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