Push on to turn pet cemetery into park

The only pet cemetery in Greater Vancouver could eventually disappear under a developer's bulldozer, but some pet lovers are trying to have the property turned into a park.

Kevin Woronchak and his wife visited the old cemetery at 147A Street and 78 Avenue, east of Vancouver, after someone called their pet crematorium with concerns about the neglected state of the site.

"It brought tears to our eyes. We just felt the pets resting there just weren't respected anymore," Woronchak said.

Since 1952,the B.C. Pet Cemetery in Surrey's Newton neighbourhood was a place for grieving pet owners to bury their cats and dogs.More than 600 pets were eventually buried there at a cost of at least $600 per pet for a headstone and grave.

'The place just started falling apart.' Pet owner Sam Barkley

But the burials stopped in the mid-1990s when the privately owned cemetery and surrounding land were sold to a developer.

Since then, the surrounding land has beendeveloped forhousing, while the pet cemetery was neglected.

Sam Barkley lives nearby and has three pets buried there. He has watched as hundreds of tombstones and grave markers became overgrown by weeds.

"The place just started falling apart, and I thought maybe the city would come in and come take care of it from that point on. But no, nothing was ever done," he said.

Covenant expires soon

A restrictive covenant on the cemetery was put in place when the land was rezoned in 1997, but it expires in January and Woronchak said he is now lobbying the City of Surrey to have the pet cemetery turned into a park.

The city said currently there are no plans to develop theland, but itis privately ownedandzoned for a single-family home and there is little the municipality can do to block futuredevelopment.

Calls to the current owner of the land were not returned.

During the 1990s, a developer reportedly offered to sell the cemetery to the Surrey Pet Cemetery Society, butthe deal fell through whenthe group couldn't raiseenough money to buy the land.