22_John_Adams.mp3

otter.ai

18.01.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00
First, but we might as well have the lights off now. cemeteries are an interest of mine that goes back a long way.

Unknown Speaker 0:15
And some of you might be curious as to how somebody does get interested in old cemeteries. When I first moved to Victoria as a boy with my parents, we rented a house, opposite Ross Bay cemetery. And I spent many happy hours walking through there. taking shortcuts through there. And I soon discovered that there were many interesting things to read on the tombstones. And almost before I knew it, I got to know the cemetery really liked the back of my hand, it was my neighborhood. And so when I was in scouts, and I had a mapping project to do, I would map the cemetery because it was my neighborhood. And when I had to identify trees, I would identify the trees in the cemetery. And later on, when I began to find out more about history, in school, I discovered that many of the names that I saw on tombstones like Sir James Douglas, Robson, Emily Carr, and more the cosmos and many others that are very well known in BC history. Were right there before my very eyes. And so it gave me an extra interest in the cemetery. I moved away from there and discovered that old cemeteries elsewhere, were very interesting. I wasn't expecting to move back to Victoria. But when I did, I went to see Ross Bay cemetery, again, with new eyes, having seen older cemeteries in the East. And having discovered how you can look at tombstones, and see in them all sorts of things. Besides the names on the art, the sculpture, the layout of the cemetery is to was something that I was interested in. And what I'm going to do today is a little different than I think what was billed, I am not going to talk to you specifically about Saltspring Island cemeteries. But what I'd like to do is talk about other cemeteries in BC, some of them not too far from here, and relate the cemeteries that I've seen on Saltspring Island to some of these other cemeteries.

Unknown Speaker 2:33
Many cemeteries are sited because of the beauty of the place. This is a place near Burnie overlooking the Rocky Mountains. I took this slide several years ago, but I was there last weekend. And it's just as beautiful now with the snow capped mountains and just a little bit of snow on the ground. A bit closer to home is the little mountain cemetery outside of Chilliwack, just northeast of Chilliwack. Situated on top of a small hill known as Little Mountain locally, because of the floodwaters of the Fraser River, they wanted the cemetery on higher ground. And there's a very old part of that cemetery. And down towards the bottom of his of his Hill, and the mountains in the background. It still serves as Chilliwack cemetery today at Nelson, a very beautiful cemetery, again, at the top of the hill at the top of the residential area overlooking the nearby hills and valleys. And incidentally, in that cemetery, there are some very beautiful pieces of sculpture like this one. Very, very beautiful setting. more modest stones, however, are in this cemetery, an Indian cemetery in London. There are quite a few very small cemeteries, Indian and non Indian in and around London. This is a very tiny one, there might be only about half a dozen grades. And it's right overlooking the Fraser River. If I had stepped another 10 pages forward, I would have been looking down into the Fraser River. And these are not marble or any stone. They're made of cement cast casts events and you find a lot of those sorts of markers in the Indian cemeteries in the Fraser Canyon area. And in Victoria, the Chinese cemetery overlooking the Straits of Juan de Fuca one of the most beautiful setting, I think for a cemetery, even when it's cloudy in the mountains over the Olympic range aren't seen. This cemetery incidentally was started in 1903 by Chinese consolidated Benevolent Association because Ross Bay cemetery where the Chinese had been burying their dead, proved not to be a good sight. There was some racial prejudice and the Chinese felt it would be better if they had their own cemetery separate and this is a cemetery that has been operated by the Chinese up until just a few years ago.

