Camp Hill Cemetery
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In 1844 Camp Hill Cemetery on Robie Street in the heart of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada replaced the city's first cemetery known as the Old Burying Grounds that had been established almost 100 years earlier in 1749.
As a cemetery in the provincial capital, Camp Hill became the final resting place for many of the Nova Scotia's elite and officials did allow the burial of Black Canadians, albeit in a segregated section. In the 1990s it was pointed out that the graves of African-Canadian veterans of World War I, unlike other white Canadian veterans, were marked by nothing more than flat white stones. This situation has since been rectified by the federal department of Veterans Affairs.
There are also 17 graves of Norwegian sailors, soldiers and merchant seamen in Camp Hill Cemetery who died in Nova Scotia during World War II. These men were at sea when Germany invaded Norway in 1940. The King and government of Norway ordered the more than 1,000 ships at sea to go to Allied ports.
The cemetery remains in operation today and amongst those interred here are:
- James De Mille (1833-1880), novelist, educator
- Abraham Pineo Gesner (1797-1864), a primary founder of the petroleum industry
- Simon Hugh Holmes (1831-1919), lawyer, journalist, politician
- Joseph Howe (1804-1873), journalist, statesman
- Alexander Keith (1795-1873), brewer, politician
- Jonathan McCully (1809-1877), educator, statesman
- William Machin Stairs (1789-1865), Bank founder, merchant, statesman
- Robert Stanfield (1914-2003), one of Canada's most respected politicians
- John Taylor Wood (1830-1904), Civil War Confederate Naval Officer, grandson of President Zachary Taylor, nephew of Confederate President Jefferson Davis
- Sir William Young (1799-1887), politician, Premier of Nova Scotia
See also: List of famous cemeteries