The history of Chinese immigration to Canada, well the west coast of Canada, is pretty much as long as the history of European immigration to this area (actually probably much, much longer according to how one looks at history and categories but that's another story). This is a brief snippet about the Chinese Cemetery at Harling Point.
It's said that a traditional Chinese belief is that the soul of a person who dies in a foreign land wanders aimlessly until their bones are returned to their homeland. The early Chinese pioneers who came to work and live in Victoria and on the mainland, came mainly for the gold rush and to supply labour for the western portion of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The remains of those who died locally and elsewhere in Canada were buried in Victoria until their bones could be exhumed and sent back to China.
In 1903, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, bought land to create a cemetery, for previously, Chinese people had been buried in a section of Ross Bay Cemetery (just down the road) that was prone to washouts by ocean waves. Victoria's Chinese Cemetery at Harling Point became the temporary resting place, until 1933 when the practice of sending bones back to China ended.
People are no longer buried here and it is now a National Historic Site of Canada but people still come to the site to worship their ancestors and/or pay their respects, cultural background depending and all that.
The graves are very modest and some have been given a lick of paint.
This is the ceremonial altar, used for burning incense and leaving offerings.
Here, someone has left a martial arts suit of some kind and a basket of spirit money and oranges.
The cemetery overlooks the straight and the Olympic Mountains (there aren't usually that many boats; a race was going on) and it's not too shabby a place to spend an hour or two or a day or for all of eternity for that matter! ;-)
See more Scenic Sundays here.
