Mountain View Cemetery

The Lost Cemetery of Stanley Park

by Eve Lazarus on February 13, 2021

Mountain View Cemetery may have been Vancouver’s first official cemetery when it opened in 1886, but Stanley Park was first.

Bodies had been buried on Deadman’s Island in Coal Harbour for thousands of years, and those who didn’t want their relatives interred alongside the socially undesirable, the diseased or unchristened, moved their burials further into Stanley Park.

This story is from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Maurice Guibord estimates there are around 200 bodies buried between Brockton Point Lighthouse and the Nine O’Clock Gun

The Pioneer Cemetery:

“Its very association with the First Nations and Chinese immigrants thus designated Deadman’s Island as a resting place for the pagan, the unchristened, and the socially and culturally anathematized,” says local historian Maurice Guibord.

The stretch of land from Brockton Point Lighthouse to the Nine O’Clock Gun had always been a burial ground for the Indigenous people who lived there, but as Gastown was settled it also became an alternative burial ground known as the Pioneer Cemetery.

Chinese burials:

Chinese people were initially buried there, but for most, it was only temporarily. The custom was to return the bones to China eventually, so the graves were shallow to allow for faster decomposition and to facilitate exhumation. Once the body had turned to bones, they were dug up by bone collectors, cleaned, packaged and returned to China. Failure to do this was said to create po—homeless and malevolent ghosts who stuck around and haunted living relatives.

Maurice believes that there are up to 200 bodies still buried there along the peninsula, including the remains of settlers, some Chinese people and the indigenous people who had abandoned the custom of above-ground burials.

Unmarked graves:

The graves weren’t officially marked and the burials weren’t recorded, so when the perimeter road was built around the park in the late 1880s, the bodies were just paved over. “They are buried under the road, under the trees, under the bike path and the walkway. They are all through there,” says Maurice.

Something to think about the next time you’re sitting in the car park or taking a walk along the Seawall.

For more ghostly stories check out these podcast episodes:

S1 E9 Three Ghost Stories and a Murder

S2 E24 Halloween Special 2021

Victoria’s Ghost

Tags Deadman's Island, Maurice Guibord, Mountain View Cemetery, Pioneer Cemetery

The 100-year-old Unsolved Murder of Special Constable Charles Painter

by Eve Lazarus on October 22, 2016

Last year, Constable Graham Walker of the Metro Vancouver Transit Police was asked to research the history for their 10-year anniversary. Graham promptly fell down the rabbit hole and his journey has taken him to UBC Special Collections, City of Vancouver Archives, BC Hydro Archives, and the Vancouver Police Museum. Graham’s first surprise was that the history of transit police goes back far longer than 2005 when a recommendation by the BC Association of Chiefs of Police led to the creation of the Transit Police. In fact, the earliest record showing the appointment of a special constable for the BC Electric Railway dates back to 1904.

But Graham wasn’t calling me with a history of transit, he had uncovered a 100-year-old murder mystery in war-time Vancouver.

Graham Walker standing where the 1915 murder took place near Willow and 6th

On March 19, 1915, Charles Painter, 34, was working the night shift for BCER. The special constable was patrolling the railway tracks at 6^th and Willow when he saw a man carrying a bag of what he thought was wire stolen from the overhead trolley wire. He struggled with the thief, who managed to get his gun and Painter was shot in the stomach with his own weapon.

“Everything comes full circle,” says Graham who is also 34. “I’ve worked overtime shifts myself where we were going up and down Fraser Street looking for trolley wire thieves.”

Nowadays, transit police work foot patrol in pairs for protection, but in 1915 Charles was alone, and wandered for about an hour before he found help. He was able to give a statement to police, but later died from blood poisoning.

Painter was unmarried and lived at 1543 West 3^rd Street. There’s not much known about him—Graham found out that he was born in 1881 in Ireland, and had served in the British Army before coming to Canada in 1908.

“They didn’t have any suspects at first, but a few years later there was an article in the Province saying this man Frank Van der Heiden was being tried in Seattle for murdering two people and was of interest in the murder of Charles Painter,” says Graham. According to the article, Van der Heiden, who had been in Vancouver at the time of Painter’s murder, told a soldier he was locked up with that he was responsible for the constable’s death. Van der Heiden was caught with a large sum of cash, and according to the article, the money was believed to have been provided by the German government for the purpose of persuading soldiers to desert.

graham-memorial Painter’s murder is still officially unsolved, and his death went unrecognized until Graham and his research. Now his name has been added to the Honour Roll of the British Columbia Law Enforcement Memorial in Victoria, and Graham is presently trying to secure the funds to have a headstone placed on his unmarked grave at Mountain View Cemetery.

