Gregg Doughty has worked at UBC as horticulturist and arborist since 1991. For the last few decades, he has tried to find out the names of the people buried in two unmarked graves. The university prefers not to talk about it. They’re worried that the graves may be vandalized or frighten students living in the adjacent Walter Gage residences. But Doughty wants to know who is buried there and why.
“This is a disgrace. These graves are in poor shape and they are hidden away here. It’s disrespectful,” he says. “For the last 20 years or so I’ve been trying to figure out who these people are. What happened to them? It makes me sad and curious at the same time.”
Who is buried in these unmarked graves?
Erwin Wodarczak, who heads up the archives at UBC, says the mystery of the two graves comes up every few years. He suggested using ground penetrating radar to confirm whether or not there are remains buried there back in 2014 but does not know whether that was ever done. It’s possible that remains were buried and later reinterred elsewhere. Speculation is that the unidentified men are Indigenous, Chinese or Japanese.
That there are graves, isn’t under dispute, it’s clearly marked on the 1984 plans for development with instructions to place cedar planks around the graves. Doughty has sent me photos that he took this week showing the tiled graves outlined among landscaped beds. It’s possible that the tiles were also added during this period.
Walter Gage Residences:
The Walter Gage residences (built in 1972) and the apartments (added in 1984) are located off Westbrook Mall, just north of Student Union Boulevard. It was the site of a lighthouse station in January 1908, and later a wireless radio station.*
I spoke to David Grigg, who was an engineer and planner at UBC until his retirement in 2010. He says that a senior UBC administrator told him about the graves decades ago. “I’ve never seen any documentation on it, it’s all been word of mouth. We never made any big fuss about it,” says Grigg. “[The administrator] said as far as he knew there were two Chinese people buried here.”
Could they be Japanese?
Former head gardener, Joe Rykuiter, pointed out the graves to Doughty when he started over 30 years ago. Rykuiter worked there in the 1950s so the graves pre-date that. Doughty thinks they may belong to two Japanese workers who lived and died out there in the early 1900s. He may well be right.
Newspaper articles from 1907 report a large Japanese settlement made up of former shingle bolt-cutters who stayed on in shacks after logging ended. Under the headline “Squatters must leave Point Grey,” the Province reported in May 1907: “Within the next 30 days all the squatters now in possession of land on the reserves are to be evicted. The ousting of these men may be expected any day.” The government land was for sale and they didn’t want any legal battles ensuing between squatters and the new owners to mess up the deal.
This was just a few months before the anti-Asian riots would tear through Vancouver.
Doughty says there is a file at campus planning that has more information, but so far, he has been unable to obtain a copy.
“I’m getting close to retirement and I would like to solve this mystery and find out who these people were and what happened to them,” he says.
Please see Part 2: which mostly solves the mystery, and wasn’t what anyone expected!
- Source: Rough Radio
Related:
- The Lost Cemetery of Stanley Park
- BC Binning’s Missing Murals
- Boothill: New Westminster’s Strangest Cemetery
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10 comments on “The mysterious graves at UBC’s Gage Towers”
Hi Eve, These are not “graves”. My husband and a friend created this “shrine” in the early 1960’s when they were high-school students at University Hill. I have sent your blog to the instigator, who may, or may not get back to you. He became a highly regarded UBC Prof… I think they would like it to remain a mystery!
Since the location is no longer a mystery, if the “highly regarded UBC Prof” wants to get back to me and put the record straight, I’d be delighted to write an update.
This hypothesis actually makes a lot of sense to me, a tribute shrine to an unknown history! Very zen, in fact. If the contractors went out of their way not to disturb the site, they would never learn if in fact anything was buried there at all!
Perhaps the use of Ground Penetrating Radar could confirm.
I can’t believe this is here! This is a mystery my childhood next door neighbour have been planning to pursue for years. These were on the path to our “fort” which was right behind.
I can’t see it in the pictures but it seems part of what I remember is no longer there. There was an altar like brick construction, with Chinese characters on it.
The U-Hill connection seems plausible. The “graves” were along side a well trodden path in the mid 60s though well overgrown at that point.
Thanks Megan, this story just keeps getting more interesting!
The mention of the shingle mill brings back a faint memory of friends living at Carey Hall finding “artefacts” in the same grove. (Though could as easily have been debris from WW2 or construction garbage.)
I lived in Gage Lowrise for a couple of misspent UBC sessions, 1979-80 and 1980-81. I unfortunately did not notice this shrine while I lived there, so even though I spent sixteen months in its immediate vicinity, I can offer no reminiscences. Maybe there was nothing to see then?
I will say the landscaping and gardens at UBC were great then and still are, so thanks Gregg.
Having officiated at numerous official and unofficial burial sites, my experience makes me wonder if the remains (ashes/urns? caskets?) actually belong to someone in the Gage family. Sometimes, even though it’s not legal to bury remains in certain places, people ask for this as a dying wish when the location carries such profound meaning. In other words, the Gage family members or patriarch/matriarch could not officially be laid to rest there, so maybe a story of former workers served as a convenient cover story! Thus, your ‘plot’ (sorry) might be even thicker, Eve!
[…] week I wrote about the two graves near UBC’s Gage Towers. Gregg Doughty first heard about the graves when he started with the university in 1991. Various UBC […]