Volunteers revitalize and repair historic Calgary Chinese Cemetery following decades of neglect

Members of Calgary’s Chinese community are rolling up their sleeves alongside dozens of volunteers to repair and restore a local cemetery on Macleod Trail that’s been neglected for decades.

The City of Calgary partnered with the Calgary Chinese Development Foundation (CCDF) this week to ‘right a historic wrong’ by cleaning up the Calgary Chinese Cemetery.

Volunteers began the first phase of work to repair headstones, plant fresh grass and refurbish seven planned rows of graves.

“This was one of the original cemeteries in Calgary that first began in 1908, but the city didn’t take it over until 1935 so it’s kind of been decaying, many monuments have been broken, and it’s just in disrepair,” said Ward 7 Coun. Terry Wong. 

“There was some kind of unwritten rule or agreement back then not to touch the Chinese cemetery and because of the Chinese Exclusion Act and head taxes, many families weren’t allowed to come visit, so a lot of their headstones weren’t looked after.”

Wong notes that the Chinatown community felt it was their responsibility to fix the site because many of the first pioneers formed the first associations and built what would become multiple Chinatowns in Calgary’s history.

Volunteers work on the Calgary Chinese Cemetery, on Aug. 13, 2024

He adds that Gary Daudlin, cemeteries management lead with the City of Calgary was also influential in meeting with community members to help provide support to repair headstones.

Ward 7 Councillor Terry Wong was also involved and advocated for the community to begin repair work.

“A lot of the settlers who came at the time to build the railways to start the first Chinatown are buried here and over the course of the last century, the cemetery has fallen into different states of repair with no investments to sustain it,” Lee said.

“The city had some funding opportunities to take care of a variety of different parks and this is one of them, but as for the precise dollars we haven’t seen the division or numbers yet. The work is a combination of resurfacing the land and regrading it so it won’t be a lot of capital costs to do something like this.”

The project is set to be finished in the summer of 2025 at which point 262 of the 343 monuments on the site will be restored over a total area of 460 sq. metres.

Plenty of consultation has taken place in collaboration with the Calgary Chinese community and the City of Calgary.

A feng shui master also visited the site after which it was determined that corrective work was required to restore and revitalize the area.

“It makes my heart feel good and it makes me proud to tidy up this area,” Yee said. “Now whenever we come to visit, we will feel good looking at this place, especially for families visiting their loved ones, it’s truly a place where they can rest in peace.”

'It makes me proud'

Jack Yee has been a member of Calgary’s Chinese community for nearly 50 years and currently sits as the President of the CCDF.

Both his mother and father are buried at the Calgary Chinese Cemetery.

“It makes my heart feel good and it makes me proud to tidy up this area,” Yee said.

“Now whenever we come to visit, we will feel good looking at this place, especially for families visiting their loved ones, it’s truly a place where they can rest in peace.”

Yee says the repair work has also offered a chance to update cemetery records along each plot in the cemetery.

“We have a pretty good idea of each headstone and what it’s all about, but we don’t know all the Chinese names, so we feel happy to build this database, to have pictures with each headstone and put it all back together as we renovate.”

Repair work for this phase began Tuesday and is expected to wrap up on Thursday. The entire project will conclude in September 2025 at which point a final celebration of the work completed will take place

For more information, visit: The Chinese Cemetery (calgary.ca)