PIONEER CEMETERY-- Nanaimo BC Canada

PIONEER CEMETERY-- Heritage Registry

10 Wallace Street Nanaimo, BC Canada

 

This Cemetery served Nanaimo during its early years, beginning in 1853.

Pioneer Cemetery Park speaks to the community’s earliest development and is a valuable record of the lives of Nanaimo’s first European settlers. The park is the third oldest cemetery in British Columbia after Fort Langley and Victoria. From the first known burial in 1895 to the final burial in 1953, this cemetery served as an essential communal space, both practically and spiritually.

Pioneer Cemetery Park is an important example of an early preservation project and the development of community heritage consciousness. In 1953, concerned by the overall dilapidation of the site, the newly formed Nanaimo Branch of the BCHA (BCHF) made a record of all the stones still standing and a sketch of their original positions.

In 1958, as the remaining headstones in a curving rock wall and planted grass and flowers. In 1960, the project was completed and the site was officially converted into a memorial park by the municipality.

Pioneer Cemetery Park is significant green space. When first created, this site was a considerable distance from the town core. Today, surrounded by a busy commercial district, the site, with its massive maple trees, functions as a relatively quiet, secluded and peaceful urban oasis.

For more information regarding names of deceased at the Pioneer Cemetery go to:

http://glosters.tripod.com/crimrnx.htm

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.