27 February 2013

Ancestry adds Vancouver, British Columbia, Mountain View Cemetery Index, 1887-2007 and "death takes a holiday"

Ancestry.ca now facilities searching index entries for Vancouver's Mountain View Cemetery, 1887-2007. Located west of Fraser St, between 31st Ave and 43rd Ave it's made up of 106 acres of land with approximately 92,000 grave sites and 145,000 interred remains. Background information is at http://vancouver.ca/your-government/mountain-view-cemetery.aspx
 
Searching is by name and date of death with incomplete information acceptable.
The original database can also be searched through the iCemetery app for iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, where you can also zoom in on a map to pinpoint the grave site.
 
The exact number of people in the database is 139,892, so with 365.25 days per year the average number for deaths for a given day, irrespective of year, should be 383. You sometimes hear of the "death takes a holiday" effect where people postpone their death until after a holiday. What's the evidence from this Vancouver database?
 
22 Dec 402
23 Dec 446
24 Dec 372
25 Dec 304
26 Dec 286
27 Dec 347
28 Dec 382
29 Dec 469
30 Dec 474
31 Dec 989
1 Jan 502
2 Jan 405
3 Jan 416
 
The data looks suspicious. Looking at the database on the iPhone many entries have either a death or interment date, not both. I suspect Ancestry may have sometimes mistakenly entered the interment date in their database in place of the death date. Beware.
 
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous28 February, 2013 06:45

    FYI -- NOT associated with this particular Blog entry

    The Status and Future of Canada's Libraries and Archives

    see: http://rsc-src.ca/en/expert-panels/rsc-reports/status-and-future-canadas-libraries-and-archives

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  2. David28 February, 2013 15:01

    Very odd. The cemetery used to offer a search facility. I wonder what changed?

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  3. Anonymous28 February, 2013 17:22

    Some people on the site do have both a death and interment date. For example, Randy Jon Alatalo. Ancestry.com shows both dates correctly.

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  4. M. Diane Rogers11 May, 2013 05:06

    The City of Vancouver has a new website, but not all change is for the better! The Mountain View Cemetery burial list to January 2007, along with other great historical information, is still free on-line at the 'former' Vancouver City website: http://former.vancouver.ca/commsvcs/NONMARKETOPERATIONS/MOUNTAINVIEW/burials/index.htm
    And the City of Vancouver Mountain View Cemetery walking tour info for 2013 is up at the Cemetery blog: http://interestingmountainview.wordpress.com/walking-tours/ I'm co-hosting a Women's History Tour there on August 4th!
    And the British Columbia Genealogical Society has listings of the memorial inscriptions at Mountain View. Contact the Society: http://www.bcgs.ca

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