Ross Bay Cemetery - Terry Reksten

While most of the graves in Ross Bay Cemetery are of historical figures from the 19th and early 20th centuries, here is the stone that marks the relatively recent grave of a writer very important to Victoria's heritage and history. This is the grave of Terry Reksten, who deserves a place alongside the historical figures that lie nearby because she actively worked to preserve what they created and wrote about it so feelingly. Her books of BC and Victoria history were and still are very popular. Much of the little I know of our local history comes from reading some of her numerous books.

Ross Bay Cemetery - John Dean

John Dean was a pioneer businessman active in many areas of life in 19th and early 20th century Victoria. He had a house in Esquimalt but in later years he bought a hundred acres in Saanich and built himself a cabin there on Mount Newton. Later he donated much of the land to the province (its first donated parkland) and it became the basis for John Dean Provincial Park. It is home to the last surviving old growth timber on the Saanich Peninsula. John Dean was a colorful character and had his tombstone made to order before his death. Here are the words he had inscribed there:

"It is a rotten world, artful politicians are it's bane. It's saving grace is the artlessness of the young and the wonders of the sky."

John Dean Provincial Park is a splendid wild park and we are very indebted to John Dean and other early Saanich settlers who also donated lands for this park. I did not get a chance to visit the park this year but here is post about it from a few years ago.

Ross Bay Cemetery - Emily Carr

I was touched to see the perfect mementos devotees have used to decorate the grave of one of Victoria's best known and best loved artists and authors, Emily Carr. The pens and paintbrushes are just one expression of how much she is remembered and revered even today 70 years after her death. At times her grave is adorned with children's drawings. Like many great artists her paintings and books are probably more popular now than when she produced them.

Roderick Finlayson - Father of Victoria

I mentioned in yesterday's post that Ross Bay Cemetery is the final resting place of many of Victoria's important early residents and above is the grave of a man sometimes called "The Father of Victoria", Roderick Finlayson. While Sir James Douglas selected the location for Fort Victoria the actual building of the fort was the work of Charles Ross, who the first resident Hudson Bay Company factor. He died in the first year and Roderick Finlayson, his second in command, continued as Chief Factor and completed the construction of the fort. After Ross's death, his wife Isabella, a Mètis woman, bought the land surrounding Ross Bay and became, incidentally, the first female landowner in the colony. After her death her farm became the Ross Bay Cemetery. Finlayson was active in many areas of early Victoria's life and in later years became Mayor of the city. His memory is enshrined in the many local landmarks that bear his name - Finlayson Arm (off Saanich Inlet), Finlayson Point (between Clover Point and Holland Point on Dallas Road), Finlayson Street and Mount Finlayson to name a few.

Ross Bay Cemetery

Regular visitors here will know that I often like to browse among the graves in our oldest colonial cemetery on Ross Bay because so many of the city's founding citizens are buried there. I spent a few hours there on Sunday and passed a part of the time with this splendid Blacktail Buck. Some people consider deer in the city to be a problem. I love to see them, especially when they are as calm as this one. He seemed quite unperturbed by passersby even when they approached quite closely.

Ross Bay Cemetery - Long-lived Victorians

It's easy to get a little melancholy when wandering around a graveyard, especially when one sees the grave markers of young children. In an old cemetery like Ross Bay there are many such graves, testament to how fragile life was for the young a century ago. Diseases we no longer worry about such as diptheria and scarlet fever routinely killed children before vaccination became widespread. But some balance is provided by the large number of graves belonging to people who lived long full lives. Ross Bay Cemetery currently holds about 28,000 graves so it is not surprising that there are a few centenarians. Above are two I noticed, Natalia Buchan who died at 100 years of age, and Elizabeth Whitby, who lived to be 105 years old.

Ross Bay Cemetery - Statuary

Most of the graves are marked with simple stone memorial markers with the name, dates of birth and death and perhaps a phrase or quotation or a bit of biographical information. Some grave markers are quite ornate with symbols of employment such as anchors for seamen or organizational symbols such as Masonic symbols. Other graves are marked by statuary such as above or other stone carvings in relief such as below. While I suspect much of the sculpture is generic it ages well and makes me wish we had more sculpture scattered around other parts of the city.

Ross Bay Cemetery - Religions

Originally the inhabitants of the graveyard were buried in different sections according to their religious affiliations - Anglican, Presbyterian, or Methodist, etc. There was also a section for non-Christian burials where "heathens" were interred. Above and below are two of the memorials in the Catholic section. The statue above overlooks a number of graves of the Sisters of St. Clare, an order of nuns.

