Customer Reviews

Old Canadian Cemeteries: Places of Memory

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We have all been to a cemetery for a funeral,but a cemetery is a wonderful,interesting place to visit at any time.I have spent many hours wandering around in cemetaries all over the country and at all times of the year.If you have any curiosity,I doubt that you can spend more than a few minutes in a cemetery before you will come across a gravestone or monument that will make you wonder what was the story behind it.
This is an excellent book that will explain many things that you might have wondered about.Over the years I have attended many funerals,and without doubt,on those occasions it is all about sorrow and death.But a visit on another time you will quickly realize that a cemetery is really all about remembering people and the lives they lived.Of course,if you visit large cemeteries in cities,you will undoubtably come across the graves of famous people and names made famous in history.This book explains many of the types of monuments,structures ,inscriptions,symbols,etc.that you will recognize and often come across.Even small villages and town graveyards are very interesting sites that tell you about their history and the trials,suffering,heartache,joy and successes that took place.Sometimes you will come across monuments that will hit you very enmotionally ,even if you had never heard of or known of the people buried there.It is hard not to feel deep emotion when you come across a stone listing several deaths in a family,several even childern all within a few days ,obviously from sickness(flu,diptheria,scarlet fever,etc.)Particularly when it occurred in winter,maybe in the 1800's and what a great sadness it must have been.Then there are those graves of the young men and women who lost their lives fighting for their country.In the towns ads villages near the oceans and lakes with monuments to those "lost at sea"
I have come across many interesting things visiting cemeteries,never knowing what to expect,if anything.One day in Galway,Ireland,I decided to visit an old cemetery near the center of the city.I was amazed.I struck up a conversation with a gentleman who had just placed some flowers on a grave.Unbeknownst to me,he was a very famous sports figure in his youth and now was serving on a crmetery committee.He spent over an hour explaining many things about this site.It had originally been a Monestary,but destroyed by the English.He explained the huge Celtic Cross at the Synge gravesite.It was the world's largest,had been made for and erected at the World's Fair in Chicago,then later brought back here.He showed me a plaque in honor to a large number of Spanish Sailors who were part of The Spanish Armada,and got shipwrecked off the Irish coast.They managed to get to shore,but only to be killed by the British.Their bodies had been thrown in a mass grave which later served as a garbage dump.I was curious about the iron bar and padlocks on the end of several above ground crypts.He explained that nobody was in that structure,but that it covered the stairs that led down to the crypt where there was space for three coffins on each side.And there I thought the coffin was in the crypt above ground.
So,if you find cemeteries interesting,you'll find this a wonderful book and a great reference;I know I did.