Union Cemetery is the oldest cemetery in the City of Calgary. Many of the early settlers and founders of the city are buried here.
"In 1884, Calgary was incorporated as a town with a population of over one thousand people. By year's end, it boasted its first newspaper (founded the previous year), some thirty major buildings, and a healthy economy based on farming and ranching.
One of the first tasks of the new council was finding land for a Protestant cemetery. The only existing graveyard at the Roman Catholic mission was clearly inadequate to meet future needs and councilors needed about fifty acres in a suitable location. The place they chose was Shaganappi Point; a beautiful spot overlooking the river valley which is now the site of the Shaganappi Golf Course.
Unfortunately, these were the days when graves had to be dug by hand and it wasn't long before rocky soil conditions at Shaganappi Point forced council to seek another location.
The new site, on a hill to the south of the town, was known as Union Cemetery.
When Union Cemetery was established in 1891, the cost of a single plot was five dollars, a double plot was ten dollars, and the charge for digging and closing was two dollars. These were significant amounts at the time - especially since the new burial ground could hardly be called convenient. Since no bridge existed over the Elbow River, funeral carriages had to lurch up and down steep banks and slosh through fairly deep and hazardous water. Pedestrian mourners had to wait till a ferryman rowed them over, a few at a time. And don't forget that Calgary's weather was as unpredictable then as it is today - something that was eventually recognized in 1909, when a mortuary chapel was built to store sealed coffins for the winter.
Union Cemetery remembers the famous and the not so famous in its chiseled history. Here, you'll find the last resting place of pioneers and settlers whose names are synonymous with Calgary: newspaperman and politician Bob Edwards; A.E. Cross and William Roper Hull, RCMP Colonel James Macleod, and legendary black cowboy John Ware.
Rev. Robertson, the founder of the Knox United Church is remembered among the sleeping stones. So is Esther Honens, creator of the piano festival that bears her name. Here, too, is the family plot of the Lougheed clan, close to the many other distinguished families who helped build our modern city. More than ten thousand graves tell their silent stories - and only a few reclaimed plots remain available.
In 1913, the City dedicated a landmark archive in Union Cemetery to William R. Reader, a renowned horticulturist who devoted twenty-nine years of his life to the greening of Calgary. In 1990, the archive was relocated to preserve the historical artifact and increase its visibility. The structure can now be found at the top of the hill overlooking the Reader Rock Gardens and the pathway system.
While sandstone has withstood the test of time as a building material, monuments made from it have not fared as well. The deteriorating sandstone memorials in older areas of Union Cemetery are a sad sight indeed. Some are unreadable; others are so badly worn that their original shape and design are lost forever. It was the sight of these eroding memorials, which prompted Pauline Kearns Ashley and Mary Kearns Trace to begin recording Union Cemetery gravestones in 1986. Their meticulous work, Monumental Transcriptions of Union Cemetery, Calgary, Alberta, was complied with every effort to maintain accuracy. Copies can be accessed in The City of Calgary Corporate Records Archives or in the Local History Room of the Calgary Public Library. Burial registers for Union Cemetery are also available in the Archives."
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