It is located close to the village of Cintheaux and named after Bretteville-sur-Laize in the Calvados department, between Caen and Falaise in lower Normandy.

Bretteville-sur-Laize was created as a permanent resting place for Canadian soldiers who had been temporarily buried in smaller plots close to where they fell.

[1] Of the 2,958 burials, 2,782 are Canadian of whom 87 remain unidentified, together with 80 British, four Australian and one each from France and New Zealand.

[3] A large number of dead in the cemetery were killed late July 1944 around Saint-André-sur-Orne and in the battle for the Falaise Pocket in August 1944.

The road into the cemetery, the Rue du Prieuré/D167 runs north out of the village of Cintheaux It can be seen on Google Maps here