Work has begun on restoring decades of neglect that saw headstones for pioneers in Calgary’s Chinese Community toppled and overgrown with moss.

The City of Calgary, along with the Calgary Chinese Development Foundation (CCDF) and volunteers from the Calgary-Chinese community began the next phase of work on Aug. 12 to right a historic wrong.

Calgarians driving by the Macleod Trail cemetery over the next week will see volunteers cleaning headstones and refilling in dirt, refurbishing three of seven planned rows of graves.

“This project started during the 100-year anniversary of the Exclusion Act. A lot of these are [Calgary] pioneers… and because their families weren’t allowed to come, a lot of their headstones were not looked after. So, it just basically fell in disarray,” said Ron Lee, Treasurer for the Calgary Chinese Development Foundation.

“We thought that with the China Chinatown community, it was our responsibility to fix it. Because of the pioneers—they originally came to Canada and Calgary and did a lot for the Chinese community—we took it on ourselves to fix this, fix what was wrong.”

Those pioneers formed the first tongs (or associations) in Calgary for the Chinese community, and built the first of what would become multiple Chinatowns in Calgary’s history, he said.

Lee said that credit also had to be given to the City of Calgary, and to Gary Daudlin, Cemeteries Management Lead for Calgary specifically, for meeting with the community and providing support to repair the headstones.

He said that the City had agreed to provide workers and resources for the project—which according to the City of Calgary, has meant installation of foundation stabilizers and providing turf and surface upgrades.

Jack Yee, President of the CCDF and a long-time advocate for the Calgary-Chinese community, said that the project even went so far as to consult Feng Shui Master Peter Lau to see if the project made sense.

“He said, ‘yes, we have to get them straight now to make it tidy, and that’s good for the health of the descendants.’ Then we decided to hold a meeting with the community, and they all agreed that, yes, we want to get it fixed. We negotiated with the city on how it’s going to be done,” said Yee.

“The city was really cooperative, and we’ve worked out a very good solution. The city is going to undertake all this work, they provide the equipment, the personnel and the technology to get it done. But we, the Chinese community, will provide the volunteers to clean up, and help the city to get it tidied up.”

The project is set to be complete in the summer of 2025, having restored 262 of 343 monuments and a total area of 460 sq. metres.

Sense of pride for the Calgary-Chinese community

Ward 7 Councillor Terry Wong said that the restoration of the graveyard was reflective of a movement by the City of Calgary and of Calgary City Council to address historical injustices against the Calgary-Chinese community.

“There’s a greater appreciation for the anti-Asian racism work that has been going on, and the work that’s been done by people like the Asian Heritage Foundation. That has brought together and solidified a number of different associations and and groups to to come together and make this a an educational and informed message as well.”

Yee said that the community had come together with a sense of pride over the project, and a bit of relief now that the repair work was underway.

“We feel very proud of the Chinese community, and we all agreed on the same idea. So I was very, very happy about that, because I guess they have attempt to do this before and they were not successful,” he said.

“This time, we got the whole community to come together, and we all worked on the same project, and they’re all participating in this project.”

Completing this year’s phase before the fall had been a challenge, Lee said.

“This project is heavily dependent on the weather. The City of Calgary can only work on it during the summer months, as you know, this year it’s just been super bad weather,” he said.

He said that the project, which had been set to officially kick off in June, had been delayed because of the rainstorms that hit the city during that month.

July’s extreme heat and smoke from wildfires also delayed work.

“Of course with cemeteries, there’s not much shade, so the workers that can’t be out here for too long, so they try to do the best they can,” Lee said.

Cultural superstition has also played a role in why it has been difficult to find volunteers, he said.

Cemeteries have been seen in traditional Chinese culture as a home for ghosts and ancestral spirits.

You Guijun, a ghost culture researcher in China writing for Sixth Tone in 2018, said that “Chinese do not see cemeteries as repositories of the dead but as living communities inhabited by spirits capable of both communicating with and giving assistance to their descendants.”

“It is therefore vital that these spirits be taken care of, lest they refuse to provide aid or even choose to exact vengeance on their no-good heirs.”

The Qingming Festival, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day, remains one of the most important festivals in Chinese culture to pay respect to ancestors—and is the subject of a mural by local Calgary artists Rawry & Pohly at Point Sushi in Chinatown.

Yee said that now that the work is underway, more volunteers are set to show up, with the last day of work on Thursday.

For more details on the project, see www.calgary.ca/parks/cemeteries/chinese-cemetery.html.