A must-have for anyone interested in the history and design of late-Victorian-era cemeteries and monuments. Located in Victoria, British Columbia, Ross Bay Cemetery has been in use for 125 years and was designated a Heritage Site in 1997.

John Adams guides readers through thirteen separate tours of the cemetery. Each tour varies in the length and includes detailed information about style of marker; motif; epitaph; and occupant(s).

Tourists and local residents alike will be interested to know that Ross Bay Cemetery is the final resting place for numerous famous Canadians including Emily Carr, the painter; the Honourable John H. Gray, the only Father of Confederation buried west of Ontario; and the Honourable Edgar Dewdney, the former Lieutenant-Governor of BC (1892-1897). Fascinating details are revealed about the cemetery's famous and infamous inhabitants alike.

This revised, extensively illustrated edition contains sixty new gravesite entries plus new research on the architecture, landscape design, and history of Ross Bay Cemetery and the surrounding neighbourhood.

History, 48 pp, 7.5 x 10, 49 b/w photos, maps
ISBN 1-55039-091-0, paper, $9.95

Solstice, Christmas and Hanukkah are celebrations of renewal, birth and hope. But a great local gift this year is about death — a plotless book based on hectares of plots.

John Adams' Historic Guide to Ross Bay Cemetery (Sono Nis Press, 48 pages, $9.95) was what one bookseller called a "sleeper hit" when it was first published in 1983. Since then about 1,500 copies have sold, The Old Cemeteries Society has been formed and cemetery tours are a huge success.

This year a logical step was to revise the guide, include 60 new grave sites, more photographs and updated historical information. And launch the book before Christmas.

Adams gives a modest "thank you" when the guide is described as a great present. The president of the Old Cemeteries Society is just happy that others share his enthusiasm for this 11-hectare Victoria landmark that was virtually his backyard while growing up.

"When I was a kid in the '60s I was struck by the names on the tombstones: Sir James Douglas, Emily Carr and Robert Dunsmuir. Now I'm interested in the more subtle things (about the cemetery)," Adams says. His family moved from Ontario into a house on Memorial Crescent when Adams was 11 years old, and when there were several funerals a week.

"The graves were dug with shovels and I used to stand around and watch the guys digging. Now there's rarely a funeral and if there is, they bring in a backhoe. But the place looks much the same, except for the monuments. There was more variety even 30 years ago."

Thirty years ago when vandals knocked over tombstones, the debris was usually hauled out only after a few years, when joined by others stones on the ground. Restoration was rarely done.

Vandalism has always plagued western cemeteries, Adams says. The last major attack on Ross Bay occurred in 1996 when 53 stones were pushed over. Unlike the 1960s, a huge outcry follows any tomb bashing now and some form of restoration is undertaken. The city has shown its support of Ross Bay Cemetery; Victoria councillors struck a committee after the last incident and are reviewing recommendations to better protect the cemetery while encouraging benign visitors.

Marketing can be a great tool for raising the popularity of the dead. Walking tours conducted by the society since 1987 have certainly helped Ross Bay's profile. Cemeteries in the United States go even further. Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx holds concerts and a holiday tree-lighting festival. In Cincinnati, Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum hosts weddings and pruning seminars. And Boston boasts an annual "Tour de Grave" bike trip.

North Vancouver's Season Memorial Park Inc. added excitement to the cemetery game recently by designing a $40-million, 34-metre-tall white-marble-clad Your Final Condo project complete with two high-speed elevators and theme floors. With room for 90,000 occupiers it's the first in Canada and the largest in North America.

With such showy marketing techniques, it's tempting to view Ross Bay Cemetery as deadly dull. But because of its design period — 1872 — Ross Bay is an oasis of beauty in the middle of a city.

"It was designed as a place of beauty and contemplation," Adams says. "It was created at the height of Victorian design with a picturesque and rural landscape."

Indeed. Royal Oak Burial Park, which opened in 1923, and is mostly a "lawntype" cemetery: fewer trees, more tombstone uniformity and no ethereal ocean view.

Ross Bay's landscape is romantic and the monuments complement the setting. The monuments and landscape are the subtleties that drew Adams back as an adult. Though about 28,000 stories lie within the cemetery boundaries, the unique monuments and the trees and shubbery speak volumes about the place. Stonecutters signed their names to their works back then and the Victorian propensity for elaborate carvings and meaningful flora is inspiring even today.

"I think of it as an outdoor sculpture garden," Adams says. And yes, while on vacation he visits cemeteries.

"But my family rations my visits," he adds, laughing. Adams has trekked as far as North Carolina for this "deadly" hobby, but Ross Bay Cemetery remains his favourite.

After all, the setting is beautiful enough to entice even a Scrooge to open his wallet to buy a plot. But none is available (at least not by current city records) so where does Adams plan on being buried?

"I don't know," he admits.

Well, if Adams goes the cremation route (he has a long time to decide) a place might be free at Ross Bay; columbaria (repositories for urns) are one recommendation the city is discussing. It would be a popular move considering 80 per cent of dead British Columbians go up in smoke.