Ross Bay Cemetery - Flowers in January

Our weather seems to have been unseasonably warm for the last few weeks but I was still surprised at how many flowering plants were already beginning to grow and even to bloom. Cut flowers on a grave are nice when they are fresh but I think I'd rather be remembered by the daffodils sprouting over the grave above. On a nearby grave there were even some crocuses blooming. I suspect the flowers in Ross Bay are a bit precocious because of being close to the seafront and its moderating influence. There were also lots of snowdrops which seem somehow particularly appropriate for a cemetery.

Ross Bay Cemetery - Sir James Douglas

I mentioned on Saturday that the Ross Bay Cemetery holds many Victoria citizens who were prominent in the early days of the city. Probably none is more significant than Sir James Douglas, who founded the city and governed the colony during its early days. He was a Hudson's Bay Company factor as was Alexander Ross, who gave his name to the bay and the cemetery that faces it. A number of the older graves such as Sir James' are surrounded by wrought iron fences. This ironwork is often quite ornate.

Ross Bay Cemetery

On the eastern side of Clover Point is a large semicircular bay called Ross Bay. It's named after one of the early factors of the Hudson's Bay Company who had a farm on the shores of the bay. That farm became the Ross Bay Cemetery after the death of his widow and it contains the graves of many Victorians who were prominent in the early days of the city. Next week we'll look at what I saw when I recently spent an afternoon there.

Ross Bay Cemetery 2 - Kenneth Mackenzie (1811-1875)

Above is the family mausoleum of Kenneth MacKenzie, his wife Agnes and other members of their family. It is located right next to the plot of the Pearse family that I posted about last Wednesday. There is something very Scottish about the craggy solidity of this structure - and that is fitting for a Scotsman who came out from Scotland to carve out a new life for himself and his family in early Victoria.

The foundation of his house, now known as Craigflower Manor, had been laid before his arrival in Victoria but the building (on the left) was completed after he came according to his wishes to have it resemble his family home, Renton Hall, in Scotland. Renton Hall is pictured on the right (Photo from virtualmuseum.ca.) Craigflower Manor still stands although since a serious fire some years ago it remains closed to the public. Nevertheless there is an excellent website where one can get a good idea of the furnishings and interior of the house and the kind of life the MacKenzies lived there. Click HERE to visit Craigflower Manor website.

When Mackenzie disembarked in Victoria in 1853 he brought with him his wife Agnes and six children ranging in ages from 8 months to 10 years old. One can only imagine what a 5 months sea voyage must have been like for this young family. However, the Mackenzie children thrived in their new environment. One daughter reminisced, "We were happy as children for it was a great change for us to run wild after a more or less restricted nursery life in Scotland." Mackenzie came to Victoria as an employee of the Hudson Bay Company to develop and manage their farms so as to produce needed foodstuffs and materials for other residents of the new colony and for visiting ships. Another early settler, Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken, described MacKenzie thus: "hale, robust and powerful - a good specimen of a hospitable, warm-hearted 'Scotch laird' a kind of whole souled proper gentleman" (quoted from the BCheritage website.) Mackenzie later left the company's employ and developed his own sheep farm, Lake Hill Farm, near Christmas Hill, where he and his family lived. One of his grandsons lived there until his death in 1947.

Ross Bay Cemetery - Mary Laetitia Pearse (1840-1872)

Friday's balmy weather stretched right through the long weekend and I took advantage of it to begin a project - getting to know the Ross Bay Cemetery. It's the oldest cemetery in Victoria and walking around in it is like taking a stroll through Victoria's history. I have a copy of the "Historic Guide to Ross Bay Cemetery" by John Adams that contains 13 tours of sections of the cemetery. I started with tour number one which, appropriately, begins with the oldest grave, a burial that took place in 1872, several months before the cemetery was officially opened in 1873. In the above photo it is the grave on the right. This is the same grave that was photographed in 1874 in the photo to the left. It is the grave of Mary Laetitia Pearse (1840-1872), the first wife of Benjamin William Pearse (1832-1902), who is also buried in this plot. His grave is marked by a simple stone between his first and second wives' gravestones. The inscription reads "Benjamin William Pearse of Fernwood". Fernwood at that time was not a neighbourhood; it was the name of Pearse's home, Fernwood Manor, from which the neighbourhood got its name. Pearse came to Victoria in 1851 and in 1864 became Surveyor-General of Vancouver Island. His second wife, Sarah Jane Pearse continued to live in Fernwood Manor after her husband's death in 1902. She died, aged 100, in 1954 and the house was demolished in 1969. Some of the foregoing information and the photo at the left were taken from John Adams' "Historic Guide to Ross Bay Cemetery" and some was derived from the Wikipedia entry on the Fernwood Neighbourhood. The photo on the left is originally from the Provincial Archives of BC - PABC 6808.

