DEADMAN'S ISLAND in Stanley Park

Other States of Mind, No. 18

The name fits.

Its graves, now not visible but once marked by cedar pickets with simple headboards, continue to hold the interred remains of pioneers, suicides, infants, smallpox victims, railway construction casualties, and people killed in the Great Fire of Vancouver.

Deadman’s Island, Stanley Park, Vancouver (Image: Hendrik Slegtenhorst)

In earlier times it was the tree burial grounds of the Squamish Indians. Poetess Pauline Johnson, in her 1911 book, Legends of Vancouver, recounts a tale told her by Chief Joe Capilano. Rival Indian bands once warred, and the Island was one of the battlegrounds. One of the tribes had taken women, children, and elders hostage; and to free them, two hundred opposing warriors surrendered on the Island, where they were promptly executed by arrow.