Cataraqui Cemetery, in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is the city's largest and oldest still active with over 46,000 interments. Cataraqui Cemetery offers the greater Kingston area a variety of interment, cremation and memorialization options and services. The cemetery is most noted as being the burial site of Canada's first prime minister and a Father of Confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald. Macdonald's gravesite, and the cemetery itself, are both designated as National Historic Sites of Canada.The charter of The Cataraqui Cemetery Company was handed down on 10 August 1850, by the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada.The Cataraqui Cemetery is unique in that is was incorporated in 1850 as a not for profit company with the interment rights holders as the members. It is the members that elect amongst themselves The Cataraqui Cemetery Board of Trustees. It continues to operate as a not-for-profit, non-denominational (all faith, reform cemetery. Sir Alexander Campbell (a Father of Confederation and law partner of Sir John A. Macdonald) served as the board's first President. The board is accountable for all aspects of the cemetery by delegating responsibility of the operations to the General Manager and a full-time staff. A volunteer citizen advisory committee also assists the Board and Management with the stewardship of the cemetery.The cemetery was developed using the Rural or Garden theme, after the pattern of Mount Auburn near Boston and Mount Hope in Rochester, New York. The 91-acre cemetery includes roadways winding through rolling wooded terrain, ponds and watercourses all laid out in the Picturesque style of landscaping. Cataraqui Cemetery predates other notable Canadian cemeteries such as Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa Ontario, Mt Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto Ontario and Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal Quebec.Located within the cemetery office, is a stained glass window commissioned in 1891 in memory of Sir John A. Macdonald. Originally installed in a church at Redan, north of Brockville, it was salvaged from the church and donated to the cemetery in 1980 when the current Office/Crematorium was built.As a result of recent changes to provincial legislation, Cataraqui Cemetery and Funeral Service, operated by The Cataraqui Cemetery Company, offers a new dimension of services for Kingsotn families in addition to its traditional cemetery and crematorium services. Other historically notable occupants include: Thomas Kirkpatrick, first mayor of the Town of Kingston John Counter, first mayor of the City of Kingston Sir Alexander Campbell, a Father of Confederation and a former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Wallace Bruce Matthews Carruthers founder of the Canadian Signal Corps, the first independent signalling corps in the British Empire Evan MacColl, the Loch Fyne Bard Zachary Taylor Wood, Commissioner of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) and Commissioner of the Yukon Territory of Canada.↑ ↑
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