The Cemetery

Home becomes an imprecise concept, as we scatter across the country and around the world. Regardless of how scattered we have become, if “home” is determined relative to the geographic location on this planet where our roots are deepest and dearest, for many Amesdale would be most accurately described as home.

Yet, except for the memories, stories, and feelings that we hold dear, little remains of our Amesdale home. For the most part, our homesteading ancestors have departed this realm. The works of their hands: the homes, hall, school, and store have been removed, and nature has reclaimed their field, roads, and pathways. Even so, in that place where the cemetery is the only tangible remnant of their existence and their labours, our memories still flow warm and alive with sweet recollections of their will, sacrifice, and love.

In the summer heat, as I step through that gate, and walk among the pines to the sound of dry moss and pine needles crushing beneath my feet, I feel at home. Standing on the knoll by the graves of my loved ones, in a sweet silence broken only by the breeze through jack pine boughs and the singing of a grasshopper in the grass, I feel my roots reaching deep into that soil, and sense the influence of those I so dearly remember. I gladly recall the smile, the laugh, the song, and the tease, then give thanks for the reassuring love I felt in their presence. Notwithstanding their simple lives of perseverance in the face of untold hardship and personal challenge, they each left their mark.

I have no personal memory of “the happy wanderer” named George McKay. He died before I was born, but I know a portion of his story. I know that his family is intertwined with mine, not just as relatives but as friends, as they were with other pioneering friends from the sister communities of Amesdale and Richan. In the spring of 1928, following a tragic spring storm, George McKay was the first to be laid to rest in the Amesdale cemetery. His brother-in-law Samuel George Ames and his friend Jack Nelson were instrumental in securing permission for the cemetery where he was laid.

Others followed. Years later Gordon Ames drove from Dryden with Bruce’s infant body beside him on the bench seat of his pickup. Jack Nelson fashioned a tiny wooden casket and Clarence Tilleneus painted the concrete headstone. The sad journey of the previous year was repeated in the summer of 1940, as Gordon retraced the route to bring his infant daughter Katherine home to rest alongside her brother.

On a cold wintry day in January 1943, Gordon sat with Ote Thompson, Amesdale’s original pioneer, as he passed on. He closed the eyes and placed coppers on them, straightened the body, and expressed his condolences to Phoebe and Joyce. The task of digging the grave fell on George and Bill Radford and Jack Nelson. Lucky for them, twenty-five years earlier, the deceased had selected a sandy spot for the cemetery. George Radford supplied the team and sleigh. Then amid the pines, sheltered by the horses standing near the mound of earth by the open grave, the heavily clothed mourners paid their last respects.

A generation later, I too was privileged to stand amid the pines, by an open grave, and in the pattern of men like Gordon, Jack, Clarence, George, and Bill provide a small measure of service to family and friends. Now, just beyond the once bustling frontier village of Amesdale, in that small plot where they once laboured in the service of their friends, many of these men lie at rest, with their parents, wives and children, among friends and neighbours:

ALVERSON, Allan
ALVERSON, Rosa
AMES, Annie Eliza
AMES, Beverly
AMES, Bruce (baby)
AMES, Donald
AMES, Katherine (baby)
AMES, Samuel George
AMES, Gordon
AMES, Beatrice

BAKALA, Nick
BREAU, Ed

CARLSON, Arthur
CARLSON, Katherine
CARLSON, Donald
CRANDELL, William

DAHL, Carl
DAHL, Ellen

GEVANOLE, Pete

HANSON, Mark (baby)
HEWITSON, Amy
HEWITSON, Jack
HEWITSON, Violet
HEWITSON, Wilfered

LaFORREST, David
LYNCH, Olive

McKAY, George
McKAY, Joseph
McKAY, Mary Eva
MEREDITH, George
MONCRIEF, Hugh
MONCRIEF, Katherine (baby)
MURDICK, Virginia
MURDICK, Chuck

NELSON, Don
NELSON, Ella
NELSON, John
NELSON, Margaret (baby)

OLLIS, Roy

PATON, William

RADFORD, Edward
RADFORD, George
RAMSTEAD, Agda
RAMSTEAD, Mormor
RAMSTEAD, Lorne

THOMPSON, Iotis
THOMPSON, Myron
THOMPSON, Roy

WILSON, Andrew
WILSON, Glenn
WILSON, Dorothy
WRIGHT, Joyce
WRIGHT, Donald

The Little Cemetery at Amesdale

Andrew Clement
Posted with the kind permission of

Jessie Howarth Clement

The little cemetery at Amesdale is one of many scattered about the North. It is typical of those to be found, if indeed they can be located, in small homestead settlements which began dying as soon as they started.

Every five or six years Jessie and I, while visiting in the area on a pleasant summer day, have been able to stop for a few moments of quiet contemplation on that spot where the pines are growing ever more stately, and the fragrance of the woods drifts through them.

A pretence of a fence with a little gate, barely seen among the brushes and the grass as you drive by, remains one of the vain hopes that herds of cows might some day be wandering the road.

Nature alone takes care of this burial ground. Pine needles have formed a cover over the soft carpet of moss on which only a few stunted weed can grow. The lurid devil’s paint brush adds the only touch of brightness to be found among the gravestones.

It is so quiet you can hear the crushing of the moss and needles under your feet, quiet enough to hear the long, soft sigh of the winds.

Here and there the remains of wreaths indicates that someone has come back, though perhaps five years ago, and thought haunts you that this someone, who has been spoken about in your presence with lonely heart by one of these who rest here, is himself gone, and that you too will follow and be forgotten in the awful processes of nature.

