Victoria has an huge amount of history that is as different and unique as the people who inhabit it. Like many other students at Uvic, I did not grow up here in Victoria or even on the island. For the year and a half that I have lived here, I've extremely enjoyed learning about the many interesting and historical features of this beautiful city. It is then why I've chosen to write about Pioneer Square Cemetery in the hub of Victoria on the corner of Quadra Street and Rockland Avenue.
Pioneer Square, or also just known as 'Old Burying Ground', was the main place to bury the dead for Fort Victoria and Victoria from 1855 to 1873. It is the oldest cemetery in Victoria, and was very popularly used until the much more well known Ross Bay Cemetery in Oak opened in 1873. In Pioneer Square however, there are roughly 1 300 people buried there from a large array of Hudson Bay Company families and later on, participants in the gold rushes. In 1908, it was made into a city park and is well known for its heritage gravestones and bench tombs.
This particular cemetery caught my interest because it is the oldest, and well known cemetery of it's size in Victoria. Before I looked into it, I thought that Ross Bay was the oldest since it's almost twice the size of Pioneer Square and host so many famous people such as Billy Barker, Emily Carr, Sir James Douglas, and Roderick Finlayson. Pioneer Square is located right beside Victoria's famous Christ Church Cathedral which was built in 1926 and is one of Victoria's most beautiful and historically rich cathedrals.
http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/cem_pn.htm
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