NATIONAL MUSEUM OF MAN

AND NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SCIENCE

AND TECHNOLOGY

Mt1SEE NATIONAL DE L'HOMME

ET MUSEE NATIONAL DES SCIENCI:S
ET DE LA TECHNOLOGIE

Material History Bulletin

Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle

01-FAVIA . SPKiwcaF>Ri ;vTi:nIPS 1986

23

National Museums
of Canada

Musees nationaux
du Canada

Board of Trustees/
Conseil d'administration
L'honorable Gerard Pelletier
Mr . Richard M .H . Alway . . .
Mr . George K . Campbell . . .
M . Laurent Cyr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mrs . G . Joan Goldfarb . . . . . .
Mme Claudette Hould . . . . . .
M . Yvon Pageau . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mr . C . Alexander Pincombe
Mrs . Mira Spivak . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mrs . Rosita L . Tovell . . . . . . . .
M . Rodrigue A . Tremblay . .
Dr . Larkin Kerwin . . . . . . . . . . .
Mr . Peter Roberts . . . . . . . . . . . .

.. .
.. .
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.. .
.. .
.. .
...
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.. .
.. .
...

Secretary General/
Secretaire general

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . President
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membre
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membre
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membre
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Member
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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Membre
. . . . . . . . . . . Member (ex officio)
. . . . . . . . . . . Member (ex officio)

Dr . Leo A . Dorais

Director National Museum of Man/

Directeur du Musee national de 1'Homme
Dr . George P . MacDonald

Chief History Division/

Chef de la Division de 1'Histoire
Dr . F .J . Thorhe

EDITORIAL BOARD/COMITE DE REDACTION

Editor/Redactrice
Barbara Riley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Museum of Man
Guest Editor/
Redacteur invite
Gerald L . Pocius

. . . . . Memorial University of Newfoundland

Advisory Board/
Comite consultatif
Gerald L . Pocius . . . . . Memorial University of NewfoUlidland
Jean-Pierre Hardy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Musee national de I'Flornme
Peter E . Rider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . National Muscum of Man
James Wardrop . . . . . . . British Columbia Provincial N1useum
Pierre Lessard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (lucbec
Geoff Rider . . . . National Museum of Science and Technology

Cover Illustration/Illustration de la couverture

Memorial marking burial mound of German labourers
on the road between Cobourg and Peterborough
(Archives of Ontario, S901)

Published by/Publie par

History Division, National Museum of Man/Division d'histoire, Musee national de I'Homme

and/et
National Museum of Science and Tech nology/Musee national des sciences et de la technologic
ISSN 0703-+89X

National Museums of Canada/

Musees nationaux du Canada 1986

11+1

Material History Bulletin

Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle

23

SPRING-PRINTEMPS, 1986

TABLE OF CONTENTS - TABLE DES MATIERES

Introduction

Gerald L. Pocius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Articles
Dying and Rising in the Kingdom of God : The Ritual Incarnation
of the "Ultimate" in Eastern Christian Culture

David J . Goa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Beautifying the Boneyard : The Changing Image of the

Cemetery in Nineteenth-Century Ontario
Roger Hall and Bruce Bowden

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

The Transformation of the Traditional Newfoundland Cemetery :

Institutionalizing the Secular Dead
Gerald L . Pocius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .~ 2 5

Research Reports - Rapports de recherche

Carved in Stone: Material Evidence in the Graveyards
of Kings County, Nova Scotia

Deborah Trask and Debra McNabb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Open Secrets: Fifteen Masonic and Orange Lodge Gravemarkers
in Waterloo and Wellington Counties, Ontario (1862-1983)
Nancy-Lou Patterson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Research Note - Note de recherche

In Mourning

Valerie Evans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Bibliographies
An Introductory Bibliography on Cultural Studies
Relating to Death and Dying in Canada

Gerald L. Pocius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Mort et religion traditionnelle au Quebec : Bibliographie

