The Twin Cemeteries

Written By Dane Ryksen

Edmonton Municipal & St. Joachim

  • 107th Avenue at 117th & 120th Streets

  • Established: 1886 & 1888

It’s eerily quiet. Despite being bisected by an arterial road, the only meaningful noise heard in central Edmonton’s twin cemeteries is a squawking raven. Trying to dig his talons into a granite gravestone marked “KEMP,” he yells at no one in particular. For all the markers that read “At Rest” the black bird does its damnedest to wake the dead.

Fittingly it’s October. Everything on the grounds is dying. The grass, now an ugly khaki, is barely visible under a blanket of wilting yellow and brown leaves. Its mighty elms stand naked. Only the stately pines that line each gridded pathway remain tall and unmolested. Fall’s warm, orange-tinted sun rarely breaks through the grey skies. A late autumn dew clings to everything. It feels weird to call a place of solemn remembrance, and of death and decay “beautiful,” but in its way it is. You could spend hours here and see nary a soul, absorbed in your own thoughts in a quiet and humbling place.

Walking around the two cemeteries, especially at this time of year, is an enchanting experience. The ornate, Gothicesque headstones give an almost old world quality unmatched elsewhere in our young city. When one treads past their dignified and somber faces it’s almost as if reading the pages of a history book. Several generation’s worth of the city’s founding fathers lay interned in its cold, wilting ground. Secord and McDougall, Boyle and Powell, O’Leary and Griesbach, Oliver and Taylor, Little and Groat, MacKay and Muttart, they proudly read. Like everything else in this city, the origins of St. Joachim and Edmonton Municipal are humble. Perhaps fittingly enough their stories begin with many of the men who are forever interred in their hallowed ground.

Edmonton Municipal’s begins in 1886. Previously, “there were three older graveyards, one attached to the Methodist Mission and two at Fort Edmonton in the river valley,” but congestion and haphazard planning spelt the need for a new formal cemetery. With the express purpose to “build a non-denominational cemetery that resembled a park on the outskirts of town — where plots where uniform and not overcrowded” — pioneers including Frank Oliver, Matthew McCauley, John McDougall, Richard Hardisty, John Camerson, William Anderson, and Donald Ross came together to charter the Edmonton Cemetery Company. Some two-and-a-half acres of land obtained from the Hudson’s Bay Company’s reserve, of which Hardisty was local Chief Factor, was set aside for their purposes.

Similar problems had been facing St. Joachim’s Roman Catholic Mission. Two years after the establishment of the Edmonton Cemetery Company, noted pioneer Malcolm Groat donated some three-and-a-half acres for the formation of a Catholic graveyard. Located immediately east of the non-denominational site, the new graveyard amalgamated several irregular burial sites which had been previously used by the Mission. Its creation also prevented Edmonton’s Catholics from having to travel to St. Albert for formal interment.

Over the next century, as Edmonton grew so did its twin cemeteries. The Edmonton Cemetery Company would later expand its operations north of present-day 107th Avenue, while the Catholic Archdiocese expanded south to 105th. Operations of the non-denominational cemetery were offloaded to the City in 1964 following stricter provincial laws regarding privately-run graveyards. Its neighbour, St. Joachim’s, remains run by the Catholic Church.

The line between the two grounds is usually blurred, and you’ll often see one referred to by the other’s name. Edmonton’s twin cemeteries are unique, in that unlike other graveyards, there exists little physical separation between the two. In the conjoined 427 acres no markers, wrought-iron fences, or brick inlays provide a clean separation between Catholics and their non-denominational neighbours — the only thing that will alert you is a keen eye: south of 107th Avenue, Edmonton Municipal is defined by its headstones facing east/west; St. Joachim’s face north/south.

The Cathedral of Memories

  • 11820 107th Avenue

  • Architect: William Ralston of Toronto

  • Constructed: 1930-33

The story of Edmonton’s aptly named Cathedral of Memories starts with a letter. It was the winter of 1929 and Canadian Mausoleums Limited of Toronto had reached out to the Edmonton Cemetery Company. They asked a simple question: would its Board of Directors be receptive to a mausoleum in their graveyard? Its Board of Directors were.

