St. John's is the oldest Anglican parish west of the Great Lakes. It was founded in 1820, when the Rev. John West arrived from England to serve as chaplain to the Hudson's Bay Company, and as missionary to this part of the world. The graveyard surrounding the Cathedral predates the parish. It was established by the first group of Selkirk settlers in 1812.

A plaque, installed at the southwest corner of the Cathedral building in 1988 by the Manitoba Heritage Council, recognizes the long-term use of the site by the Anglican Church. The present Cathedral building was erected in 1926 on a design by local architects Gilbert Parfitt and Edgar Prain. The building is both a municipally and provincially (#117) designated historic site. Inside the church is a list of parishioners killed during military service in the First World War.

The graveyard around the massive church contains a veritable "Who's Who" of Manitoba (mostly anglophone or English-speaking) society from the 1800s through the present. Among the noteworthy people buried in it are the following: James A. M. Aikins, William F. Alloway, James H. Ashdown, E. L. Barber, Douglas Cameron, Edward L. Drewry, William Sandford Evans, Colin Inkster, John Inkster, Alexander Logan, William F. Luxton, Hugh John Macdonald, Robert Machray, Samuel P. Matheson, J. D. McArthur, Andrew McDermot, Augustus M. Nanton, John Norquay, John C. Schultz, Margaret Scott, David A. Stewart, William Whyte, and Errick F. Willis.

Sources: Manitoba Historical Society and the Parish of St John's [Adapted])

Dominion Land Survey coordinates: LSD07-16-11-03-E1

In the St John's neighbourhood of what was once deemed the "North End" of the City of Winnipeg (i.e., on the north side of the CPR tracks)

Free digital versions of many Manitoba local history books can be found online in the University of Manitoba Digital Collections which contain chapters of the lives of the people honoured here. There is also a list of such books organized by district and town name on the Manitoba Historical Society's website on their page entitled "Finding Aid: Manitoba Local History Books".

A list of burials in this cemetery is available from the Manitoba Genealogical Society (reference #0122), transcribed by a member or members in 1980-1982 and updated in 1996. Also available to MGS members is a searchable online database named the "MGS Manitoba Name Index" (or MANI). Some additional information is contained in the 1996 MGS publication "Carved in Stone: Manitoba Cemeteries and Burial Sites" (revised edition, Special Projects Publication, 106 pages).

• Additionally, many records for Anglican congregations in Manitoba and over part of the territory designated historically as "Rupert's Land" (esp, as bounded on the south by the U.S. border, extending north into the Manitoba Interlake Region past Fairford, with the western boundary reaching into the Pembina Hills and includes Portage la Prairie, eastward the diocese stretches to Sioux Lookout/Atikokan) are now with the Diocese of Rupert's Land and are kept in their offices in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.