Madeleine Grammond et Benoit Lacroix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ., . . . . . . .  .  , . . . . . ., . . . . . 5(,

Reviews - Comptes rendus

Provincial Museum of Alberta, "Spiritual Life - Sacred Ritual"

Earl Waugh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
DesBrisay Museum National Exhibition Centre,
"The Ox in Nova-Scotia"

Eric J . Ruff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Thomas J. Schlereth, U .S . 40 : A Roadscape of the American Experience
John van Nostrand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Books received - Ouvrages requs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Contributors - Collaborateurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Notice - Avis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Errata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Introduction
Gerald L. Pocius
In the past few decades, scholars in the humanities and
social sciences have realized that what is ordinary and
everyday is, perhaps, as important as what is unique and
uncommon . Spurred on in part by the availability of
university education for an increasing percentage of the
population - rather than being a privilege of the economic
and social elite-more and more attention is being paid to
those common groups and experiences neglected or taken
for granted in the past . Scholars saw the rapid development of new fields and areas of research : women, children,
ethnic and racial minorities, and the working class
suddenly came under a scrutiny that had been largely
absent in decades past . Canadians, often labouring under
the traditions of a colonial past, finally realized that the
national and regional cultures within their own country
were every bit as important as the outside models that for
so many years were considered the only standards . Thus,
we have the birth of interest in things Canadian Canadian Studies, Canadiana, and numerous regional

Depuis quelques dizaines d'annees, les specialistes en

sciences humaines et sociales se rendent compte que le
banal et le quotidien sont sans doute aussi importants que
1'exceptionnel et 1'inusite . Qu'un pourcentage accru de la
population air maintenant acces a I'universite, qui n'est
plus reservee a Line e1ite economique et sociale, explique
partiellement cet interet croissant pour les categories
sociales et les plienomenes ordinaires, autrefois negliges
ou consideres comme banals . De nouveaux champs
d etude firent rapidement leur apparition : femmes,
enfants, minorites ethniques et raciales, classe ouvriere,
autant de sujets pratiquement jamais abordes voici quelques dizaines d'annees . Les Canadiens, marques par leur
passe colonial, s'aper~urent enfin que les cultures
nationales et regionales de leur propre pays etaient tout
aussi importantes que les modeles etrangers auxquels ils
avaient si longtemps tente de se conformer . C'est ainsi
qu'apparurent les etudes canadiennes, les collections
d'oeuvres canadiennes, et un grand nombre de programmes, d'etablissements et de cours .

And finally, those areas of our daily lives that had been
taken for granted or that were taboo made their way into
academics. The relations between the sexes, the reasons
for poverty amidst affluence, or boredom in the age of
mass communication - these and more began to receive
serious attention . One major theme was a concern with
death and dying, a topic perhaps once as taboo as sex, but
now of interest in a world that has had to daily contend
with incurable diseases, famine, and nuclear disasters .
Even a cursory look at the published literature will indicate that more has been written on death as a topic in the
past decade or so than the previous fifty years. Researchers
from all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences
are writing from their own perspectives, with entire
courses, conference panels and seminars being devoted to
this topic.

Les sujets banals ou tabous furent enfin inscrits au

programme scolaire . On commenqa a s'interesser serieusement aux relations entre hommes et femmes, aux causes de
la pauvrete qui voisine 1'opulence ou de 1'ennui qui resiste
aux communications de masse . La mort, peut-etre aussi
taboue que le sexe 1'etait autrefois, devint un sujet
d'interet majeur dans un monde ou l'on doit compter
quotidiennement avec les maladies incurables, la famine
et les catastrophes nucleaires . Un regard rapide sur le
monde de 1'edition revele qu'on a davantage ecrit sur la
mort ces dix dernieres annees que durant les cinquante
annees precedentes . Les differents specialistes des sciences
humaines et sociales traitent ce sujet selon leur perspective
propre, consacrant des cours entiers, des tables rondes et
des seminaires a la question .

programs, institutes and courses .

