The Jewish Cemetery is the oldest non-Indigenous cemetery in continuous use in the province of British Columbia. The land was purchased from Roderick Finlayson, Chief Factor of the Hudson Bay Company, in October 1859. A dedication ceremony was held in February of 1860. The first burial took place in 1861.

Among those buried in the Jewish Cemetery is Samuel Davies Schultz, ace baseball player on record as pitching the first no-hitter in BC, journalist, composer, lawyer and Canada’s first Jewish judge. Other notable graves include a family plot for the Oppenheimer family in which Vancouver’s early Mayor David Oppenheimer’s first wife and his brother and business partner Godfrey were interred. H.E. Levy proprietor of the first gourmet restaurant in the Pacific Northwest, and most of his family are also buried in this cemetery.

Once inside the gates, on the left, stands a Holocaust Memorial. At the base on the far side of this monument is a shrub planted by the Hebrew School in honor of Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s fifth prime minister.

Website: The Jewish Cemetery of Victoria

Other resources:

• Jewish Victoria: A Historical Perspective
• Database of Burials
• List of Monuments
• Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia