One of the things we love to do (weird as it may seem) when visiting a new city is to check out any historic cemetery near downtown that we can walk to or is easily accessible by transit. In Victoria, we have often visited the historic Ross Bay Cemetery, home to Emily Carr’s grave.

In Calgary, we love our Cemetery District as it is a pensive place to wander and wonder.

My mother at Emily Carr’s grave site in Victoria BC. We have visited several times, it is always interesting to see what other visitors have left at the site.

Cemeteries are very attractive places to wander during COVID as it is easy to practice social distancing. They are also a reminder to be thankful for what we have and to enjoy today.

Tourist Attractions

Paris has several cemeteries which have become tourist attractions. Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise for example, which opened in 1804, has over 69,000 ornate graves and is the resting place for over one million people, including Fredric Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf. Other famous Paris cemeteries include: de Montmatre (Emile Zola, Vaslav Nijinsky), du Montparnasse (Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir), de Passy (Edouard Manet, Claude DeBussy) and de Picpus (1,306 victims guillotined between June 14 and July 27, 1794).

While Calgary’s cemeteries aren’t mega tourist attractions, they are interesting and insightful places to explore at any time of the year. The same could be said for older cemeteries in almost any city in Canada or around the world.

One of our favourite cemetery visits was the Kirchhoff Jerusalem und Neue Kirche V, in Berlin. Not only did it have some great grave stones, but a lovely little cafe where you could enjoy a coffee or a light meal.

Calgary’s Cemetery District

Calgary has five historic cemeteries clustered in a small area southeast of downtown that straddles Macleod trail from 25th to 34th Ave SE. It includes St. Mary’s Cemetery, Union Cemetery, Burnsland Cemetery, Chevra Kadisha (Jewish) Cemetery and Chinese Cemetery.

St. Mary’s Cemetery

The original St. Mary’s Cemetery was established at the Roman Catholic Mission (2nd Street and 24th Ave SW) in 1876 in Calgary’s Mission neighbourhood. It closed in 1897, and the graves exhumed and moved to its current site. As one would expect, it is home to numerous bishops, priests and nuns, as well as a few famous Calgarians.

Located at the top of Elbow River escarpment, it offers spectacular views of the Calgary’s City Centre. This is consistent with late 19th century cemetery design principles, which included locating cemeteries outside of town, often on hillside settings, with landscaped gardens and winding roads. In many cases, landscape architects and horticulturalists were hired to make the burial grounds showplaces to be enjoyed by the living.

Link: St. Mary’s Cemetery

Union Cemetery

In 1884, city councillors saw the need for a new protestant (in those days we didn’t use “public;” it was always “Catholic “vs “Protestant”) cemetery, as the only existing cemetery was for Roman Catholics. City website says non-Catholics were buried in unsanctified land set aside for that purpose, but doesn’t identify where that was.

So, in 1885, a new cemetery was established at Shaganappi Point (where the Shaganappi Golf Course is now). Rocky soil conditions made digging graves very difficult and it was decided a new site was needed. (They obviously didn’t think that one through!)

In August of 1890, Agustus Carney’s farm, located at 28 Avenue and Spiller Road S.E., was purchased and Union Cemetery was established. It also incorporated many of the ideas of the “Rural Cemetery Movement” with its hillside location at the southern edge of town, and its curvilinear circulation system. In 1913 Reader Rock Gardens were developed adjacent to the cemetery further enhancing the its appeal as a public park. (FYI: William Reader, Calgary’s famous Parks Superintendent responsible for many of Calgary’s inner city parks, had his house in the cemetery and is buried there.)

The Shaganappi Point Cemetery was then closed, and in 1892, the process of moving the 75 burials from Shaganappi Point to the new cemetery began. Today, Union Cemetery is home to 22,200 of Calgary’s early pioneers and city founders including: A.E. Cross, William Roper Hull and the Lougheed family.

If you can get yourself a copy of the Union Cemetery Interpretive Tour by Laurie Knight-Steinback, it makes for great reading with the stories behind 40 of the gravesites. You might find a copy at a used bookstore site or there is one copy at abebooks.com.

Or you could try to find Harry Sanders’ “Calgary’s Historic Union Cemetery: A Walking Guide, which is out of print, but Harry has copies for sale. Link: Harry Sanders

Link: Union Cemetery

Calgary's Historic Union Cemetery cover.jpg

Burnsland Cemetery

By 1923, with the existing Union Cemetery running short of space, a new burial land was opened nearby at 27 Avenue and Spiller Road S.E. This new location was called Burnsland Cemetery. Today, Burnsland Cemetery has 22,100 graves and is the location where most of Calgary’s World War I war veterans are buried.

Link: Burnsland Cemetery

Both Union and Burnsland are beautiful parks.

The graves of many of Calgary’s early pioneers can be found at Union and Burnsland Cemeteries

One of the saddest experiences of walking in an old cemetery is the number of graves of young children. Many of the infant graves are marked by a sitting lamb, some so worn you can barely tell what they are. It is a reminder of how lucky we are today.

Wandering a historic cemetery can be a bit like walking in art park, as many of the graves have weathered in various ways to become lovely works of art.

Chevra Kadisha Cemetery

Chevra Kadisha, literally “The Holy Society” is Calgary’s oldest Jewish communal organization. The cemetery, established in 1914, is much starker than the other cemeteries in the district, with no trees or flowers, however, you will see small stones on many of the graves. The placing of stones on the grave of loved ones has many different significances from being a sign that someone has visited the grave, to Biblical times when graves were simply marked with small stone mounds which served as a marker so people didn’t step on dead.

That reminds me, it is proper cemetery etiquette to not to step right on a grave site.

FYI: This cemetery is not open on Saturdays and for security reasons, be prepared to identify yourself and the family member’s site you are visiting. We just observed from outside the fence.

Link: History Placing A Stone

Chinese Cemetery

The Chinese Cemetery was established in 1908 on the west side of Macleod Trail at Erlton Street. Many of Calgary’s early Chinese pioneers were from Hoy Sun Country (also known as Toisan) in southern China's Guangdong province. The newcomers faced terrible hardships: racial discrimination, loneliness and often difficult, dangerous labour work in mines and building and maintaining the railway lines. Many had no immediate family or relatives in Canada since immigration laws of the time prevented them from bringing over their wives and families. And because there were no descendants to maintain the burial sites, many of the headstones in the Chinese cemetery eventually deteriorated.

The City took over the Chinese Cemetery in 1935. In 1980, during the Light Rapid Transit (LRT) construction and the widening of Macleod Trail, workers excavating near the cemetery unearthed thirty-nine bodies, which were later reburied in a common grave. Initially, the Hoy Sun Association considered restoring the damaged headstones, choosing instead to build a common monument so as to not disturb the Feng Shui of individual graves.

Link: Chinese Cemetery

Virtual Tours

The City of Calgary’s website has several virtual cemetery tours that share some of the stories of the people buried in Calgary’s cemeteries. They are worth viewing.

Link: Virtual Tours of Calgary’s Cemeteries