Unknown Speaker 5:30
And the cemeteries we've seen so far have had beautiful views from them. This one does too, but not a valleys or water or mountain so much. This is at St. Stephen's Anglican Church in Saanich. And this is the Woodward family gray overlooking woodwind barn. Very quiet country setting overlooking the barn where the family had lived for many years. St Stephen's is one of those beautiful countries churchyard some of you may know it. Very reminiscent I think of some of the small church yards here on Saltspring Island. And in many places in BC you don't find the quiet country churchyard as you do here and on nearby Vancouver Island, but it certainly is one of the nice features of this area. A quiet country churchyard is this one at New Denver. This one however, has more or less be forgotten. It's not actually attached to a church. This is the old cemetery. And the undergrowth has grown up in quite a tangle. The arrow Lake isn't behind. You just see it. On the summer day when I took this photograph. It's really quite an intriguing cemetery to walk through. And in Yale, on a nice spring day when the forget me nots are in full bloom. I took this photograph of Peter Macpherson's grave. And as you can read on the epitaph he was accidentally killed at sailor bar blog in 1888. The small cemetery here was really quite a tree, and has some beautiful tombstones besides this one. And in ROSS Bay cemetery, a shot that shows the beauty of the cemetery. And it was deliberately laid out that way. It wasn't just an accident that this cemetery and many other turned out to be rather peaceful, beautiful places. The grave you're looking at in the foreground was the very first burial in ROSS Bay, dating back to Christmas 1872. The cemetery was just being laid over that time. Before then, in Victoria, they had bury their dead at a number of small cemeteries including Pioneer Square in the downtown area, but that had become overcrowded. And so they they found cheaper land out at Ross Bay $300 an acre. And they bought a farm that had been owned by Robert Burnaby after whom Burnaby is named. And the cemetery trustees began laying out the cemetery. And they laid it out according to the plans of the day. People in England wrote books about how to lay out gardens and parks and cemeteries. And the pathways were supposed to be winding with a view looking so with a VISTA in the case of Ross Bay overlooking the water in the Olympic Mountains. And there was going to be special trees planted in cemeteries as well. And at Ross Bay cemetery and many others. In late 19th century BC, you find that all of those things were done. And grave number one, when it was first put in was in a sea of mud, but it soon began to develop into this park like atmosphere. beauty of a different sort is found at Cisco, just south of linen. This is a an Indian cemetery up on the hillside above the highway. And unfortunately, in this one fire had swept through the trees and burned most of the wooden headboards. However, this one I think, took an interesting form. I don't know who it was for the words at all burned away. But it left this modern sculpture behind and so even when a cemetery has been destroyed by natural causes, there is some beauty remaining And over on Pender Island, or other small cemetery and the surrounding trees, especially the tribute is make it a beauty spot. And there's some very interesting tombstones over there as well for those that like to read the old epitaphs. Just outside of Abbotsford on the hillside on the side of Snowmass Mountain is this small cemetery it's called the muscle of white cemetery after one of the local families very small, but this shows some of the plantings that were very appropriate for cemeteries. We all recognize the weeping willow as a symbol of mourning, and something that we would find in old cemeteries. Well, any sort of weeping tree will do and in this case, the camper doll or weaving l was put to symbolize the mourning associated with cemeteries, but it makes a very beautiful picture.

Unknown Speaker 11:05
And in Victoria St. Luke's Anglican church yard, is a beauty spot in the spring with the wildflowers and the church in the background. And St. Mary's in my chosen I took this photograph after the Easter lilies have gone away, but this around this time of year, it's beautiful with the carpet of Easter lilies and also some very interesting headstones in the old churchyard. And that it's good to get the very interesting stones laid amongst the daffodils in spring, it's just a few you can take a step without stepping on the daffodils. And it's a very interesting cemetery as you can see by these tombstones, and we'll have a closer look at some of this kind of stone a bit later on. And the Roman Catholic cemetery at St. Paul's Church in North Vancouver. Just a sea of wildflowers. However, not all cemeteries are beautiful, even if they had intended to be man tends to neglect burial places in some cases. And in contrast to the slides we've just seen, I'd like to show you a few where time has not been so kind, in this case, if you can see it. On the other side of the CPR tracks and Ashraf is the small Chinese cemetery laid out according to the Ancient Rules of Feng Shui that prescribe how Chinese burial grounds are to be laid out. However, you'd never know it. The railway has passed through and another road a road is on the other side. And many of the gravestones have been carried away. There's a small fence you can see on the other side of the tracks of the graveyard is in behind there.

Unknown Speaker 13:15
And in Vancouver, what else would you expect a monument to an athlete named Chandler obviously intended to be very imposing and a memorial to this man.

