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28-704: The cemetery was opened in late 1872, with the first burial being Mary Letitia (Pemberton) Pearse, wife of Benjamin Pearse . The 27.5 acre (111,000 m) cemetery is part of a public park and its south side faces Ross Bay on the Pacific Ocean . It is named after its owner, Isabella Mainville Ross , the first registered independent woman landowner in British Columbia. Isabella was also Indigenous, an Anishinaabe and French Métis woman, which makes her accomplishment even more remarkable. Her Métis son, Alexander Ross,

56-647: A branch of the British Empire Navy League in Victoria. Pearse was one of the earliest settlers of the Fernwood neighborhood in Victoria as well. Pearse died on June 17, 1902, of cancer in Victoria, British Columbia . He left money to a wide variety of philanthropic organizations and other facilities, notably contributing to Victoria College and helping to bring about the foundation of

84-614: A group of rebellious American miners. Governor Douglas placed restrictions on immigration to the new British colony , including the proviso that entry to the territory must be made via Victoria and not overland, but thousands of men still arrived via the Okanagan and Whatcom Trails . Douglas also sought to limit the importation of weapons, one of the reasons for the Victoria-disembarkation requirement, but his lack of resources for oversight meant that overland routes to

112-472: A sea wall had to be constructed because of the severe erosion that occurred as a result of the relentless pounding of the ocean's waves. During the 1930s, the City began planting a large number of trees and today the cemetery is quite different from the original that was mainly barren ground. The Victorian-style Ross Bay Cemetery, contains numerous elaborate mausoleums and tall pillars from the early elite. Because

140-560: The California gold fields greeted the news with excitement. Within a month 30,000 men had descended upon Victoria . 4,000 of these Gold Rush pioneers settlers were Chinese. Until that time, the village had had a population of only about 500. This was a record for mass movement of mining populations on the North American frontier, even though more men in total were involved in the gold rushes of California and Colorado. By

168-806: The British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west" and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific." Moody arrived in British Columbia in December 1858, commanding the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment . Moody had hoped to begin immediately the foundation of a capital city, but upon his arrival at Fort Langley he learned of an outbreak of violence at the settlement of Hill's Bar. This led to an incident popularly known as " Ned McGowan's War ", where Moody successfully quashed

196-614: The City of Victoria discovered approximately 270 unused plots in the cemetery in the late 1990s. Through a lottery process the City of Victoria sold seven of these plots in April 2004, and an additional 65 plots in February 2007. The money raised through the plot sales was used to fund refurbishment work at the Ross Bay Cemetery. Some of the notable personalities among the more than 27,000 interred here are: The cemetery contains

224-656: The Fraser at the peak of the gold rush. This estimate was based on the Yale area and did not include the non-mining "hangers-on" population. (The Fraser River Gold Rush started in 1858) When news of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush reached London, Richard Clement Moody was hand-picked by the Colonial Office , under Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton , to establish British order and to transform British Columbia into

252-559: The apologies of the Americans who had waged war on the natives. Wanting to make the British military and governmental presence more visible, Douglas appointed justices of the peace and also revised the slapdash mining rules which had emerged along the river. Troops to maintain order, however, were still in short supply. Competition and interracial tensions between European Americans and non-white miners erupted on Christmas Eve 1858, with

280-465: The beating of Isaac Dixon , a freed American black. He was the town barber and in later years was a popular journalist in the Cariboo . Dixon was beaten by two men from Hill's Bar , the other main town in the southern part of the goldfields. The complicated series of events that ensued is known as McGowan's War . Its potential to provoke United States annexation ambitions within the goldfields, prompted

308-421: The city of Victoria is the capital of the province of British Columbia, until the second quarter of the 20th century when improved ferry service and air travel made mobility to and from the island much easier, most senior politicians made Victoria their permanent home. As such, Ross Bay Cemetery is the burial site for many of the province's premiers . Although the Ross Bay Cemetery had long been considered full,

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336-572: The employ of Vancouver Island. He became acting surveyor-general of Vancouver Island in 1859 and received the post permanently from 1864 to 1866, when Vancouver Island was united with British Columbia. In this capacity, he was a member of the colonial legislative and executive councils. He would also later serve as the surveyor-general and chief commissioner of lands and works for the united province from August 1871 to October 1872. He resigned from his posts as surveyor-general and chief commissioner of lands and works of British Columbia in 1872 to become

364-465: The fall, however, tens of thousands of men who had failed to stake claims or were unable to because of the summer's high water on the river, pronounced the Fraser to be "humbug." Many returned to San Francisco, but a continuing influx of newcomers replaced the disenchanted, with even more men storming the route of the Douglas Road to the upper part of Fraser Canyon around Lillooet ; others got to

392-555: The first charges of land abuse brought against Pearse; previously, allegations were made that Pearse had profited from the sale of territory during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush . Pearse had other varied interests as well. In 1855, he became a member of the first Canadian musical ensemble west of the Rocky Mountains . He was also closely tied with Britain politically and philosophically, and helped to form

