Apart from St. Paul’s Anglican Cemetery in Midnapore, Union Cemetery is Calgary’s oldest existing burial ground. The original Roman Catholic cemetery, located immediately south of the former Holy Cross Hospital site, was established in 1876 and was moved to the present location of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cemetery around 1898. Calgary’s first public, or Protestant, cemetery, was established at Shaganappi Point in 1885. Deemed unsuitable, it was replaced in 1890 when the Town of Calgary acquired Augustus Carney’s hillside farm on Macleod Trail, south of the Exhibition Grounds. The Town bought Carney’s 56.5-acre parcel for seventy dollars per acre. Seventy-five bodies were moved from Shaganappi to Union Cemetery in 1892, and most of the remaining graves were relocated in 1911. The former Shaganappi cemetery was then redeveloped as Shaganappi Golf Course.
Until it was demolished in 1899, the Carney homestead house along Macleod Trail functioned as the cemetery caretaker’s residence. Modern-day Macleod Trail follows its historic route south of Cemetery Hill, but the road originally skirted the hill to the east, following what is now Spiller Road east of Union Cemetery, and thence along what is now 8th Street S.E. in Ramsay toward a crossing at the Bow River. The Carney house, located immediately south of the extant Spiller Road entrance to the cemetery, would have been a landmark building along that highway. Carney and his wife remained in the house until 1892, and Carney himself served as the first cemetery caretaker. He was replaced by Robert L. Barker, who held the post from 1892 until 1899, and then by James H. Galloway (1861-1941), who served as cemetery caretaker from 1899 to 1934.
At the recommendation of the Public Works Committee, the Carney house was demolished in 1899 and replaced by a brick cottage with sandstone foundations. Designed by City Engineer G.A. Stewart, who held the post from 1899-1902, the new caretaker’s cottage was completed in 1900 at an estimated cost of $1,000.00. The name of the contractor is unknown. The new cottage was built a short distance south-west of the original house, within sight of the cemetery entrance on Macleod Trail. Like its predecessor, the new cottage would have been a landmark for highway travelers and for those entering and leaving the cemetery. Calgarians crossed the Elbow River by ferry (and later by bridge) at a point west of the Exhibition Grounds, near what is now the north-west corner of Union Cemetery, then travelled east to Macleod Trail and south to the main cemetery entrance. Before the construction of the mortuary chapel in 1908, the cottage was the only building in the cemetery.
By 1907, and possibly earlier, James Galloway was living at a downtown address and no longer in the cemetery cottage. The cottage eventually became the cemetery office and workshop, and might have been used for those purposes at the time Galloway moved out. In 1911, a separate office building was constructed at the north-west corner of the cemetery, and around that time a new, formal cemetery entrance was developed at that location, completed with a stone entrance arch and a winding route adjacent to what eventually became Reader Rock Garden. By 1912, the new Victoria Road had been cut over Cemetery Hill, replacing the stretch of Macleod Trail east of the cemetery as the north-south thoroughfare.
Article and photos provided courtesy of Discover Historic Calgary resources via calgary.ca.