Unknown Speaker 13:29
However, the trolley buses, the traffic and the 711 and the donut shop don't really add too much to the Senate

Unknown Speaker 13:43
Fortunately, the the rest of the cemetery is a very pleasant cemetery. And you don't get this visit in all parts just in this one corner. I'm not quite sure what it was like at the Indian cemetery at Tappan before they put a log down beside it. It might have been quite beautiful, but you can see the small white picket fence a background but that's the cemetery and then Kamloops the small pioneer cemetery has suffered partly because they stored lumber beside it. But also because they've taken the very interesting stones and laid them flat in the ground and put a fence around it so it's very difficult to get near them to read. And also, unfortunately, when you lay stones flat on the ground like that, they'll probably end up weathering more rapidly because the rain and the frost will crack them far more than if they were still standing.

Unknown Speaker 14:54
Course cemeteries are meant to be sad places and Although they are beautiful, and in many cases, the beauty of the cemetery was deliberately done so that people would go to the cemetery and their minds would be taken away from the theme of sadness and death. But of course, death is always present in a cemetery. This is in ROSS Bay cemetery, a very old picture, you can see the the background when the land was still quite raw. This is a slide showing that tombstone today or anyway, a few falls ago, and it's a bit difficult to read because the lichens have grown up on the white marble. But it commemorates Fanny, a daughter of Mr. And Mrs. Digby Palmer, the founder was a music teacher and his wife was a dance teacher in Victoria. And in 1875, that he was going off by ship to visit one of her sisters in San Francisco as a holiday. She'd had a premonition that something bad was going to happen. And in fact, the ship bounded off Cape Flattery, and Fanny was drunk. And if you can read the writing at the bottom, her body was washed ashore on San Juan Island sometime later and was buried in ROSS Bay cemetery. Incidentally, many of the tombstones in British Columbia cemeteries were put up after it was popular to put a lot of personal information on the stones. So often we just have the name, where the person was born. If that the date they were born and their death date. There's not usually extra information such as this, how the person died. But in cases where the information about death is mentioned, Drowning is the most common of all. Of the veterans are the yes the Veterans Cemetery at Esquimalt, which was originally just for the Royal Navy one would expect to find a lot of drowning deaths. As in this case, James Owens, of HMS triumph, drowned by the capsizing of a boat in Esquimalt harbor in 1887, aged 21 years, and somebody from the same boat, Frederick Barrett drowned at sea by falling from the main mat from the main yard in 1887, aged 17 year. And something I'd like to point out, just as we're looking at the stone, if you look at the very bottom right hand corner, you'll see in very tiny letters, the name of the man who carved this stone Gee runs

Unknown Speaker 18:11
George Roger was one of the more prolific monument makers who practice out of Victoria and later the North Coast. And although he sent many stones to other parts of the province, often with his name many times they didn't have his name, and I'm sure there are many of his stones here on Saltspring Island. This is a rather sad one for many reasons it's in it's in Fernie and if you look, the main epitaph on this, this is painted tin over wood in the memory of William Clark, who was killed in the explosion at Coal Creek 1917. And when they put up that memorial to William Clark, they remember that a son Burt had died some years before in 1910. So they put Bert on as well at the bottom. And then in 1965, and Williams widow died, Kate, and there wasn't much room left, so they put her name up at the top.

Unknown Speaker 19:24
And in Barkerville, we find many very fascinating tombstones, many in wood, and some of them have been replaced, as this one has been.

Unknown Speaker 19:37
Andrew Hansen, a native of Sweden died in the royal caribou hospital from the effect of a fall in a shaft by which he broke his back and died afterwards.

Unknown Speaker 19:57
It's one of the many pointed reminders that BC was a pretty rough place and people died by accident, almost as much as they died by natural causes. And this one at upper Nicola, even without the epitaph is a rather grim reminder of the fact that many children and mothers died in childbirth. And this one near the Stein River, just outside of London is a bit of a curiosity. You wonder whether it's an unbaptized child, a person who was not a member of the church as suicide or, for some other reason, a person that was not admitted to burial within the cemetery, but buried just outside the cemetery fence.

