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