Grave Expectations

I live a few blocks from Victoria’s oldest cemetery, and while it’s generally taken as a shortcut home from the store, the other day it was part of a spontaneous shot at flânerie. I hiked along the waterfront and up to the main road, but the traffic noise was bothersome so I took a hard left into the historic graveyard and promptly came toe-to-toe with a stone plot bearing my family name.

I know that my immediate kin is not the lone offshoot from the clan MacGregor tree; we’re more of a twig from the larger branch called “Greig”, so it got me wondering who the plot’s occupants were and how/if they may have been connected to my father’s father’s father. The graves are overgrown and unmarked within the stone boundary. They could be empty for all I know. If so, they’re definitely not being held in reserve for any of my folk. Mum and Dad have other plans.

On a winding path between the stones, I met one of the cemetery caretakers. He was pushing his wheelbarrow toward me and I prepped my passing nod-and-smile, but he spoke to me as he approached.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“No,” I replied, “but someone found me. I just saw my family name on a plot back there.”

He asked what it is, and nodded when I told him. “We have a few of them around here.”

“I know a few myself,” I said, “but they’re still moving.”

He produced a brochure from his back pocket and showed me the map. The Greigs aren’t listed among the high points, but I can call the City Archives or the Old Cemeteries Society to ask for specific locations. Then he pointed out a spot on the path and said, “You’re about here. If you want to see the important ones, they’re up along this route.” He meant Emily Carr and Sir James Douglas, among other notable Victorians who had the cash to buy waterfront real estate for their final resting place.

I thanked him for the brochure and proceeded with my flânerie. Some years ago, I had seen another Greig family plot in the cemetery but couldn’t recall exactly where, so I kept an eye out as I walked. I passed tablets and obelisks and memorial markers, some articulately detailed and others worn blank by time and salt wind. There were family plots and single headstones. English, Scottish, German, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Italian – families from all over the world were represented. None of the names meant anything to me … but then I recalled what the caretaker had said. If you want to see the important ones …

A few of the graves were adorned with fresh flowers, evidence that someone remembers and still misses the departed. The important ones.

The Ross Bay Cemetery may harbour a few famous Canadians and members of Victoria’s founding families, but it also holds the bones of ordinary people, of mothers and husbands and soldier-sons and infant daughters whose names aren’t in the history books. It occurred to me that every single person buried in every single cemetery in the whole wide world meant something to someone somewhere at some time, and that makes each of them—each of us—important.

Don’t think for a second that you have to be famous to be important. All you have to do is be loved.