Chinese Cemetery in Nanaimo BC Canada

THE OLD CHINESE CEMETERY NEAR BOWEN RD

 

Heritage Registry City of Nanaimo BC Canada

The coal company in Nanaimo, which employed many Chinese people, gave land for a Chinese burial ground on Stewart Avenue around 1890. It was in use until 1924, at which time the Chinese community contributed $2 per person for new burial grounds on Townsite Avenue.   The City of Nanaimo's Heritage Register provides more information.

Of the waves of immigrants who came to BC in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Chinese are prominent for their numbers, but also for the patient industriousness with which they endured the pioneering lifestyle and the hard work of the railroads and mines.

They also endured intense bigotry from the more numerous white populations. The Chinese men were given the worst jobs in the mines, working in deplorable conditions and not even named by the bosses when they died (they show up in the accident registers as "Chinaman #42", etc). Their ramshackle Chinatowns burned to the ground three times in a few decades, and foul play is usually thought to be responsible.

The most common singular feature of overseas Chinese cemeteries and of the Chinese section of host community cemeteries is the "burner" (sometimes erroneously called "oven"). These brick or masonry structures, often over seven feet tall (approx. 2.1 m), serve as a safe place for the ritualized burning of spiritual tributes.

These paper and cardboard facsimiles of money, clothing, possessions, and houses, for example, are to serve the deceased in the afterlife. Burning these simulacra passes them to the spirit realm.

Built in 1924, the Chinese Cemetery is a very good example of an ethnic cultural landscape. In addition to grave markers with Chinese inscriptions, the cemetery features traditional Chinese elements including ornate, brightly painted entry gates, a pagoda structure, an altar and a shrine. 

Although the cemetery is no longer exclusively Chinese, it retains, through the presence of these elements, a distinct Chinese character.