Above photo: Commemorative cairn and memorial garden at St George’s Church in Fort Langley.
The Hudson’s Bay Company Cemetery is located on the grounds of present day St George’s Church in Fort Langley. (It’s also included on our Fort Langley Walking Tour HERE). This was the Company’s second cemetery, the first was established at Derby where the original fort was built in 1827. Only a few markers remain at the St George’s site, but ground-penetrating radar indicates at least 24 burial sites, and possibly more. This is the final resting place of many from the fur trade era: Britons, French Canadians, Metis, Sto:lo, Iroquois and Kanaka peoples. Among them is Katrina, a high ranking Kwantlen wife of Peppeoh (Pion Pion), a Kanaka employee of HBC. The cross on the Anglican Church is in Katrina’s memory, and is a Roman Catholic symbol of the Oblates. Read more in historian Warren Sommer’s book, ‘Frail Memorials: The Cemeteries of Langley’.
The Oblates’ RC cross atop St George’s Anglican Churh. It honours Katrina, a Kwantlen woman who married Kanaka HBC employee Peopeoh (Pion Pion).
Sarah Brewseau’s (Brousseau) cross is thought to have been brought from the original cemetery at Derby as it was being eroded by the Fraser River. She was either Kwantlen or Katzie, and wife of HBC dairyman Basil Brousseau.
Ovid Allard was the son of HBC employee Jason Allard and his wife Seraphine.
Bronze commemorative plaque on granite boulder.(1954) Ovid Allard built the second and third forts; William Newton was an officer in charge of the fort.