The interest in assembling a number of papers on death

and dying goes back to my own research in Newfoundland
during the mid-1970s relating to gravestones and
cemeteries . My M .A . thesis was the formal statement of
several years of field-work and archival research focusing
on local gravestones and their spatial context. I think it
was David Newlands who first suggested to Barbara Riley
that I might edit a special issue of the Material History
Bulletin on death and dying, and I agreed to do so with
Barbara's help .

L'idee de compiler des articles sur la mort m'est venue

au milieu des annees 70, tandis que j'effectuais des recherches sur les tombes et les cimetieres de Terre-Neuve .
Ma these de maitrise etait un bilan formel de plusieurs
annees de recherches sur le terrain et de recherches
archivistiques concernant les tombes et leur contexte
spatial . Je crois que 1'idee de consacrer un numero special
du Bulletin d'histoire de la culture nzaterielle au theme de la
mort fut suggeree a Barbara Riley par David Newlands .
J'acceptai de realiser ce projet avec 1'aide de Barbara .

Assembling the papers was a somewhat laborious

process . I soon realized that unlike the United States,
where hundreds of publications on topics like gravestones
had appeared in recent years, there were few researchers
actually working on material here in Canada who were
ready to publish their findings . Several names were
suggested, I was aware of some preliminary essays, and I
contacted various friends around the country who, I felt,
might know people currently researching this topic. The
essays, then, were assembled through all of these
channels . Their diverse content, however, is not just a
product of this ad hoc collecting process; rather, I feel they
represent the broad range of the kinds of studies that are
being produced today .
Most of the work on this topic has been devoted to
gravestones, and the several research reports reflect this
continued trend . Patterson's work in Ontario, together
with Trask and McNabb's in Nova Scotia, are part of
larger ongoing projects aimed at documenting specific
makers of objects and their works . Bowden and Hall's
essay indicates the increasing concern that historians have
demonstrated in the study of death generally and the
social trends leading to the development of institutions
outside the small community context - like cemeteries that enabled industrialized society to deal with death .
Goa's work shows how the museum researcher is attempting to understand the broad cultural basis for deathrelated objects found in our collections ; the worldview of
religious minority groups must be thoroughly presented,
so that these artifacts are not seen as mere curiosities of an
archaic belief system . My own essay comes from a longstanding concern by folklorists in rites of passage, including death and burial ; as well, my interests in cultural
landscapes led me to look not just at objects, but also at
the changing spatial attitudes that reflect deeper
concerns .
This collection of essays, then, is an initial step in
investigating the vast number of topics related to death
and dying throughout the country . Little is still known
about Victorian gravestone traditions in most regions ; we
often feel that these nineteenth-century markers are less
worthy of attention than the older forms that dominate
American and British scholarship . The institutionalization of death still awaits examination : the establishment
of urban cemeteries, the development of the funeral
industry, the manufLCture of a wide range of objects used
in mourning rituals . The studies in this volume are meant
to be examples of what still needs to be done in order to
adequately understand a cultural issue, which is, finally,
of central concern to the life of all peoples .

La compilation des exposes s'avera passablement ardue.