Unknown Speaker 20:53
And the grave also have interesting stones. Frederick Seymour is buried in the Veterans Cemetery in Victoria. gov and commander in chief of British Columbia who died at sea onboard HMS sparrowhawk while in the discharge of an important official duty, June 18 669. And it's only been recently that the true cause of Seymour's debt has been known. I guess it always was, but historians tend to gloss over the fact. He was an alcoholic, and he he drank too much the night before he died. And so the governor died of alcoholism, and it was buried in Veterans Cemetery. However, they couldn't quite put that on his tombstone good.

Unknown Speaker 21:48
I've got a few slides that show interesting or curious tombstones that you don't see in too many places. This one dating back to the 1920s with the Chapman family in the Chilliwack cemetery has oval portraits of the father and mother. Dating back to that time, they've faded not one bit since then I'd like to know what process they use. You see some modern tombstones that have small portraits on but very few of them have them this old and in Grand Forks, a small house over the one of the Duke bar. Graves are the Duke of War Cemetery with the stone and the salt cellar

Unknown Speaker 22:35
and the child's grade, made of cement, also in that same cemetery in Grand Forks.

Unknown Speaker 22:46
You see a lot of headstones like this in British Columbia really headstone isn't the proper word because they're made of fewer zinc. They look like marble or perhaps a limestone. But it's actually pure zinc, and it goes under the trade name of white wrongs for some reason. And all the ones that you find in British Columbia were manufactured in one small town in Ontario, St. Thomas, where the bright white, white bronze foundry has been in existence for quite recently. And backup to the Queen Charlotte's I'd really like to know what that bird is and what it's doing on that nest. I've never seen one quite like that. Some of these stone carvings in the Indian cemeteries in the north coast are known as white man's totems because they resemble totem poles, but were carved in stone. And recently, I saw some examples of the wooden prototypes that were carved by the Indians and sent down to the monument makers in Victoria. And that they copied and then put on top of, in this case, a modern, or in those days of modern, Western style, others. Ross Bay cemetery has a rather interesting stone to Rachel Marzen 1879 And if you look closely at the top, you'll see the eagle with the salmon and its talent. And the makers name Moses van Metlakatla. And it turns out that this is the Methodists section of Ross Bay cemetery. And according to the burial register, the area that Rachel Carson was buried in was an area set aside for native Indians. And so the stone was probably made it but in the catalog and she was probably from their East Indian funeral tires were quite a common sight in British Columbia. In Ross Bay cemetery. This particular one was taken by Todd inlet on the Saanich Peninsula And one of your members is going to be attending the cemetery symposium in two weeks time and we will be visiting some cemeteries in the Cowichan Valley. And we'll be going to the East Indian crematorium at Paul V. on that tour Ross Bay cemetery was named after Charles Ross, who was the man in charge of building, Fort Victoria in 1843. He died very shortly after, and was buried in a small cemetery in downtown Victoria. But his children were buried in ROSS Bay cemetery, and this was the last remaining wooden headboard in ROSS Bay cemetery, until it was taken out for safekeeping about two years ago. It's now been replaced by a stone. Sometimes, tombstones I think contain jokes. funny sayings occasionally. This particular one I think is a ton. What do you think of when you see that stone? What does it look like?

Unknown Speaker 26:15
Did anyone think of a rocket ship? Well, I wonder if it's a coincidence that the family name is rocket?

Unknown Speaker 26:23
I don't think so. Although there are some stones similar to this, I've never seen any exactly like this. Round of the point that top I'm sure that somebody had maybe been reading Jules Verne. And the rocket family certainly had a sense of humor. symbolism is interesting and not always humorous. The finger pointing to heaven, perhaps it's wishful thinking on the part of the deceased or the family. And you see a lot of this in British Columbia in the late 19th century cemeteries.

Unknown Speaker 27:03
But I wonder what this means in a Vancouver cemetery. I think that that might be more appropriate for Pierre Trudeau is great.

Unknown Speaker 27:16
But this one is actually not pointing downwards so much as holding the link chain. But when I first saw this one, I thought wow, what have I found? I wanted to find out more about John tackling. And up at Fort St. James is this rather curious Indians dome in white marble with the moon face and the carrier's script.

