Description du lieu patrimonial

Mountain View Cemetery includes the cemetery grounds and buildings in the City of Vancouver between 31st and 43rd Avenues, between Main and Fraser Streets, an open expanse of lawn with an extensive array of mature trees and views
to Coast Mountains to the north. Many of the historical burial sites are grouped together by religion, nationality, or organizational affiliation, as well as pauper and war veterans.

Japanese and Chinese Canadians were buried at the back of the cemetery, known as the Old Cemetery, the first and oldest section, located generally between 37th Avenue and 35th Avenue, behind the Jewish Cemetery and next to the Chinese Shrine.

Valeur patrimoniale

Mountain View Cemetery has historic, cultural, social and spiritual value as an important record of the settlement, culture and lives of Japanese Canadians in both the Vancouver area and across B.C.

Opened in 1887, the cemetery has cultural and historic value as the final resting place of over 3,000 Japanese Canadians, a reflection of the fact that by 1941 there were about 10,000 Japanese Canadians living in the Vancouver area, mostly in the Powell Street area of town, but also in enclaves of close to 1,000 individuals in Kitsilano, Fairview, and Marpole/Eburne. The early areas of the cemetery contain the grave sites of some of the first Japanese Canadian immigrants to B.C., including the first Japanese Canadian to be buried in the province, Yasutaro Hirose, in 1893.

The cemetery has social value for being the final resting place of many influential Japanese Canadians that together convey the important contribution of the Japanese Canadian community to B.C.

As a representative of other Japanese cemeteries and memorials across the province, Mountain View is significant for helping mark the location of important centres of Japanese Canadian settlement in B.C., the timing of their settlement, and the relative size of the Japanese Canadian population in enclaves within larger communities. The collection of cemeteries is valuable as a display of the shift away from race-based segregated sections following the World War II. In some cases, memorials are the only remaining sign of the Japanese Canadian settlement, such as the Japanese Monument in the Slocan Cemetery, and the Ocean Falls Japanese cemetery monument.

Mountain View Cemetery has cultural value for reflecting the prosperity of Japanese Canadians, who were well established by 1942 and had bought plots at Mountain View, as well as their reverse in fortunes, through having some of those plots left behind and unclaimed after the forced internment of the Japanese Canadian community during World War II.

Formal recognition of the Japanese Canadian Cemetery at Mountain View, largely due to an inaugural walking tour by the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural centre, is important for its dedication to the history of Japanese Canadians in B.C. and over a century of burials. This work to increase the recognition of the Japanese Canadian Cemetery is representative of efforts across the province to redress the deliberate erasure of many Japanese Canadian grave sites in other cemeteries in B.C. through racist acts of destruction or through the forced relocation of Japanese Canadians away from their coastal settlements.

Source: Province of British Columbia, Heritage Branch

Éléments caractéristiques

Not applicable