Je me suis vite rendu compte que contrairement aux
Americains, qui ont publie des centaines d'ecrits sur des
sujets comme les tombes ces dernieres annees, peu de chercheurs canadiens etaient prets A publier le resultat de leur
travail . On me suggera plusieurs noms, je connaissais
quelques essais preliminaires et je contactai divers amis
susceptibles de connaitre des chercheurs s'interessant ~i
cette question . C'est ainsi que je reussis 1 recueillir les
essais . Toutefois, leur contenu varie ne tient pas seulement a la fa~on anarchique dont ils ont ete reunis ; j'estime
plutot qu'il represente la diversite des etudes menees
aujourd'hui .
La plupart des travaux dans ce domaine ont ete
consacres aux tombes et plusieurs rapports de recherche
refletent cette tendance . Les travaux de Patterson en
Ontario, de meme que ceux de Trask et de McNabb en
Nouvelle- Ecosse, font partie de projets ii long terme visant
a documenter des fabricants d'objets particuliers et leurs
ceuvres. L'essai de Bowden et de Hall revele l'interet
croissant des historiens pour la mort en general et pour les
tendances sociales qui entrainerent la creation d'institutions en marge des petites communautes, comme les
cimetieres, ce qui allait permettre a la societe industrialisee de composer avec la mort . Le travail de Goa
montre que le chercheur du musee s'efforce de comprendre
le vaste fondement culture] des objets relies a la mort qui
composent nos collections ; la vision du monde des
minorites religieuses dolt etre decrite avec minutie afin
que ces objets ne soient pas per~us comme de vulg .ures
curiosites appartenant a un systeme de croyances
archa'ique . Mon propre essai reflete 1'interet de longue
date des folkloristes pour les rites de passage- y compris la
mort et 1'inhumation ; de meme, mon interer pour les
paysages culturels ne concerne pas seulement les objets,
mais egalement 1 evolution des conceptions spatiales qui
refletent des questions plus fondamentales .
Ce recueil d'essais est donc Line introduction a 1'erude
d'un grand nombre de sujets 1ies a la mort au Canada . On
sait encore peu de chose sur la tradition des tombes
victoriennes de la plupart des regions ; on a souvent
l'impression que ces pierres tombales du XIX siecle
meritent moins d'attention que les formes plus vieilles qui
ont la faveur des chercheurs americains et britanniques .
L'institutionnalisation de la mort est encore un sujet
d'etude neuf, de meme que la creation de cimetieres
urbains, le developpement de I'industrie des pompes
funebres et la fabrication d'une multitude c1'objets servant
dans les rituels. Les etudes reunies dans le present volume
illustrent ce qui reste a faire pour comprendre Line
question culturelle d'un interet fondamental pour tout
etre humain .

Dying and Rising in the Kingdom of God: The Ritual

Incarnation of the "Ultimate" in Eastern Christian Culture
David J . Goa
RestrnelAbstract
Cet article trace le tableatl des differezts ritttels religieux destines a reveler le royattrne de Dien atrx adeptes des comnttinatttes ehretienrres
orientales . L 'atrtettr s'interesse particulierentent all rapport etroit qui existe entre les ritttels entourant la ntort, l'inhttntation . le ctrlte de.r
nrort.r, et le cycle de fetes de la sentaine sainte et de la pascha (Pirqttes) qui commentorent la mort dru Christ . D'apres 1'atrteur, la senlalne
sainte et la pascha constitttent tin rnodele rnythiqtte qtii strttctttre et traduit le sens de la ntort pour les fideles, pottr cetcx qtii portent le dettil et
pornr la collectivite . Le caractere nzythico-poetiqrte des derux cycles rituels (sernaine sainte et pascha ainsi qtte les rites observes par les fideles)
fait appel r la parole, r 1'objet et au geste sacr& pour identifier 1'adepte arc Christ cosntique. C'est ainsi qtre l'experiern'e de la ntort c%chappe au
chaos et que le fidele est initie ~t tnt cosmos charge d'tine signification sacree .
This paper maps the rituals throtqh which devotees in Eastern Christian communities are initiated into the Kingdom of God. Its primary
focns is the intimate relationship betzueen the rituals surrounding dying, death, burial . and the memory of the dead. with the festive cycle of
mythic pattern of Holy
Holy Week and pascha (Easter) . in which Christ's dying and death are contemplated. The paper argues that the
Week and pascha structures and informs the meaning of dying and death for the devotees . the mourners . and the community. The ntythopoetic character of both ritual cycles (Holy Week and pascha . and, the rites for the devotee) irses sacred word, object, and gesture to identify
the devotee with the cosmic Christ . In this manner, the experience of death is wrested from chaos. and the devotee is initiated into ct cosmos
laden with sacred meaning .

