Forgotten Cemeteries

In class this week we watched a film about an abandoned cemetery in Priceville, Ontario. The cemetery was for the black pioneers who lived in the area in the 1820s. The community decided to restore the cemetery, and they recovered four gravestones from a stone pile in the town. The committee in charge of the restoration decided to bring the ground level in the cemetery to its original level in an attempt to find more headstones. The process was controversial as some people did not want to disturb the dead.

The cemetery reminded me of one that I have heard of in Kamloops, which is located in the interior of British Columbia, Canada. There is a Chinese cemetery for people who settled in Kamloops after the Railway was built (Image 1). This cemetery is maintained and recognized by the community. However, there are numerous unmarked graves of Chinese workers under the railway tracks that span the country. What makes the people buried in the cemetery different from the ones buried under the railway tracks? 

The timing of the graves in the cemetery are at a time when formal burials could take place. The land is consecrated, and a designated cemetery. However, I feel like the workers buried under the railway tracks deserve recognition as well. 
 Some efforts have been made:

"Ninety-five years later, the first official recognition of the

Chinese Railway Workers was on June 16, 1980. In

1982, a bronze plaque was installed at the Yale museum.

In Vancouver, a Chinese Railway Workers bronze plaque

was installed in 1988. A 12-metre high memorial was

built in Toronto and unveiled in 1989. In Winnipeg, a

bronze sculpture was erected in 1998. The latest tribute

to the Chinese Railway Workers was the documentary

“Canadian Steel, Chinese Grit” produced in 1998.

In May 2005, the Canadian Pacific Railway named the

Cheng Interchange in Kamloops in honour of Chinese

railway workers, in November 2005, the Province of B.C.

issued a proclamation declaring November 1-7 as

“Pioneer Chinese Railway Workers’ Week”, and on the

29th of November, the Heroes of Confederation project

was adopted into the City Centre Plan/Kamloops Official

Community Plan."

                   - Heroes of Conferation

 
The Heroes of Confederation want a museum to be established in Kamloops to formally acknowledge the workers. It would provide information to future generations, and it would include a library.

The theme shared between the two cemeteries is recovering memories. In Priceville the cemetery had been disregarded, and it is now too late to recover any more gravestones. In Kamloops, there is still a chance to preserve what is known about the workers through the museum. However, the longer it is delayed the harder it will be to find out later on. 

 Image 1