To both parties it seemed like a faultless idea. To Canadian Mausoleum there were five key adjectives they used to describe their buildings: Beauty, Durability; Sanitary; Sentimentality, and; Perpetuity. They presented mausoleums as the way of the future and Edmonton’s Cemetery Board was inclined to agree. Similar institutions had existed for generations out east and temporary seasonal entombments made logical sense for a city whose ground is frozen solid for half-a-year.

Yet, while the Cemetery Company may have received the idea well, Joe Edmontonian wasn’t as quick to judge. Now, that’s not to say there weren’t heaps of support — a survey found most Edmontonians did, in fact, like the novel idea — but a classic case of “Not In My Backyard-ism” brewed. Within weeks the anti-mausoleumists were making their voice heard.

Vocal opponents had three chief “concerns:” firstly, from a traditionalist perspective, the concept of ‘unburied’ dead was a still relatively alien idea in Edmonton; secondly, hygiene implications surrounding the ‘unburied’ were raised; and thirdly — perhaps the biggest point of contention — was that the project’s main driver was a private firm. To the anti-mausoleumists, the fact that the humble Edmonton Cemetery Co., and by extension the deceased they took care of, were being corrupted by some big Ontarian corporation was too much.

A special city council meeting was set up to hear concerns. One speaker, R.T. Dykes of Alberta Granite, Marble & Stone, made his side’s points loud and clear. “Mr. Dykes asks that the health department ascertain if the proposed mausoleum would not be a menace to health and asks that, if it is constructed, as it is a business proposition, proper taxes be levelled against it.” “If it is to be built for profit,” he added, “it is contrary to Alberta cemetery laws.”

In tandem, “unsigned pamphlets of a malicious nature,” with “the object purpose of destroying public confidence in respect to the permanency of the mausoleum and its perpetual upkeep,” circulated. The mausoleum was too big, too gaudy, too expensive, it argued. How would the Cemetery Board finance its upkeep? How long would it be before its internees spirits were desecrated?

Opposition to the project proved so rowdy it forced the Cemetery Board to issue an official five point counter in the Edmonton Journal. “Don’t be deceived by anonymous propaganda!” they begged. “Following a thorough investigation, the Directors of the Edmonton Cemetery Company are satisfied that the Mausoleum Company has a splendid track record of success in construction of many similar projects in other cities in Eastern Canada.” And satisfied was their tone when they revealed, that despite all the hollering, a sizeable section of the building’s space had been accounted for. “Former residents now of Brandon, Saskatoon, Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, and many other points also have taken accommodation.”

Despite their best efforts, the anti-mausoleumists failed to have their position seriously taken. On July 14th, 1930 the City approved the project and sod turning followed the next day. By November work on the lower crypt had sufficiently progressed to allow for temporary, seasonal interments.

Architect William Ralston, a frequent collaborator with Canadian Mausoleums Ltd., was responsible for the beautiful “Greek-Doric” temple design. The finest materials were used, with its chaste lines and Doric pillars being “of fine cut stone,” and all interior work being “of domestic and foreign polished marbles with the fittings, doors, and fixtures all of ornate bronze.” “Large cathedral stained glass windows throughout,” — by “noted old country expert” J.Bromfield — help illuminate its halls. Sadly, the economic realities of the Great Depression neutered a more ornate design.

With its formal completion in 1933, Edmonton’s Cathedral was the first mausoleum of its kind in Western Canada. Perhaps in part due to that odd distinction — or perhaps just the newfound options it provided — attitudes to entombment changed. More and more, citizens requested permanent interment and several of Edmonton’s most notable figure now lay within its Tyndall walls: Emily Murphy, “Famous Five” suffragette, novelist, and eugenicist; John Percy Page, teacher, Edmonton Commercial Graduates basketball coach, and Lieutenant-Governor; Dr. Norman Terwillegar, pioneering city surgeon and land owner.

The Cathedral’s place as one of Edmonton’s most sacred pieces of architectural history is well understood by the City. A complete $40,000 restoration — amounting to one-third its original construction cost — was undertaken in 2002.