Now is life's artful triumph of vanities destroyed .

For the spirit hath vanished from its tabernacle ; its
clay groweth black . The vessel is shattered, voiceless, bereft of feeling, motionless, dead : Committing which unto the grave, let us beseech the lord
that he will give him (her) eternal rest .
(Order for the Burial of the Dead,
p . i89)'
O God of spirits, and of all flesh, who hast trampled down Death, and overthrown the Devil, and
given life unto thy world : Do thou, the same Lord,
give rest to the soul of thy departed servant, N ., in
a place of brightness, a place of verdure, a place of
repose, whence all sickness, sorrow and sighing
have fled away .

(p . 369)

Introduction
The concern of this paper is to explore the pattern of
meaning formed by the ritual actions associated with
dying and death in the liturgical tradition of Eastern
Christian culture :' its movement from mythic image in
pascha (Easter), that grand universal paradigm of understanding provided by the tradition, to the ritual action in
which the devotee identifies with the myth and comes to
understand (to know) the meaning of the experience of
death in the "fullness of its mystery ." The mythic dimen-

sion (image) of dying, death, burial, and resurrection

known in the religious imagination is thoroughly formed
in that cycle which stands at the apex of the church calendar: pascha, or Easter .' With its various rites and
ceremonies, the mythic drama of human beings, a drama
celebrated at pascha and in the rites associated with the
experience of dying and death, is played out . In paschcr the
human experience is seen in its universality as a form of
Christ's passion (suffering and death) . The rites of initiation associated with dying, death, burial and the memory
of the loved one are experienced with the immediate force
of what is unavoidably at hand .4 The individual's experience is taken up into the universal action of Christ . What
devotees contemplate through Great Lent and pascha in
the life of Christ, they experience "in the flesh" in their
own dying, and in the death of their loved ones . In pascha
the rituals are mythic ; in the initiation of the devotee to
the mystery of dying and death the mythic pattern takes
on the most direct human proportions .
The ritual action associated with dying and death will
be examined, with an emphasis on the interplay of form
and image between the mythic rites of Great Lent and
paschct, on the one hand, and the rites of initiation for the
dying, on the other. The way the mystery ofdeath is incarnated in word, gesture and object will be the focus of this
study .

The Sanctification of "the Horror"

When we plunge into the question of the meaning of
death and dying for Eastern Christian culture, we are faced
with a world view and a form of cultural making very
different from what we in the West are accustomed to
considering Christian . The definition of Christian has
been largely appropriated by the Western Church and,
most recently in North America, by Protestant culture
and its secular variants . Nevertheless, we are discussing a
culture, profoundly Christian, which shares with the
West common patristic roots for its theological ideas . Its
sensibility, its understanding of the notion or concept of
creation, and its ritual embodiment of these matters are,
however, so dissimilar that one is inclined to suggest that
a different god is active on this cultural playground .

in the passion . Once his circumstances are identified with

Christ's passion, the devotee can give himself to the
experience of dying .

What is the meaning of death for Eastern Christian

Culture, How does the terrible existential reality of-death
Inform the believer's understanding of creation, the status
of the human, and, ultimately, the course of human
destiny'
Death, the Ahrtnrntal Condition of Life
Death enters the world through sin . Sin is not, like
"mortality," a structure of creation . Human beings are
creatures, and thus share with the rest of creation the

