Vancouver, B.C. - Mountain View Cemetery

Alot of the larger cemeteries in North American cities are owned or maintained by the municipalities they're located in.  Some cities do a good job, from a genealogists point of view, of allowing access to records that indicate who is buried there, when they were buried, and even where their grave is located. 

I've just run across the Mountain View Cemetery Burial Index, maintained by the City of Vancouver in British Columbia.   This site is an excellent resource providing information such as:

• Person's name
• Date of death (if known)
• Date of burial (if known)
• Plot location in text
• Plot location on a map of the cemetery
• Names of people the plot is shared with
• A photograph of the headstone or burial location, if feasible

One of the people I was searching for turned out to be buried in a common grave, shared by 220 other people - and the names of those people were also listed - but no photograph, obviously.   Another individual was buried in a grave alone, but had no headstone so the photograph was of cut grass.  A third individual turned up a nice surprise when it showed that one of the people she was buried with was a daughter I had been unable to locate by other means.  

I particularly like the feature that shows the general location of the plot on a map of the cemetery.  While I enjoy wandering through cemeteries to get some fresh air, when you're actually trying to find a specific gravesite, it helps to be able to narrow it down.  Not all cemeteries have full time offices on-site, and quite frankly not all cemetery managers are keen on responding to inquiries.  

If you have ancestors in the Vancouver area, give the site a try.  They don't post names of individuals buried in the past 20 years for privacy reasons, but other than that it's worth a visit.