On a windy day almost a century ago, a few dozen people gathered on a hillside on the east side of East Saanich Road, about half a mile north of the Royal Oak community hall, to dedicate a new municipal cemetery.
When it was opened in 1923, Royal Oak Burial Park was on a gravel road, its 80 acres surrounded by wooded areas and farms. The burial park was expanded several times, so today it is about 135 acres. Twenty-five acres are too rocky, too wet or too steep, so they will remain in a natural state forever.
Ross Bay was scenic, but as the location for a cemetery, it was far from perfect. It was too small to meet the needs of the growing community, and the area closest to the water was at the mercy of the weather. After a protective seawall was completed in 1913, Victoria council members started looking for a site for a new cemetery.
There were also proposals from private interests, including one for a cemetery close to the north end of Quadra Street, and another for 50 acres in the Blenkinsop Valley, west of Mount Douglas. Saanich council rejected both proposals; councillors said any cemetery in Saanich should be municipally, not privately, owned and operated.
In May 1921, the inter-municipal committee, made up of members from the four local councils, adopted a draft agreement that called for the involvement of the four municipalities. Evergreen was designed as a burial park rather than a traditional cemetery. It was designed for the living rather than the dead, with plenty of trees, flowers and lawns, and a ban on upright memorials. It became the model for the new cemetery in Greater Victoria.
“Cadboro Bay — one of Victoria’s greatest assets — is in danger of being converted from a playground into a cemetery,” the letter said. “The $80,000 voted for the purchase of a cemetery site may be used to destroy an asset that could not be bought for ten times the money. How any public trustee could even consider such a scheme for a single moment passes all comprehension — but so it is.
But a solution was at hand. A local real estate company offered the board 84.1 acres in Section 109 of the Lake District — in layman’s terms, on the east side of East Saanich Road, just north of the Saanich Municipal Hall in Royal Oak. The property, surrounded by farmland, was reported to be one of the highest on the Saanich Peninsula, with views of Juan de Fuca Strait.
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