Unknown Speaker 27:48
Cast iron, the veteran cemetery, probably one of the oldest cemetery monuments in British Columbia. It dates to 1855 commemorates George McCauley who was chief engineer on HMS brisk. And if you go around the back of this cast iron monument, you'll be amazed to see that the foundry mark is on the back. And where would where would it be made in 1855 There were no foundries anywhere in British Columbia. It was made in Valparaiso, Chile. And it was set up probably by the friend, probably one of his shipmates when the boat headed down South America and another grave and live in a child's grave also has the Maker's Mark cast and this is made of zinc and Underwood on Baker Street in London. I wonder if Underwood was a neighbor of Sherlock Holmes. In Ross Bay cemetery, we have a very old stone that was moved in from Pioneer Square. The Russell family were from Craig flower and Thomas Russell was a teacher at Craig flower. His son Robert died of diphtheria and was buried in the old Pioneer Square cemetery. Pioneers were closed and Ross Bay was open. And a daughter Catherine also died. So they exhumed Robert took the stones from Pioneer Square, and buried Katherine in the only place available in ROSS Bay cemetery and put her name on the bottom. Unfortunately, this stone was broken a short while ago when there was some vandalism in the cemetery. But the family descendants still live in the Nanaimo area and they will pay for it to be repaired. The old Hayward's horse drawn hearse is a favorite slide of mine I must have gone many times down Fairfield road from downtown Victoria to Ross Bay cemetery. I'd like to show very quickly some of the finer pieces of sculpture that we find this case is in London property Made in Italy on a child's grave this one in ROSS Bay cemetery for the Woods family. For a while I thought it was made in Italy but it turns out it was made in Victoria by a local stone carver by the name of curse off probably one of the finest pieces of sculpture in the cemetery. But nearby is this one, the only portraiture in the cemetery for the Bossy family, Carlo and Petronella. Carlo was a stone This is another great nearby it has no name on it, but I'm sure it must be carved by the same man like Florida

Unknown Speaker 31:04
and I was mentioning some of the white man's totems in the northern cemeteries. This one isn't Hazleton. As is this one very unusual but very fine pieces of sculpture. And back to Kearney one of my favorite cemeteries we find this this monument to a man who died in the Coal Creek explosion in 1917. The monument was proudly made in Italy. And fine art can take the form of cast iron as well as in this case and Ross Bay cemetery. Our old cemeteries committee which is a subcommittee of the Victoria branch of the BC historical Federation, is taking on the restoration of this grave as a project this spring. The grave is of Charles Moss, who was a mold maker at the Albion Ironworks and it was probably at the Albion Ironworks it this railing was made it shows the heart and acorns and oak leaf is a symbol of Heaven and a symbol of strength.

Unknown Speaker 32:22
Again, in the lower right hand corner you can see the name G runs on this beautiful carvings on the Queen Charlotte's at that time Raj was living up in Port Simpson. Now there's some very interesting art in modern tombstones as well. Quite often we find it in connection with Indian cemeteries. In this particular case, at massive we have a sandblasted piece of black granite. It's a very striking Indian motif. At the Duke of War Cemetery in Grand Forks we have some contemporary wooden carving a woman's face and also in Grand Forks. Carpenter's tools carved onto a wooden headboard on the grave of this man Louis Chernykh off a carpenter and some welders art as well in the Grand Forks Nuclear War Cemetery

Unknown Speaker 33:38
and aren't of a different kind are these motorcycle forks on the grave of a biker who was killed in the crash near Verona This is the small Coldstream cemetery just outside of Burnham and at that same cemetery is another contemporary sandblasted monument waiting for his master is the word at the bottom the dog waiting folks down below at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic cemetery at the on the candles Indian Reserve is a very simple, contemporary cross carved out of a law and it brilliant. Rather original sandblasted granite one showing some of the things we saw in that earlier picture at Grand Forks where we saw the stone, the bread and the salt as well as the water

Unknown Speaker 34:48
and just outside of London this very simple one handpainted Isaac's spirit is free

Unknown Speaker 35:03
I couldn't help but wonder whether the the refuse dump in the cemetery were one of the same thing at the chorus line. The science seems to be pointing in the direction of the refuse dump.

