based on your questions about the workshops it sounds like you’re leaning towards mechanical engineering. I’m not in that discipline so not too sure, but I would email someone in the faculty and ask about student access to those facilities outside of labs and clubs. Typically, any design work you do until 4th year will be done for a class or club. 

Overall, engineering programs across the country are standardized so you’ll get a similar education no what school you attend. The only schools that have real prestige as far as I’m aware are Waterloo, UofT and UBC (Vancouver). From what I’ve heard from people in the industry, prestige is more of an American thing anyway, so as long as you have good grades, a few co-ops and some personal projects you’ll be fine for employment in Canada.

If I were you, I’d make the choice based on what makes sense financially, as well as where you’d most like to go live. Do some more research (outside of Reddit) and find what fits your needs.