In 2013, JewGen, a Jewish genealogical website, forwarded a database of 494 names of people buried in the cemetery to then Cemetery Director, Rick Kool. Included were 40 names with ‘Unknown’ given as their grave-site designation.
Working with available burial rolls, some of which were created by Ben Levinson, University of Victoria’s Professor of Archaeology, Erin McGuire, and Cemetery Committee member Amber Woods, were able to find 10 graves-sites, add the names of 8 children, and remove two names from the list.
Of the two names that were removed, one already had a headstone. For the other, the list included the name of Philip Liberman and Philip Silverman. The death dates matched. An obituary notice for Liberman was printed in The Daily Colonist. None was found for Silverman. The name Silverman began to appear in burial records that came after the Roll of Occupants of Graves in Hebrew Cemetery 1862-1941. It was in that record that the script used for the letter “L” could be interpreted as an “S”.
That left 36 names of people known to be buried in the cemetery but whose grave couldn’t be found or, had been found, but there was no room to place an additional headstone.
Acknowledging the ‘unknowns’ became a focus of the Cemetery Committee. The overall aim of the project was to acknowledge the names of the people who are buried in the Jewish cemetery but whose grave site had not been marked. With a $10,000 grant received from the Greater Victoria Savings and Credit Union Legacy Fund in 2025, private donations and monies from the Cemetery Committee, the Historical Recognition/Restoration project was completed in 2026. Carl Hughes of Meadowlark Memorials did the work.
Carl inscribed and placed a large black memorial stone recognizing the names of the ‘unknowns’ thus correcting the historical record as best as could be done in 2026.
The Jewish Cemetery of Victoria, British Columbia 