As you step over the fence and search the names – the McKays, the Ames, the Radfords, the Nelsons, Olive Lynch, Ote Thompson, Ed Brough – the terrible reality of death overwhelms the poor heart. Here beneath your feet lies dust once vibrant with life and for a moment you hear its laughter and catch the bright glance from its eye.

And we ask ourselves, “Was the life of these worth living?”

When we see the hard-won earth going back to nature, trees growing in the roads which had been made by a team and scraper in the flies and heat, and the crumbling homes soon to be hidden behind a new forest, we must surely say, “No, ‘Twas all in vain!”

Such is not the case. The weak and disenchanted had come and soon left. The precious few who remained and who are interred in this little plot had their share of happiness. One should not mourn the lives of the pioneer as being in vain, because they worked hard and died poor. Indeed at the hour of death we are all poor. The homesteader had an advantage in that everything he did from his prayers to his labour touched close upon his family and himself. Their expectations were few and humble and they learned to find joy in the simple things.

Clement, Andrew D. 1987. The Bell and The Book. Highway Book Shop, Cobalt, Ontario, p212-213

Dominion Day Picnic

Everyone turned out to celebrate July 1st, Dominion Day. It was a pleasant time of the year when the heat of the summer settled over the community, and the woodlands once again became clothed with green, and the meadows were arrayed with wildflowers. Annually, on this day the citizens of Amesdale gathered at the airport to celebrate the nation’s birthday with fun and games, and a picnic.

Since the proclamation issued to all Her Majesty’s loving subjects by Governor General, Lord Monck on June 20, 1868, the celebration of the anniversary of the Act of Confederation, and the formation of the Dominion of Canada was a national holiday. Unlike Britain, the United States, France and Germany, which achieved nationhood in war, Canada demonstrated a new way of achieving nationhood, through peace.

With another long winter behind them, Dominion Day was a time for every man, woman and child to have a good time. The men who laboured on the section gangs and in the bush enjoyed a well deserved day-off. There weren’t any flags or speeches, it was simply good fun. However, the celebration reflected the optimism of a nation and its people emerging from the bleak conditions of the Great Depression which had driven many of them from dry impoverished prairies to seek refuge in the bush.

The optimism was reborn in later years, after the war when Dominion Day had taken a back-seat to news from the front. All the “boys” had returned from overseas, having won Canada’s greatest test and proven themselves and their nation by fighting in WWII beneath their own flag, the Red Ensign. Having seen a portion of the world, they returned with new skills, and renewed optimism to establish families in the place they themselves had been raised by the first generation of Amesdale pioneers.

During the early years the celebrations had been held anywhere there was room in this community carved out of the bush. Space was first found alongside the store during the 1920s, then in the school yard beside the newly constructed school during the early 1930s. The later Depression years saw it moved to the Relief Camp, built for the construction of the airport, and there it remained even after the airport was completed and the five bunkhouses were removed. The remaining sheds and the airport custodian’s home remained the centre of the festivities with Jack Nelson, the airport custodian, together with his wife Ella hosting the event often organised by Beatrice Ames and Laurie Ames.

Through the years, the ice cream was always the highlight for the kids. In this era before modern refrigeration which never did arrive in the community, ice cream was a rare treat. In the heat of the summer, the manufacture of ice-cream relied upon ice was removed from the icehouse and mixed with salt to lower the temperature. Then after much cranking of the ice-cream tub, the prized frozen delicacy was extracted to the delight of the children. Later, Gordon Ames in his truck would deliver store bought ice-cream all the way from Dryden, packed securely in dry ice for the trip. As if for Santa Claus, the kids waited anxiously for ice-cream’s annual visit.

Regardless of the location, the games were the same year after year. Sack races, three-legged races, and tug of war were the favourites, not only for the youngsters, but also for the adults. Jean and Irene Paridis, young sisters now married to the Thompson brothers, would practice for the event and consequently always won the ladies events. Siblings, Beatrice Ames and Fred Radford enjoyed the softball games, often taking the position of pitcher in the tournaments, as would Myron and Roy Thompson. Undoubtedly, there would have been a game of horseshoes, and much visiting in the shade of the trees, interrupted only by a dip in the cool water of spring-fed Airport Lake, lying just over brow of the hill upon which the airport was built.

Being a family event, drinking reportedly wasn’t normally a part of the event, but eating was. Sandwiches, potato salad, pies, cakes and Irene Thompson’s baked beans were standard fare.

One year, during the late 1940s, lightning struck with an explosion like a bomb going off. Jack Nelson, standing beside a car was knocked to the ground, landing on his backside as the lightning bolt struck a tree not five feet from him. In the tree, standing alongside an outhouse, the lightening ploughed a three inch deep strip down the trunk, from top to bottom ripping the wood into splinters like toothpicks as the big white streak tore through the tree. Fortunately for the pregnant lady visiting from Dryden, and at that the very moment comfortably seated upon the outhouse throne, the bolt bypassed the outhouse and proceeded to strike a nearby shed. The shed, storing jute gunny sacks in the attic, immediately burst into flames, while the bolt bifurcated sending a ball of fire tumbling through the door of a nearby building.

Like a volunteer fire brigade, Fred Radford standing within ten feet of the strike, together with the other men, grabbed jute sacks now strewn about the yard, and beat out the fire. Fortunately, the event left only memories and no injuries. Everyone returned home happily from the annual event, after a particularly memorable day of games, socialising, and of course…ice-cream. Such was life at Amesdale, long days of work punctuated by rich and memorable events with family and friends.