Description of Historic Place

The Wellington Cemetery is a small, municipal cemetery located at the northern end of the City of Nanaimo. The historic place is limited to the legal boundaries of the cemetery.

Heritage Value

The Wellington Cemetery is one of very few tangible links to the town of Wellington, a formerly distinct community that was subsequently absorbed into the City of Nanaimo. Developed in the 1870s as a coal town by Robert Dunsmuir, who became one of the province's wealthiest men, Wellington rivaled Nanaimo in population and industrial output until its demise in 1900 when coal operations were moved south of Nanaimo to Extension and Ladysmith. At that time, many of the buildings were moved by railcar to the new communities. Combined with a few remaining 19th century buildings that are scattered throughout the area, the Wellington Cemetery is an important example of the ephemeral nature of single-industry resource towns.

The physical remains of the Wellington Cemetery reveal much about the early social and economic history of the area. The original division of the cemetery into quadrants by religious denomination reflects the importance of those distinctions. In addition, the headstones provide evidence of the community's population composition. Unlike Nanaimo, which was developed predominantly by English and Scottish settlers, the headstones at Wellington Cemetery indicate an ethnically diverse population that included significant numbers of Italians, Finns and Belgians. Other headstones tell of deaths due to mining accidents, a common occurrence in Wellington's history. As a whole, the cemetery functions as an outdoor classroom of Wellington history.

Source: City of Nanaimo, Development Services Department

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Wellington Cemetery are:
- all the elements within the legal boundaries of the Wellington Cemetery including the headstones, grave markers, plantings and fencing.
- the cemetery's location in what used to be the Wellington district.