mortal status of creatures . They are not God, though

deification is the goal of human life . What humans
experience of the divine, the church fathers are fond of
suggesting, is the energy of God (not his essence), a chief
characteristic of which is consciousness of their creaturehood . In fact, it is through the recognition of their
finitude that they "recover" the fullness of created being
and step onto the path to deification . This is beautifully
summed up by a favourite phrase of St . John Chrysostom :
"God has become man so that man may become god ."
This is not a simple return to the primordial status of
consciousness in which innocence is recovered - a restoration of the state before the Fall, before sin entered the
world . On the contrary : it is an initiation through death,
and through identification with the death of Christ, to a
life in which death itself is transfigured . Death's power to
destroy, to "trample down," has been redeemed, and
human beings are freed to experience even their dying in
the light of Christ . This is "imaged" by the tradition in
the icon 5 of Christ's resurrection, also called "the descent
into hell," which shows his salvific action for the release of
all who are enslaved to death (fig . 1) . Both in the icon and
in the specific ritual act prescribed in the liturgical
calendar (especially in parchu, but also in the Feast of the
Elevation of the Cross and others), we see the process of the
redemption of death - its redemption, in fact, to the
status of mortality . Mortality can be sanctified through
Christ's action . Death, the curse, is transfigured when the
devotee is taken up into the universality of Christ's action

Fig . 1 . Icon of the resurrection . Also called the "descent into

Hell," this icon was recently painted by Heiko
Schleiper, Ottawa, Canada . It is in the Novgorodian
style . All photographs were taken by the author and are
drawn from research done at St . Mary's Romanian
Orthodox Church, Boian, Alta . (Folk Life Collection,
Provincial Museum of Alberta, neg . no . 85 . I?0? .2)
Man's mortal life is identified with that of the Christ .
In this manner it is sanctified : taken, as it were, into the
Body of Christ . Those participating in the various rituuls
under discussion, both the dying person and those drawn
to the bedside, funeral, grave or table of memory, are
taken into and identified with Christ . It is "in Christ" that
the fullness of human existence is realized .
The Christian myth is primarily about the restoring of
God's creation to himself. Creation is understood to
realize its completeness, the "abundant life," when unselfish love predicates experience and the destiny of life in
union with God is actualized in time . This does not lead
the believer to a petition about heaven or the afterlife . The
myth is not understood as being about immortality of the
body and soul in any sense current in popular Western
Christian thinking . Rather, it is a precise way of identifying how human beings, giving up their presumed status
as "immortal" beings (demi-gods), recover all that is

reminiscent of that swaddling Christ at his birth or binding his corpse in the tomb . A vessel is set on the table . It
contains wheat, the embryo of life, specifically of that life
which, having fallen into the ground, has given birth to
life - a "natural" resurrection of sorts (John 12 .24 ; 1 Cor.
15 .36-38) . Holy oil is placed on the table. A token of the
grace of healing (Mark 16 . 18), holy oil is the focus for this
service. A gospel book, lighted tapers and seven wands
wrapped with cotton for the anointing are thrust into the
wheat. The priest, vested in his chasuble, begins the service by censing around the table of the holy oil and the
room in which the dying person lies . He comes to stand
before the table, his face to the east .

good, true and beautiful in life through recognition of

their own finitude and through identifying with the death
of God in the crucifixion of Christ . There is no sentimentality here - just a cool eye on the reality of mortal life .
Here man undergoes a growing identification with the
myth in which Christ, the God-man ("fully man," as the
great creeds proclaim), takes on the life of all humans, its
agony, its dying and death and, finally, its fullness, which
is proclaimed by the tradition as his "glorious reign
eternal" and is memorialized in the Divine Liturgy and
explicitly enacted at pascha . The human status is restored
because Christ has "taken it on Himself." Through "flesh"
sin entered the world (in the sin of Adam), the tradition
proclaims, and, through flesh, the flesh of Christ (the
second Adam), the bondage to sin and death is lifted for
those who enter into the Body of Christ . How this is
accomplished is described in the next section .

Through psalm, canticle, scripture reading and a kind

of expository prayer the service moves from a direct confrontation with the experience of suffering to one in which
the typology of the oil is developed . Hymns (tropari)
punctuate each of the readings, bringing home the theme
and specifying the "image" of the oil as discussed in the
readings of the scripture .

