Before I begin my analysis of our monument analysis of Pioneer Square, a link to our map may be found at: http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=216867271032167791830.0004b8a259463316b79f4
In selecting a project for our monument analysis, it was difficult to decide on a focus for our scope. Because of this issue, we chose to examine the Pioneer Square cemetery in its entirety. Little did we know that there were not just 25 burials as we, or at least I, presumed from the monuments present, but approximately 1300 (OCS, 2012). This new information transformed my first research question going into the project from just what distinctions exist for who was buried there to what distinctions exist for whose burials were demarcated? The next question I would like to address here is one that was raised by a member of my group, Beth, who brought up the consequences of the designation of the cemetery as a city park, now dubbed “Pioneer Square”. With this in mind my question is how does this designation affect attitudes towards the dead today? A final research question that was raised was what relationship existed between the cemetery and the Christ Church Cathedral located next to it on Quadra Street?
In selecting a project for our monument analysis, it was difficult to decide on a focus for our scope. Because of this issue, we chose to examine the Pioneer Square cemetery in its entirety. Little did we know that there were not just 25 burials as we, or at least I, presumed from the monuments present, but approximately 1300 (OCS, 2012). This new information transformed my first research question going into the project from just what distinctions exist for who was buried there to what distinctions exist for whose burials were demarcated? The next question I would like to address here is one that was raised by a member of my group, Beth, who brought up the consequences of the designation of the cemetery as a city park, now dubbed “Pioneer Square”. With this in mind my question is how does this designation affect attitudes towards the dead today? A final research question that was raised was what relationship existed between the cemetery and the Christ Church Cathedral located next to it on Quadra Street?
Regarding
the first question, the first part may be answered in that specific spatial
designations did, according to the old cemetery society, exist historically.
Specific sections of the cemetery were separated for naval burials as well as
burials of Chinese citizens and possibly Hawaiian citizens (OCS, 2012). In
addition, colonial surveyor B.W. Pearse apparently divided the cemetery into
two parts, designating half to the Catholic church and half to the Anglican
church. As to the second part of the question, how was it determined whose
burials would be recorded in monument form, two ideas from the reading were
brought to mind.
The first idea was structured by
Ian Morris (1991, pp.148), who wrote, “If a permanent, specialized, bounded
area for the exclusive disposal of the groups dead exists, then it is likely
that this represents a corporate group that has rights over the use and/or
control of crucial but restricted resources” Since with 1300 burials in such a
short span of time (the cemetery was only open from 1855-1873), it seemed
unlikely to me that who was buried there was to intensely exclusive. Even
though there were originally around 200 grave markers in the cemetery, that
still left a vast number of burials which were not marked. This has left me with
the idea that perhaps while this “specialized, bounded area” (Morris 1991,
p.148) was not for the “exclusive disposal of the groups dead”(Morris 1991,
p.148), perhaps the decision of whose graves were marked was more exclusive.
This may have been determined based on social status and/or wealth since some
of the more elaborate monuments were dedicated to people who it does not seem
likely would have held high status positions, for example the “Brown Jug
Saloon” owner, John Carroll.
This
particular grave leads me to the next connection to the readings, regarding
monuments as material culture. John C. Barrett (1990, pp.179) wrote, “material
culture does not so much reflect social conditions as participate in the
structuring and transformation of those conditions”. This leads me to the
conclusion that the use of monuments, in particular that of John Carroll, were
a means to establish status in a relatively young settlement, possibly to
benefit future generations.
While
it is interesting to ponder these possibilities, it is in fact a mystery as to
why the monuments that remain today were chosen to be preserved and displayed.
There is no documented reasoning for why the remaining monuments were chosen or
placed as they were during the “clean-up” of the cemetery when it was
transformed into a park in 1908 (OCS, 2012).
This
leads to my next question, how does the designation of the cemetery to a city
park affect the attitudes towards the dead today and furthermore, reflect upon
attitudes towards the dead at the time? According to the website for the
Pioneer Square cemetery, attitudes towards the burial ground during its time of
use were less than sensitive. The vandalism that occurs today occurred then as
well and upkeep was supposedly abysmal. The transformation to a city park was
apparently in reaction to complaints of this insensitivity. Does this change
then exhibit a greater respect through upkeep of the grounds, or a change for
the worse in the removal of monuments and therefore memories of the individuals
buried there? I would argue that the change implied greater respect for the
area as one to be remembered as the final resting place of the earliest
settlers of Victoria, but a distancing from the individual identities of those
people. With this change, the cemetery in and of itself seems to have become a
unified monument to those who rest there yet conceals who they were separately.
What confuses me still, however, is that while it is understandable that this
distancing from individual identities would occur with time and affect present
day attitudes, why were these identities erased so early, as exhibited by the
lack of monuments to record the burials of the ~1300 people at the time of its
use?
The
final question I would like to address is the relationship between the
cathedral and the cemetery. When first going into the project, I believe we as
a group assumed the church was built first, followed by the cemetery, so as to
have the cemetery on or near “holy ground”. However, when we went into the
church and asked a member of the staff there about the relationship, he told us
that the cemetery had, in fact, been designated before the original church was
built. I found this very confusing, and so researched it further. According to
the cemetery website, the cemetery was put to use while construction of the
original church was in progress, but cemetery had purposefully been placed
adjacent to the church, though was put to use before its completion (OCS,
1012).
I
have walked through the Pioneer Square cemetery many times with no knowledge of
the history and questions that it represents. Having the opportunity to look
further in detail at the concealed truth of the lovingly tended park landscape
was a valuable experience. It stands for me now as a reminder that usually in
history and archaeology, there is much more than meets the eye.
References
1. Barrett, J. (1990) The monumentality
of death: The character of early bronze age mortuary mounds in Southern Britain. World
Archaeology: 22(2): 179-189.
2. Morris,
I. (1991) The Archaeology of
Ancestors: The Saxe/Goldstein Hypothesis Revisited. Cambridge
Archaeological Journal: 1(2): 147-169.
3. Pioneer Square - Victoria BC.
2012. Pioneer Square - Victoria BC. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/psp/html/reports/history/index.htm.
[Accessed 20 February 2012].
