Early Chinese Cemetery at Harling Point National Historic Site of Canada built 1903, image via Parks Canada

One of British Columbia's oldest public burial grounds, Victoria's Ross Bay Cemetery first recorded a Chinese interment on 18 March 1873, when the grave was entered simply as “Chinaman No. 1.” Over the next several years, about twenty more Chinese burials appeared under similarly numbered entries (e.g. “Chinaman No. 2,” “No. 3,” etc.) in Block L, a race-segregated shoreline section where Chinese individuals were interred separate from white and Christian plots. Later on, winter storms eroded much of that waterfront, washing away graves. Before Ross Bay opened to Chinese burials, the Old Burying Ground at Quadra Street was used (now Pioneer Square). In 1903, the Chinese community purchased land later named Harling Point to establish BC's first exclusively Chinese cemetery. Between 1903 and 1908, many of the remaining Chinese graves were exhumed from Ross Bay and relocated to this new, more secure site.