OLD MENS PROVINCIAL CEMETERY
The City of Kamloops incorporated in 1893. Just one year later, it became home to the Provincial Home for Old Men. The Home was built on the farm site belonging to former Government Agent Constable John Ussher who was killed by the Wild McLean Boys twenty years earlier.
The Home was meant to house the old fur trappers, guides and gold miners who opened up the province during the early pioneer years. The first resident arrived in May of 1895. The first recorded death occurred a year later and a special Home Cemetery was opened for the old men on the bench-land above the Provincial Home.
The poor and indigent also shared this cemetery located on the outskirts of town. Most of the over 1,000 graves remain unmarked since Home administrators often had little background information about their old residents. There are written archival records showing the location and name of each burial. Some of the small flat stones which marked individual graves have gradually sunk and lie buried beneath the grass. The last person to be interred in the Old Men's Cemetery died in 1974. By then, the famous old Home had been demolished and a new seniors residence built in its place.
Source: Kamloops Heritage Commission