Military Field of Honour & Cross of Sacrifice

  • 120th Street Between 106th and 107th Avenue

  • Artist: Sir Reginald Blomfield

  • Constructed: 1921-22

The horrors of the Great War were still painfully recent memories in 1921. Across Canada more than 600,000 had served, a remarkable feat given that the country was only home to 8,000,000. There was nary a family that hadn’t known someone who went off. In Edmonton this was doubly true. For a city whose population was 72,000 in 1914, 15,764 men enlisted to fight. Of those, 2,365 never returned home. That sacrifice wasn’t taken lightly and as memorial projects began to take shape around Alberta in the war’s wake, Edmontonians looked for their own. Fortunately for them the Edmonton Cemetery Company was approached by the Imperial War Graves Commission.

Responsible for constructing cemeteries around the globe dedicated to the Empire’s lost servicemen, the I.W.G.C. suggested they construct a “Military Field of Honour.” The Commission explained they would exhume ex-servicemens’ bodies from other cemeteries and amalgamate them into a single plot at the Edmonton Cemetery. A “Cross of Sacrifice,” meanwhile, would be erected to remember those lost and buried overseas. It would be at no expense to the Cemetery Company — construction of both would be fully paid for by the I.W.G.C. and the Last Post Fund. The Cemetery Company was agreeable and work began in 1921.

The Cemetery’s plot was perfectly levelled, its rows of plain granite headstones perfectly aligned. A sense of equality was stressed throughout, and no distinctions were made to rank or branch of service. Instead, privates were to be laid next to lieutenants who were to be laid next to seamen. As the bodies arrived, “the coffins were covered with the Union Jack.” “It is apparent,” the Edmonton Bulletin noted, “that the relatives of the deceased soldiers feel that everything possible was done to show respect for the departed.” Each tomb was marked with a single Flanders poppy.

The ground’s unveiling took place on September 11th, 1922. In a sign of respect it was declared a civic holiday. As overcast skies parted and the morning mists cleared, thousands arrived from around Edmonton to pay their respects. “Over all, towering high into the sunshine, within the folds of the Union Jack hiding all but its merest outline, the Cross of Sacrifice, Mecca Monday of hundreds of those whom the Great War left sorrowing.”

As everyone took their seats, the 19th Alberta Dragoons, and Edmonton Regiment (49th Battalion C.E.F.) arrived as honour guard alongside Julian Byng, 1st Viscount of Vimy, and Governor-General of Canada. While he served as Governor-General — and that was nominally the reason for which he was invited — Byng’s presence was more about military symbology. The man had led the Canadian Corps during the Great War and was widely popular among veterans around the Dominion. His victory at Vimy Ridge inspired the nation, and his former troops causally called themselves “Byng's Boys.” Who better to unveil a monument in their honour? Yet, neither Byng nor the municipal politicians that invited him held any pretentious. They knew who the true guests of honour were — the hundreds of war widows, grieving parents, and returned veterans who had come to pay homage to fallen husbands, fathers, sons, and comrades.

“The blind were there too,” as were “those there whose limbs had been sacrificed in the cause.” Amputees who couldn’t support themselves with crutches or braces were rolled in on wheelchairs by nursing sisters. Many had donned their old wool Service Dress and polished brass collar dogs they had once worn during the war. Following them were “patients suffering from the results of gas, as well as shell-shock.” While the Bulletin may have regarded those men as “practically dumb,” their appearance stirred feelings. As they arrived, the widows gave them their chairs in an “outstanding incident.”

A lament, soulful played by the Regiment’s bugle, sounded as the Union Jack was thrusted off the cross by the Governor-General. As it fluttered down “dry eyes were few. Heavy hearts were many, yet, somehow the ceremony… seemed to lighten the load. The glorious dead had come home to their own people again; the hallowed ground, with its white cross over all, seemed to bring the departed heroes nearer to the hearts of their kindred.” The white Latin cross, clean and sedate, in the visage of those standing on battlefields in Belgium and France, simply read “To the Memory of Those Who Died for King and Country in the Great War 1914-1919 — Their Names Liveth For Evermore.”