“Something we struggle with at our work place is lack of history and culture and you look at Victoria and New Westminster and they have this proud heritage,” says Graham. “So to have this now is important.”

BCER terminal at Hastings and Carrall in 1912. CVA M-14-71

Tags BC Electric Railway, BC Hydro Archives, Charles Painter, City of Vancouver Archives, Frank Van der Heiden, Graham Walker, Law Enforcement Memorial, Metro Vancouver Transit Police, Mountain View Cemetery, UBC Special Collections, Vancouver Police Museum

The Infant Garden

by Eve Lazarus on April 11, 2015

The Infant garden From Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History

Cemeteries are really interesting places, and I’ve wandered through Vancouver’s Mountain View several times over the years, but I never noticed the Infant Garden before.

Pamela Post* told me about it a few months ago, so I dropped by the cemetery when I was over that way the other week.

It’s an amazing story. Between 1907 and 1972 nearly 11,000 babies were put into unmarked graves at the cemetery. Some of the babies died at birth, others lived for a few hours or a few days, none had markers, few had ceremonies.

infant garden boulder

Parents were told to suck it up, go home and make more babies.

Over the years, these parents called Mountain View looking for their infants. In 2006, Glen Hodges, cemetery manager, spearheaded an infant garden that would give the babies back their identities, and their parents a special place to come to grieve.

The garden is just a short walk from the main office, chosen because that particular piece of ground was once known as Block 18, the biggest of the mass graves.

Exactly 6,610 tiny, once nameless bodies are buried here.

A boulder marks the entrance of the garden and it is inscribed and dedicated to the families. The garden is designed around a streambed filled with 6,610 stones, many bearing names. And the names are heartbreaking. There’s Baby Girl Quakenbush, April 19, 1934. Beeson Beloved Son was born and died on Christmas Eve 1940. Theresa & Josephine Carolet were one of several sets of twins, these little girls were born and died over two days in May of 1962. There is a marble square in the grass dedicated to Baby Stark June 16, 1956.

The garden should be in full bloom now. Drop by and visit, but before you do listen to Pamela Post’s terrific radio documentary Buried so Deep that ran on CBC’s the Sunday Edition.

Tags Glen Hodges, Mountain View Cemetery, Pamela Post

The Sinking of the Princess Sophia

by Eve Lazarus on October 23, 2012

On October 23, 1918– six years after the sinking of the Titanic—the SS Princess Sophia sailed out of Skagway, Alaska. Four hours later the ship slammed into a coastal reef killing all aboard. These men and women formed the backbone of the North and it was a devastating tragedy for the Pacific Northwest. More than 60 people are buried at Mountain View Cemetery. This is an excerpt from my book Sensational Victoria.

I first heard about the Princess Sophia in 2004 when the Vancouver Maritime Museum held a memorial service for the 350 passengers and crew killed in 1918. The Museum had recently acquired the ship’s bell from Betty Mantyla. Betty was given the bell by her grandmother, who was given the bell by a diver.

When the Princess Sophia sailed out of Skagway 94 years ago, it was the final voyage of the year before the big freeze set in and she was jammed from cabin to steerage. There were pioneers of the gold rush, riverboat captains, 50 women and children, and newly enlisted soldiers on their way to fight in the Great War. Lulu Mae Eads was aboard, the same Lou that Robert Service wrote about in The Shooting of Dan McGrew. There were 24 horses and five dogs in the hold.

The Princess Sophia stuck on Vanderbilt Reef, October 25, 1918

Captain Leonard Locke, 66, had spent his life at sea and had made this voyage many times. But four hours after setting sail, the Sophia slammed into Vanderbilt Reef. The Sophia wasn’t taking on water and Locke felt that the ship could float free off the reef at high tide. But the wind increased and the snow thickened, and after almost 40 hours the Sophia slid backward off the rocks and went stern-first into the sea. The boilers exploded. Those passengers not trapped inside the ship, suffocated in the oil from the fuel tanks.

Those bodies that were recovered returned to Vancouver on the Princess Alice on November 11, 1918—the day the war ended.

