By Bill Chu, Kiyoko Judy Hanazawa, and Rita Wong
People in New Westminster have been waiting for more than a decade for the unmarked cemetery on the parcel of land at 835 8th Street to be made into a Memorial Cemetery Park. This public Memorial could play a crucial role in building an inclusive and respectful sense of community now, even if this did not exist in the past.
Historically, Indigenous, Chinese, poor, and non-Christian people were buried separately from wealthier settlers of European descent in this New Westminster cemetery. Today we know that our differences are valuable and help us to be stronger when we learn from one another. However, this segregation occurred because racialized people were perceived as inferior in colonial BC. Sometimes they might have a gravestone to mark their burial; other times, they might have been buried without one. Though for Chinese, many remains were repatriated back to China, most corpses remain, and it is unclear how many bodies still have this land as their final resting place.
The former New Westminster Secondary School was built on top of the graves of disenfranchised people. Such disrespectful treatment did not happen to the wealthy as their remains were properly relocated. While the Secondary School was eventually moved and reconstructed off this site, the question of how to acknowledge the history of this land and to design a memorial cemetery park has not been adequately addressed by the New Westminster School District, or the City which has promised this as its redemptive action.
At its July 13 Council Meeting, the City of New Westminster accepted the School District’s proposal for eligible school sites. While some good work could occur through such, the above important but unfinished business still needs to be approved through proper consultation with its 33 stakeholder groups. Specifically, the School District owes a responsibility to construct a respectful, contemplative memorial park over this unmarked cemetery. The spirits of the dead are still waiting for this long overdue respect.
Years ago, the School District began a consultation process that abruptly ended in 2024 without explanation and without anything approved by the 33 stakeholder groups regarding the wording of a memorial plaque and design of the Memorial Park.
As a typical park is emerging, a delegate from the stakeholders, Bill Chu, spoke at the New Westminster City Council meeting on July 13 of the urgency to restart the consultation process. Hopefully, the School District will carry through on its responsibilities to uphold truth and reconciliation, to ensure that the Indigenous and other racialized people are not yet again slighted by the authority’s actions. If the School District does not have the capacity to complete this project, can the City or another authority in this Province take on this important work of honouring our dead? Death is the great equalizer, reminding us that we are all in this together.
After the council meeting, we more closely examined the city’s maps for the protected Heritage Conservation Area (HCA) to see if the School District has placed the Memorial Cemetery Park correctly. To our shock, we now realize that their “park” location actually misses where the poor and racialized bodies are buried. Significantly, what the current park location protects is mainly the section of the cemetery largely for the white population. Furthermore, the School District, infringing the Heritage Conservation Act and without giving required notice to stakeholders, has constructed a Maintenance and IT Building on top of what should have been protected land while rebuilding the new school. It appears the School District’s current plan is to ignore its promises and perpetuate the historical injustice against disenfranchised people of colour.
As such, we are sounding the alarm that the expanded parking to the north of the Maintenance Building is another infringement and should be eliminated, with the local Park boundary pushed southward so that the Memorial Cemetery Park will actually cover more of the cemetery for the disenfranchised. Furthermore, a strip of land about 90 feet by 280 feet is currently covered with piles of gravel and soil along 8th Street, north of the Massey Theatre front lawn. In light of the land misappropriated by the School District to build its Maintenance building, that strip must be dedicated to become part of the Memorial Cemetery Park with proper history and monument for the dead who are still resting there.
These two design changes are a must if the City of New Westminster and its School District are serious about respecting truth and reconciliation. We need to proceed based on truth and the locations of our predecessors’ physical remains as reported by the School District consultant.
So now is an opportunity to learn from history and be anchored in respectful relations, even at this very late date. We invite all people who care about truth and honour to urge the School District to take this opportunity for public education both in and beyond the classroom, through the thoughtful development of this Memorial Park. Anyone running for School Trustee, Mayor or Councillor in the October 17 civic election needs to commit to respecting the ancestors who are still buried in this land, in order to be worthy of people’s votes. Waiting for the stakeholder groups to die off would be a terrible mistake and lost chance to heal some of the deep wounds that the past inflicts.
Christie Waltham created this 2015 video (above) with images and video from the New Westminster Museum and Archives.
Bill Chu is the founder of Canadians for Reconciliation. Judy Hanazawa is a longtime advocate for human rights. Rita Wong is a poet-scholar who attends to the relationships between water, justice, ecology, and decolonization. They have posted an online petition calling on the City of New Westminster to take action in response to inequitable treatment on the former segregated section for racialized and marginalized groups within the Douglas Cemetery Follow Pancouver on X @PancouverMedia and Bluesky @pancouver.bsky.social. Also find Pancouver on Instagram @PancouverMedia.
