It is located in Downtown Halifax at the corner of Spring Garden Road and Grafton Street under a parking lot beside the St. Mary's Basilica and owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth.

A conservative estimate of deaths for the first 20 years of the cemetery brings the total to 3,000 graves.

One marker remained visible until the 1970s, an 18th-century carved depiction of Adam and Eve embedded in the parking lot asphalt.

In June 2012, the Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth announced a possible development on the cemetery site in partnership with the developer Joe Ramia, a large housing and commercial complex to be built on the site of the cemetery and called "Cathedral Centre".

The development raised concerns about the fate of the estimated 3,000 graves in the historic cemetery.