Commonwealth War Graves Upgrade

In 2006 Commonwealth War Graves Commission replaced military markers in sections S & W near the Cross of Sacrifce. The Victoria Parks Department has installed a new automated sprinkler system to ensure that the flower beds are watered regularly.

Trees Changing the Landscape

The trees found in old cemeteries may be some of the oldest and largest types of their kind in the area as they were to some degree protected from being cut down for what ever reason. Cemeteries are not only memorials to the dead; they also have secured a vital function as horticultural repositories.

As you can see in the picture in the History section, the cemetery was quite bare in the 1880s. Most of the trees were planted in the 1930s, under the direction of the Victoria Parks Department. In fact, the Parks Department of Victoria formerly used Ross Bay Cemetery as a kind of warehouse of tree species.

Whenever the city needed to plant some more trees along its boulevards, it would start with clippings from the trees at the cemetery. Today, many trees in the city have roots in Ross Bay Cemetery. There are many pines, ornamental cherries and plums as well as shrubs like holly, yew, laurel, boxwood and lilac. Most of these were not there when the cemetery opened, although some are over a hundred years old.

Other Burial Grounds That Have Come To Ross Bay Cemetery

St. Ann Sisters

Not everyone who is buried in Ross Bay Cemetery was originally buried there. The first transfers came when the Old Burying Ground (Pioneer Square) was closed. Only a few of the approximately 1000 remains were moved from there to Ross Bay Cemetery in the 1870s and 1880s.

Later, others came from the Songhees Indian Reserve on Victoria's Inner Harbour when it was sold for development in 1912. Some of these graves were moved to Esquimalt, west of the City, but the Roman Catholic graves were moved to Ross Bay Cemetery.

The last set of transfers came when St. Ann's Academy was purchased by the provincial government in the 1970s. Up until 1908, the Sisters who died while at St. Ann's Academy (a convent) were buried in consecrated ground there.

The Sisters who died after that was full were buried in a separate area in Section U of Ross Bay Cemetery. When the government bought St. Ann's, the old graves were exhumed and moved to the Ross Bay plot to rest with the other Sisters.

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