Unknown Speaker 35:19
Now, what I'd like to do just briefly is to give you a bit of a quiz. I've got a few slides here from various places in BC. Does anyone recognize that place? No, no, your massive is closer, but you're still a bit farther away. It's up in the north. It's at Fort St. James Stewart lake in the background and the bmdm church in the background. Pretty well, Fort St. James is certainly an old place but these stones date from I think the earliest is from the 80s.

Unknown Speaker 36:01
For the Okanagan, North Okanagan O'Keeffe Ranch, that's right, the the O'Keeffe were Roman Catholics and this is a Roman Catholic church, St. Ann's and the O'Keefe family are buried in behind as are some others but the O'Keefe family are the only ones that may continue to be buried they're still in the Okanagan, a little bit farther so the Peach Orchard cemetery summer land and because it's very dry there, they can't get enough water for the grave. And so if you look, you'll see some graves are green, that's crushed bottle glass. They have a unique solution to keeping things green there.

Unknown Speaker 36:52
As you zip by on the Coca Cola highway, you might catch a glimpse of the Murray church at upper Nicola just outside of Marin. This is one of the most dangerous cemeteries in the province it's full of cacti. So you have to be aware as you go through that one. And as you're heading north on highway 97, just outside of clipping as the old cemetery, this is one of the very old cemeteries in the province and they do encourage people to take the road down and park and walk around the cemetery it's a very beautiful place and some very fascinating stones in there too. I was talking to somebody earlier who had spent some time and lit him recognize that one the the the lips gate. It's not looking into the cemetery but it shows the gate

Unknown Speaker 38:01
this is one of the more interesting ones in the province. Have you ever taken the long road out to Bella Coola

Unknown Speaker 38:12
perhaps passed by this one on the way out in the middle of the Chilko this small Indian cemetery farther north along the Fraser River this very quiet little cemetery overlooking the banks of the Fraser it's soda Creek

Unknown Speaker 38:41
anyone from near Armstrong this one is just outside of Armstrong and Lansdowne.

Unknown Speaker 38:54
That's my last one. Incidentally. This is at the small cemetery vieo.

Unknown Speaker 39:07
And last, but not least, is this one. People do think of cemeteries as gruesome places in many cases. I give a number of walking tours of old cemeteries in Victoria. I frequently visit cemeteries as I travel through BC and elsewhere. And I find them fascinating and they usually find other people in there looking at old graves as well. Some people are afraid to go into cemeteries though, and some people think that they shouldn't go in cemeteries, even though they might be interested. And when they see my tours advertised they often come because they think that that's a legitimate reason for going into a cemetery if they're on a tour. Well, I guess cemeteries are grim places in many ways, but they can also afford entertainment at Ross Bay cemetery in the 1890s The City of Victoria purchased some adjoining property that had belonged to Sir James Douglas. And it was purchased from the Douglas estate. This house stood on it. It had been rented out for many years. And when the city acquired the property, what did they do? They turned it into an old men's home. It was called the Victoria old men zone. And a number of people thought it was a rather gruesome thing to send the old man out to Ross Bay Cemetery, where the cemetery fence was right beside the old man's home. However, a man who lives nearby a man named CC Pemberton, who was a longtime member of the Victoria Historical Society, and grew up in this area. Remember this house long before it was the old man zone. So that was the farthest thing from the truth. And the old men didn't have very much to do. There was no TV, no radio, and they had nothing to do. There was no streetcar to take them into Victoria. And they delighted when, when a funeral came down Fairfield road, they would lean over the fence, they had a front row seat. And they took great delight in keeping up on who was being buried at the cemetery. That was their form of entertainment. Nobody seemed to mind that they might be next and wouldn't have very far to go. But people do think of cemeteries in the gruesome way and forget the humorous side and forget the cemeteries can, well are meant to be interesting places to visit as well. So I think your cemeteries here on the island are, are quite fascinating. You have some of the older ones around some very interesting stones equally as interesting as the ones I've shown. And as I mentioned earlier, some very beautiful settings as well, especially the small church yards around I, I've been to the cemetery and behind your hall here, you can put the lights on if you'd like. That's the last slide. And the rest of the fascinating region and your cemetery here. And I was curious. I was browsing through some of these albums that were on the back table when they were first brought in. And I noticed a group of Japanese standing around this. And I wonder if if this is one of the Japanese raves in the back here. I was curious to see them earlier. Because in many cases on the coast, during World War Two after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese graves were pushed over. And some of them were just thrown away. And others were just knocked over and left in the woods. There's a man in Victoria, by the name of Nakamura, who is trying to record all the Japanese grave sites on Vancouver Island. And I'll tell him about the one the site, the site here, behind the hall. What they're trying to do is to locate the grave sites and if they were pushed over or were vandalized, they're going to restore them. Now this one is a man I'm not here. Thank you. Oh, yes.