420-478: The gold rush must be understood to be inherently European-ethnic to start with. Anglo-American Southerners (from states such as Missouri and Kentucky), Midwesterners, and New Englanders were well represented. Alfred Waddington, an entrepreneur and pamphleteer of the gold rush later infamous for the disastrous road-building expedition which led to the Chilcotin War of 1864, estimated there were 10,500 miners on

448-866: The goldfields could not be controlled. During the fall of 1858, tensions increased between miners and the Nlaka'pamux , the First Nations people of the Canyon. This led to the Fraser Canyon War . Miners wary of venturing upriver beyond Yale began to use the Lakes Route to Lillooet instead, prompting Douglas to contract for the building of the Douglas Road , the Mainland Colony's first public works project. The governor arrived in Yale to accept

476-409: The governor to send newly appointed Chief Justice Begbie , the colony's chief of police Chartres Brew and a contingent of Royal Engineers and Royal Marines to intervene. They did not need to use force and were able to resolve the matter peacefully. The team also dealt with the corruption of British appointees in the area, which had contributed to the crisis. The Fraser Canyon War did not affect

504-760: The head of the British Columbia Department of Public Works, a post which he would retain until 1880. Allegations were brought against Pearse in May 1879 in the House of Commons of Canada by MPs Thomas Robert McInnes and Arthur Bunster over the construction of the British Columbia Penitentiary . Though Pearse was found innocent of charges in an official investigation, they contributed to his resignation in July 1880. They were not

532-540: The mainland of British Columbia. It was the catalyst for the founding of the Colony of British Columbia , the building of early road infrastructure, and the founding of many towns. Although the area had been mined for a few years, news of the strike spread to San Francisco when the governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island , James Douglas , sent a shipment of ore to that city's mint. People in San Francisco and

560-660: The miners had either drifted back to the U.S. or dispersed further into the British Columbia wilderness in search of unstaked riches. Other gold rushes proliferated around the colony, with notable gold rushes at Rock Creek , the Similkameen , Wild Horse Creek and the Big Bend of the Columbia River spinning immediately off the Fraser rush, and gold exploration soon after led to the Omineca Gold Rush and

588-738: The newly declared Colony of British Columbia and disrupted the established balance between the Hudson's Bay Company 's fur traders and indigenous peoples . The influx of prospectors included numerous European Americans and African Americans , Britons , Germans , English Canadians , Maritimers , French Canadians , Scandinavians , Italians , Belgians and French , and other European ethnicities , Hawaiians , Chinese , Mexicans , West Indians , and others. Many of those first-arrived of European and British origin were Californian by culture, and this included Maritimers such as Amor De Cosmos and others. The numbers of "Americans" associated with

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616-580: The region around the discovery and was centered on the Fraser Canyon from around Hope and Yale to Pavilion and Fountain , just north of Lillooet . Though the rush was largely over by 1927, miners from the rush spread out and found a sequence of other gold fields throughout the British Columbia Interior and North , most famously that in the Cariboo . The rush is credited with instigating European-Canadian settlement on

644-649: The school's board of governors . Fraser Canyon Gold Rush The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush , (also Fraser Gold Rush and Fraser River Gold Rush ) began in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River a few miles upstream from the Thompson's confluence with the Fraser River at present-day Lytton . The rush overtook

672-717: The upper canyon via the Okanagan Trail and Similkameen Trail , and to the lower Canyon via the Whatcom Trail and the Skagit Trail. All these routes were technically illegal since the Governor required that entry to the colony to be made via Victoria, but thousands came overland anyway. Accurate numbers of miners, especially on the upper Fraser, are therefore difficult to reckon. During the gold rush tens of thousands of prospectors from California flooded into

700-484: The upper reaches of the goldfields, in the area of Lillooet, and the short-lived popularity of the Douglas Road caused the town to be designated "the largest town north of San Francisco and west of Chicago ", with an estimated population of 16,000. This title was also briefly held by Port Douglas , Yale, and later on by Barkerville . By 1860, however, the gold-bearing sandbars of the Fraser were depleted. Many of

728-550: The war graves of 135 Commonwealth service personnel, 133 from World War I and 2 from World War II. Ross Bay Cemetery was the alleged site of satanic rituals according to the now-discredited book Michelle Remembers . The cemetery was also the frequent stomping ground of the legendary Ross Bay Cult bestial black metal scene, of which Blasphemy are a part. Benjamin Pearse Benjamin William Pearse (January 19, 1832 – June 17, 1902)

756-587: Was a public servant for the colonies of Vancouver Island and of British Columbia . Pearse served on the Executive Council, which was the interim government in British Columbia after it joined the Dominion of Canada. Born in London, Pearse left England in 1851 to become a surveyor for the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island . In 1855, he became a public servant and entered

784-486: Was buried in the cemetery in 1876. His grave marker is the only known original marker left in possession of the Old Cemeteries Society. The old wooden marker is still used as a model for heritage markers. Isabella Ross was buried across the path from Alexander in 1885. In 1994, the Old Cemeteries Society marked Isabella's grave with a heritage marker, styled after the one she chose for Alexander. In 1911,

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