The cemetery was never a site for the burial of the city's elite, with Mount Pleasant Cemetery being the standard resting place for those of prominence. The vast majority of those buried there are representatives of the middle and working class of east end Toronto. There are some prominent figures buried at St. John's, such as R. C. Harris, Toronto director of public works who built the nearby R. C. Harris Water Treatment Plant, was interred there in 1945 and architect Frank Darling.