Cemeteries

Chinese funeral at Ross Bay Cemetery, ca. 1900. (Royal BC Museum, BC Archives, D-05257).

Until the Second World War, when Chinese residents passed away, they were only buried temporarily in Canada. Chinese immigrants believed that after a person died, his or her soul would still hover over the tomb. Individuals who were buried away from their village of origin would be homeless. Chinese residents organized shantang, or charity societies, to collect the bones of deceased members and ship them back to China, so that their souls could rest. A shantang usually included people from the same county in China. In 1887, there were eleven shantang in Victoria. After a person had died and was buried for seven years, his grave would be dug up and his bones cleaned and dried. The bones would then be packed in a crate with the name of the person, birth and death dates, and home village in China.

Altar at the Chinese Cemetery at Harling Point, shortly after the cemetery opened in 1903. (Royal BC Museum, BC Archives, G-03076).

The earliest cemetery in Victoria where Chinese residents were buried was the Quadra Street Cemetery, in use from 1855 to 1873, at Quadra and Courtenay (now known as Pioneer Square). When this cemetery became full, the Ross Bay Cemetery was opened in 1873, and the first Chinese person interred there was on 18 March 1873.

A product of nineteenth-century thinking, the Ross Bay Cemetery was divided into different sections according to the idea of “race,” and Indigenous and Chinese residents were buried in the section closest to the sea. The first Chinese burials were recorded with little information. Rather than being identified by their names, individuals were listed as “Chinaman No. 1,” “Chinaman No. 2,” and so on. Chinese Victorians set up an altar in this area in the 1880s. The Chinese section of the cemetery was at a low level and next to the sea. As a result, it was sometimes flooded, and hit by waves during storms. Since Chinese residents had been buried in the most vulnerable sections of Ross Bay Cemetery, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) decided to look for a better site for a Chinese cemetery, and in 1891, bought land at Lake Hill (now known as Christmas Hill) near Swan Lake. However, burials were prevented by the racism and threats of neighbouring farmers. Strong winter storms in 1901 that actually washed away some bones from Chinese graves on the edge of the Ross Bay Cemetery convinced the CCBA to sell the Lake Hill site and find another functional location for a cemetery.

Entrance to Chinese cemetery at Harling Point, 2001 (Photograph by Robert Amos)

In April 1903 the CCBA bought a new site at Foul Point between Foul Bay (now McNeill Bay) and Shoal Bay (now Gonzales Bay). This was the first cemetery for the sole use of Victoria’s Chinese residents. An altar was built here, in addition to a brick house for storage of exhumed boned in their crates waiting for shipment back to China. Foul Point became known as Chinese Point.

Gradually, settlement was increasing around this area, which in 1906 was included in the new municipality of Oak Bay. In the 1920s and 1930s, some local residents thought that the site should be open to urban development, and they claimed that the cemetery was a health hazard, an argument that was rejected by the Provincial Medical Health Officer. Chinese Point was renamed Harling Point, after Dr. Fred Harling, who died trying to rescue people off this point in a storm in January 1934.

Worshipping Ceremony in Chinese cemetery in Harling Point, 2001 (Photograph by Robert Amos).

In 1909, the CCBA had taken over the shipment of bones from the shantang, and sent the collected crates back to China every seven years except during wartime. The CCBA’s archives show that the Chinese Cemetery handled the remains of Chinese residents from different Canadian cities, not only those from Victoria. The shipment of the crates of bones continued until 1949, when the establishment of the People’s Republic of China made this no longer possible. Individuals started to choose the Royal Oak Burial Park (est. 1923) for their interment, and the Chinese Cemetery was closed in 1950.

By Jenny Clayton and Zhongping Chen

Sources

Lai, David Chuenyan. The Forbidden City within Victoria: Myth, Symbol and Streetscape of Canada’s Earliest Chinatown. Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers, 1991.

Lai, David Chuenyan. Chinese Community Leadership: Case Study of Victoria in Canada. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 2010.

Old Cemeteries Society of Victoria. “The Old Burying Ground (Pioneer Square),” http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/psp/html/reports/history/index.htm.