Old Surrey Pet Cemetery land cleared, grave markers still in dirt
Published 11:00 am Wednesday, March 4, 2026
An abandoned pet cemetery in Surrey is being bulldozed, angering those who have furry friends buried there.
Close to 700 animals are buried on the corner lot, once home to a rare B.C. cemetery devoted to departed dogs, cats, birds and other pets.
Work crews are clearing the land in East Newton at 78 Avenue and 147A Street, a block west of Guildford Golf & Country Club.
“It’s pretty disgusting and sickening,” said Steve Gardner, whose family had three pets buried there many years ago.
“My grandfather’s got two dogs there and also our family pet, Sherry, is buried in there,” he added.
“There are a lot of souls there, a lot of memories.”
Stripped of trees and brush, the land appears to be cleared for housing. No development sign was posted Tuesday (March 3) when the Now-Leader observed a work crew operating excavators and other machines. Pet grave markers were visible in the dirt and debris.
“There was some big old-growth trees on that site, too, so I’m surprised they took those down,” Gardner said.
“I’ve got a funny feeling those guys working there don’t even know what they’re standing on, what they’re walking on, or what they’re digging in. I wouldn’t want to live there, and I’m pretty sure a lot of people wouldn’t if they knew what was on the site all these years.”
Two years ago, a sign on the property showed H.Y. Engineering’s application to the City of Surrey to subdivide the property into three RF lots (single-family residential).
Now surrounded by houses, the 25,468-square-foot property was a rural piece of land in 1952 when Burnaby residents Daniel and Nellie (Mary) Blair went looking for a place to bury their beloved pets, creating B.C. Pet Cemetery.
Later renamed Surrey Pet Cemetery, the property was sold in 1995, the cemetery stopped accepting remains and the land sat relatively untouched for decades. In 2021 the property owner was identified as Turnberry Developments.
Gardner and others are upset that grave markers were stripped from the site a few years ago and not returned to families who have pets buried on the site. Attempts to protect the land as a park went nowhere with the developer and city officials.
“We tried contacting the city and they said there’s nothing we can do about it, and that turned out to be bullshit,” Gardner charged. “The developer ghosted us, and we never got the headstones back.”
In 2009, then-mayor Dianne Watts said council wound not permit a developer to build homes on the site if it could be established that human remains are also buried there, as some suggest.
In 2024 a fight over the future of the site landed in B.C. Supreme Court. Lynn Weir, with Turnberry Developments, filed notice of civil claim against Kristin Adele Schumacher following “a campaign of defamation and harassment targeted at Ms. Weir.” Key to Weir’s claim was an online fundraising campaign launched by Schumacher to “stop developers from digging up BC Pet Cemetery.”