“Devoutly [the crowd] joined in the singing of the beautiful hymns selected for the occasion — and never were they sang with such fervour and such magnificence as they were in the vicinity of the tombs of more than two hundred Canadian soldiers.” As “Nearer My God To Thee” was sung — where “the volume of the music seemed to swell and grow as thousands of voices grew into a crescendo of expression” — wreaths of remembrance were laid in the cross’ shadow.

For a Journal correspondent one stood out: “For my dear daddy, from Billy,” it read scrawled in a child’s hand. It was nothing more than a “pathetic little bunch of sweet peas, short stemmed and much bedraggled from long carrying in hot hands: incongruously bunched together with part of a newspaper sheet showing a Briggs cartoon; bravely striving to look important amid a profusion of blooms that would have done honour to the tomb of king or emperor.” Yet somehow, “it seemed to dwarf all the big wreaths beside it. Their very wealth of display — their carefully worded cards — all seemed to fade into nothingness before that simple childishly gathered, childishly tied, and childishly tagged little bunch of fragrant sweet peas — a wee boy’s memory offering to a dear daddy whom, perhaps, he cannot even visualize.”

During the laying of the wreaths Lord Byng took his post to address the crowd. He methodically flipped through his notes before his eyes riveted on the cross’ inscription. ‘Their Names Liveth For Evermore.’ The intent gaze of the war’s casualties captured his own, and “eyes filled with tears which only an almost superhuman strength held back from flowing over his cheek; with a throat choking from emotion,” he declined the opportunity to publicly speak. Stepping down, he instead went to them, and going “from row to row, he talked alike with the wounded, the nursing sisters, the widowed wives and bereaved parents. Men bearing many medals stood proudly to attention after the kindly handclasp of their one-time soldier leader.”

For the next thirteen Armistice Day ceremonies Edmonton’s Cross of Sacrifice served as the city’s de facto cenotaph. Its role was only supplanted when an official municipal monument was completed in August 1936. Together, the Cross and Field represent one of the first major Great War memorial projects completed in Alberta.

Sources:

  • *Just one of several notices making reference to the fact that Edmontonian Catholics were sent to Vital Grandin’s St. Albert Mission for burial, “Sudden Death,” Edmonton Bulletin, January 7, 1888.

  • “Canada Honors Heroes: Suitable Memorials For Fallen,” Edmonton Journal, June 28, 1921.

  • “To Honour Gallant Dead: Cross of Sacrifice For City,” Edmonton Journal, September 27, 1921.

  • “Soldiers’ Plot Nearly Ready,” Edmonton Bulletin, July 5, 1922.

  • “Sacrifice Cross To Mark Graves Soldiers’ Plot,” Edmonton Journal, July 15, 1922.

  • “Few Dry Eyes In Solider’s Plot When Byng of Vimy Unveiled Edmonton’s Cross of Sacrifice,” Edmonton Journal, September 12, 1922.

  • “Impressive Ceremony When Cross of Sacrifice Was Unveiled in the Presence of Governor General,” Edmonton Bulletin, September 12, 1922.

  • “Mausoleum Plans Near Realization For City,” Edmonton Journal, October 18, 1929.

  • “Edmonton Mausoleum — Announcement by the Edmonton Cemetery Company,” Edmonton Journal, March 7, 1930.

  • “Edmonton Mausoleum — Under Construction Soon,” Edmonton Journal, May 23, 1930.

  • “Building Permit Will Be Asked Soon for Edmonton Mausoleum,” Edmonton Journal, June 16, 1930.

  • “First Sod Turned For Mausoleum,” Edmonton Journal, July 16, 1930

  • “Open Mausoleum By November 15,” Edmonton Journal, August 14, 1930.

  • “Oppose Erection Mausoleum Here,” Edmonton Journal, October 28, 1930.

  • “Mausoleum Forms Striking Monument,” Edmonton Journal, August 31, 1933.

  • Andy Ogle, “Tales From The Tombs,” Edmonton Journal, September 15, 1996.

Dane Ryksen
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