Sarah Jane Pearse, whose gravestone is on the left in the top photo, is pictured below left. Fernwood Manor is pictured below right. Both photos are taken from Terry Reksten's fascinating Social History of Victoria, "More English than the English", published by Orca Books.

History in Stone 2

From The Daily Colonist, May 27, 1896:

Victoria's Queen's Birthday carnival, so auspiciously inaugurated with unalloyed enjoyment for citizens and visitors, was abruptly terminated yesterday afternoon by a catastrophe so sudden, so awful and so appalling in the loss of life entailed by it that no thought was left for aught besides. Electric car number 16, in charge of Conductor Talbot and Motorman Farr, was hurrying to the scene of the sham battle, freighted to its capacity and beyond with holiday makers when in an instant mirth was turned into mourning and between fifty and sixty souls were hurried into eternity. The central span of Point Ellice bridge had again given way, precipitating the car into the waters of the Arm, where a majority of the imprisoned passengers – men, women and little children—to whom the world had a moment before been all sunshine were drowned before aid could reach them. The crashing timbers and ironwork of the bridge piled upon the ill-fated car as the waters received it, and doubling up, pierced it also from below, so that many were killed even before the water was reached, while the others were less mercifully held below the muddy waters – the tide was at the flood and running high – by the rapidly accumulating debris.

News of the calamity spread quickly and by 3 o'clock – the heavily freighted car plunged through the bridge at exactly ten minutes to 2 – a crowd of thousand filled the streets at the approaches to the death-trap bridge – eager to be helpful, frantic with anxiety as to the fate of loved ones who might have been on the car, or dazed, almost stupefied for the time, by the magnitude of the disaster which had come upon the city. The hour was not without its heroes who were quick to think and act, and to these heroes, women and men, the salvation of many lives from the waters is due, as well as the winning back from death of many who had to all appearances passed into the shadowland. The work of the rescuers lasted through all the afternoon, and by evening the greater number of the bodies had been recovered, although it is practically certain that yet others are still to be removed from the fatal waters.

The jury empanelled by Coroner Crompton in the evening viewed in all forty-seven bodies, and their inquiry has been adjourned so that the work of recovery may be completed. The calamity is without precedent in the history of the Pacific Coast – without parallel in the loss of life involved since the memorable Pacific disaster. So many victims has it claimed that there is scarcely a home in Victoria that has not lost some relative or friend. Ours is a city of desolation and of sadness and in its mourning Seattle, Tacoma, New Whatcom, Port Townsend and the other cities of the Sound are joining , for each has contributed among the holiday makers who formed the burden of the submerged car some of its well-known citizens.

Wikipedia has some additional information about this disaster.

History in Stone

The City of Victoria has a very short history, being founded only 168 years ago. Most of us become aware of it through our carefully preserved oldest buildings such as Helmcken House or Craigflower Manor or by means of archival photos or documents from the early days of the city. But if we want to get closer to the people who made the history, the best place to visit is Ross Bay Cemetery because many of those whose names adorn our streets and places now rest there. Above is a photo of the grave of Lieutenant Peter Leech who gave his name to Leech River and Leechtown, about 60 kilometers from Victoria. Lt. Leech was a member of an expedition for the exploration of Vancouver Island that discovered gold in 1864. The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush (1858) had such a dramatic effect on the mainland of the province that the discovery of gold near Victoria tends to be overshadowed. Leechtown and nearby Boulder City had a population of about 4,000 before the gold ran out in 1865. There is a good short biography of Lt. Leech HERE. He died here in Victoria in 1899.

Ross Bay Panorama

The shoreline that defines most of Victoria is a scalloped in a series of "bays" with "points" separating them. Here I am standing on Clover Point and looking towards Ross Bay. The large green area on the left is the Ross Bay Cemetery. The Island on the far right is Trial Island. Click the above photo to see the large version where you can scroll from side to side. You may have to click the large version also in order to see it full size.

And now, for something completely different....

On my way home from Gonzales Hill Park last weekend I stopped at Ross Bay Cemetery, which is just below the park. It is a splendid place to take photographs any time but I wanted something different, something eerie, ghostly....

"Nevermore"

Actually, this is a crow, not a raven as might be suggested by the quote above, but I think it makes a suitable introduction to the Ross Bay Cemetery, Victoria's oldest graveyard. Many of the province's most famous historical figures are interred here and we will be visiting their graves from time to time. Today I just want to share with you a lovely sculpture I discovered there, commemorating three members of the Wood family. As long as this poignant sculpture stands we will know that someone cared deeply for them.