SALI offers to help save pet remains interned at property 147A & 78th
If the B.C. Pet Cemetery in Surrey needs to be relocated, SALI has offered to intern remains and grave stones in our future memorial garden at our dog park. The only logistical problem would be a temporary location for preservation until the garden is operational. We will work with the City of Surrey and Until We Meet Again Pet Cremation in order to safeguard the memory of these beloved pets.
Pet Cemetery may soon make way for housing
By Stuart Hunter, The Province
When her beloved cat Brittany died this month, Gillian Eggert figured she would bury her beside her five other late animals at the site of the old B.C. Pet Cemetery in Surrey. Eggert was shocked and saddened to see the site in the 14700-block 76th Avenue in Newton being prepared for development.
“I hadn’t been out there in six years but, the last time I was out there, everything was fine,” she said.
Eggert had five pets buried there between 1972 and 1995. She paid former owners Mary and Daniel Blair $200 to bury each animal and $400 for each headstone. The Blairs founded the 0.2-hectare cemetery in 1952 and about 670 animals were buried there. Mary Blair sold the four-hectare property to a developer for about $900,000 in the mid-1990s. At the time, the developer offered to sell the cemetery portion to the Surrey Pet Cemetery Society but the group couldn’t raise the $172,000 asking price. The new owner stopped taking burials.
Nicholas Lai, a Surrey planning manager, said the developer was allowed to build 23 houses but with one restrictive covenant — to preserve the cemetery until Jan. 1, 2010.
“It used to be a place we could go to take flowers and visit our pets and tell them how much we missed them,” she said. “People paid good money for those burials and headstones, but no one cares now who is buried there.”
Photo by Brian Howell
Human remains on site could kill development
Tom Zytaruk, Surrey Now
Published: Friday, November 20, 2009
Kevin Woronchuck, owner of until we meet Again Pet Cremation is trying to save this pet cemetrary. Woronchuck said people paid former owners up to $600 to have their pet buried there, with a headstone.
“They’re assuming that’s a forever place,” he said. “As a pet owner, that’d be very disrespectful turning it into something else.”
Woronchuck said he’d be willing to work with the city to preserve the cemetery or to cremate and relocate the pet remains.
“I think now there’s historical value. I really strongly believe that should be preserved.”
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