Unknown Speaker 43:23
Any more questions people would like to bring up

Unknown Speaker 43:31
the flesh murder I don't like. In fact, I I've encouraged many people, some cemeteries, I noticed your little cemetery at the back here has a sign saying only flat markers. That was the case in many cemeteries, but some of them, including Ross Bay cemetery have gone away from that now and they are allowing upright markers again, as long as there's some cement around them. And in some places, they're beginning to do use old stone carving techniques and make upright stones again and the old style almost as an art form. So our old cemeteries committee and Victoria is trying to encourage the restoration of some of the old upright stones. And we're hoping to see a few more certainly where the upright ones have been laid flat on the ground. We would like to see them put up again, partly because they are damaged when they're in the ground. But they're not as easy to push over either. So there is a benefit to being flat. Rock think that they have Yes, it makes it easier to mow the lawns if they are flat. Have you ever seen the Chinese emigrated to Canada? Yes, I have. That's a very, very interesting one, isn't it? That's Oh, well, that would have been close to one of the the last burial there before it was Well would you know that this spot isn't that great? It's okay, I'll talk to you later, if you wouldn't mind. Pioneer Square is a fascinating cemetery. And it's probably the oldest group of very old stones in British Columbia. There are a few cemeteries that were older, but none really survived as intact as Pioneer Square. And it really has a fascinating history. And I guess it was in the 1930s, they began to move some of the stones to one side because the fence had been pushed over and it was it was seen as it should be a city park.

Unknown Speaker 45:43
family for many family secretaries will be

Unknown Speaker 45:48
like a farm. There are hundreds of family cemeteries, that there's a registrar of cemeteries, with the provincial government in Victoria with all things the ministry of Consumer Affairs, why don't know, but then he has a list of all recorded cemeteries. And I would say at least half of the cemeteries our family plots, some of them just one or two stones in some cases, they're not marked at all, maybe just a small fence around, maybe just a simple stone without any writing on it. But many of them are larger as well. There's one that we're going to be visiting on the tour in two weeks time to do to the family cemetery just on the couch and Bay Road. And that's one of the larger family cemeteries that I know of. But quite often ranchers especially in in the caribou and other other areas where there are a lot of small family plots on ranches discovered that they they own the cemetery that the the ranch has changed at hand. And if you own property with a cemetery or a cemetery is defined as anything from one grave, to a whole pile, and they don't have to be marked. If you happen to own a piece of property with a cemetery on it, you are legally responsible for keeping it up. And the number of ranches in the caribou are only too glad to deed over there. The cemetery they discover on their their ranch to the family who will then look after it and some of them have annual work for a little bit difficult to find I tried to if you don't have any of them, I'd be quite happy to hear it and I usually ask in small communities if there are any family cemeteries nearby and some of them are quite interesting family called follow it all the time off the hook and they have their own private channels and walkers.

Unknown Speaker 48:01
Anybody any other questions? Max would you say it was my favorite is Mr. Steve Whitehead be surprised very impressed.

Unknown Speaker 48:30
I think we have to thank you for dispelling the idea that it's something like that ever. You did that very well by introducing it originally as a child playground. Interesting.

Unknown Speaker 48:51
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