This location was never actually known historically as "Boot Hill." That was a colloquial name applied in the modern era, first sound on a website. There is no newspaper article, historical document, or local historian who would apply the name "Boot Hill." It was not used as a name, or even a nickname for the cemetery historically. The romantic sounding name Boot Hill is used for several cemeteries, typically referring to cemeteries with gunslingers or cowboys, evoking the idea that "they died with their boots on." The name Boothill Cemetery is used in Tombstone, Arizona, site of the famous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The actual name is the British Columbia Penitentiary Cemetery. It contains the bodies of those who were prisoners, who died at the prison, and where no family claimed their bodies when they died. Their crimes range from heinous to being imprisoned after stealing a pair of socks. Their lives deserve to be remembered, and are even more interesting than the apocryphal incorrect idea of another Western boot hill. Jaimie McEvoy Chair of the committee that planned and led the BC Pen Cemetery restoration. Chair - New Westminster Heritage Commission.