The sinking of the Princess Sophia was a devastating tragedy for the Pacific North West — Captain Leonard Locke

An inquiry found that the ship was lost through “peril of the seas” and not through the fault of Captain Locke. Newspapers blamed him anyway.

Legal battles stretched on until the early 1930s. Emily, Locke’s widow received $2,249.99. The passengers’ relatives got nothing.

There have been books written about the Sophia, but unlike the Titanic which had little effect on the Pacific North West, most people have never heard of the disaster.

I met Syd Locke, the grandson of Captain Locke at the memorial service. He lives in Seattle. His father Frederick, was one of Locke’s five children with wife Emily. Born in 1891, he was with the Canadian Engineers during WW1 and drowned in a tugboat accident in Seattle when Syd was 11.

1005 Cook Street was built for Captain Locke and his wife Emily in 1906. Photo courtesy Victoria Heritage Foundation

“All of my ancestors have drowned as far back as anybody remembers. My mother wouldn’t let me go to sea. ‘It’s going to end here,’ she said.”

Although Syd never met his grandfather, what upsets him most is that accounts of the shipwreck don’t address the human side of the tragedy. There was Walter Gosse, for instance, a lookout and the younger brother of second officer Frank Gosse. Both brothers were at a dance. Frank made the sailing, but Walter was left behind. And there was Archibald Alexander, chief engineer from Victoria, who stayed behind because his twin daughters were seriously ill with Spanish flu. “How did he feel when all his friends went down?” asks Syd.

The shingled Edwardian house at 1005 Cook Street in Victoria that Locke built in 1907 is still there. The house is now a commercial building and has a heritage designation.

Tags 1005 Cook Street, Archibald Alexander, Archibald Alexander 1007 Cook Street, Betty Mantyla, Canadian Engineers, Captain Leonard Locke, Emily Locke, Frank Gosse, Frederick Locke, Lulu Mae Eads, Mountain View Cemetery, Princess Alice, Princess Sophia, Robert Service, Sensational Victoria, Syd Locke, Titanic, Vancouver Maritime Museum, Walter Gosse

James Cunningham and the Stanley Park Seawall

by Eve Lazarus on October 8, 2010

Jimmy Cunningham, 1962 Courtesy the Province

Jimmy Cunningham and the Stanley Park Seawall is an excerpt from Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the city’s hidden history

The James Cunningham Seawall Race started in 1971–the year the last stone was laid on the seawall It takes place every October and attracts more than 1,200 people.

Jimmy Cunningham spent 32 years of his life heaving granite blocks weighing hundreds of pounds and built over half of the 9.5 kilometre wall. The little Scotsman (he stood five foot four – 1.6 metres) tall immigrated to Vancouver in 1910 and became master stonemason for the Parks Board in 1931. From 1921 until he retired in 1955, Cunningham, his wife Elizabeth and their three daughters lived at 4446 Quebec Street, in Vancouver, a tree-lined street near Nat Bailey Stadium. Surprisingly (or maybe not considering his occupation) instead of a stone fence, there’s a well-kept hedge.

Cunningham’s granddaughter Julia says her grandfather would talk to her in Gaelic. She remembers a big potbellied stove in the kitchen and having to boil water for the upstairs bath. During her nursing training, she would meet Jimmy at the seawall and remembers his gnarled, swollen hands. “His right hand was really quite swollen and almost deformed because of all the cutting,” she says. “He never stopped working on the wall. They lowered him down on the rope at low tide. He chose the rock to be cut and then cut the rock down on the beach. He did all the work himself. And he was still doing that into his 80’s.”

Jimmy, his wife Elizabeth lived on Quebec Street from 1921 to 1955 — 4446 Quebec Street, Vancouver

Stuart Lefeaux, a civil engineer who retired n 1978, masterminded much of the layout of the wall. He says most of the granite blocks came from the beach, the city streets, and a stone quarry on Nelson Island, but a few of them are the abandoned bases of headstones from Mountain View Cemetery.

“Wherever we could get stone, especially granite, we would send out our trucks and machinery and pick them up,” he says.

Taken in Stanley Park just by Siwash Rock. Eve Lazarus, July 2021

Long after Cunningham hung up his trowel, he’d head down to supervise the crew building the seawall. He died in 1963 at 85 and never saw it completed. Story has it that Jimmy and Elizabeth have their ashes buried near the rock at Siwash Rock.

Tags Jimmy Cunningham, Mountain View Cemetery, Siwash Rock, Stanley Park Seawall

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