The Myth and Ritual of Dying

The ritual of Holy Unction begins when the priest is
called to the bedside of an Orthodox Christian . He comes
in a flowing black cassock armed with a stole (the insignia
of office) and with flasks of oil like that used in ancient
times to anoint warriors prior to the "last" battle . The
priest also brings chalice and paten, containing the Body
and Blood of Christ . All is laid out on a table close to the
suffering devotee . Here we are looking the grim reaper in
the eye, armed for battle though not for victory (at least
not in the conventional sense) . But it is the body and
blood of the devotee that focus this contemplation, that
are offered up on this occasion to the Creator for what "will
[most assuredly] be done ." The words come quietly like
distant thunder, hanging in the air for all to hear . The
words are to the warrior lying unable to move, lying in
wait for "the end," the end, which as T .S . Eliot says, "is
6
my beginning ."

Recognition of the trauma, the horror of death, is the

point from which the service begins, the initiation of
consciousness into the experience at hand . The question as
to why death exists in the very midst of life is addressed in
the chanting of Psalm 51 .
Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness ; according to the multitude of thy mercies do
away mine offences . Wash me thoroughly from my
wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin . For I
acknowledge my faults, and my sin is ever before
me . Against thee only have I sinned, and done this
evil in thy sight ; that thou mightest be justified in
thy saying, and clear when thou art judged .
Behold, I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin
hath my mother conceived me . But lo, thou
requirest truth in the inward parts, and shalt make
me to understand wisdom secretly . Thou shalt
purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean ; thou
shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow . . . .

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and consider my desire ;

hearken unto me for thy truth and righteousness'
sake . And enter not into judgment with thy
servant ; for in thy sight shall no man living be
justified . For the enemy hath persecuted my soul ;
he hath smitten my life down to the ground ; he
hath laid me in the darkness, as the men that have
been long dead . Therefore is my spirit vexed within
me ; and my heart within me is desolate . Yet do I
remember the time past ; I muse upon all thy
works ; yea, I exercise myself in the works of thy
hands . I stretch forth my hands unto thee ; my soul
gaspeth unto thee as a thirsty land . . . . for my spirit
waxeth faint : hide not thy face from me, lest I be
like unto them that go down into the pit . . . .

(p. 334)

Here we have the significance of all suffering. All that is

destructive of life is brought into the world by sin . It is not
the wish or act of God, the creator of life, for this to be .
Yet life is filled with death. This cannot be denied . The
ritual moves from the encounter with the suffering of the
devotee and identifying its origin in the fall of man from
grace, to the "image" of the oil. The image of hyssop, the
healing substance (interpreted here as the holy oil), about
to be applied to the sufferer is invoked for the first of many
times .

(p. 333)

Hold this image in mind : the bed of the dying with

those who surround it, the priest presiding and the
medical professionals scurrying about on the periphery . A
small table is prepared, covered with a linen cloth

The breadth of the images is worth brief consideration .

They will return again and again throughout the set of
rituals we are considering . It is, in fact, these images that

marry the experience of the individual with the meaning

of the cosmos .

Christ and the saints who died because of sin and for its
redemption, the sufferer too is a victim, its crucible of
redemption . How is this initiation into Christ and his
triumphant Kingdom accomplished in the ritual action?

In a troparion (hymn) God is invoked as he who "makest

glad the soul and preservest also thy faithful by oil." He is
asked to "show compassion also unto those who draw near
unto thee through the Oil" (p . 335) . The oil is a pledge of
salvation . A reference to the "olive-branch unto the
abating of the Flood," evokes the escape of Noah and his
kin from universal destruction . Oil as the fuel, the "lamp
of the light divine," is invoked. The salvific action of
Christ is brought into the typology as the "chrism incorruptible [which cloth] empty itself utterly in grace and
purify the world" (p . 336) . The anointing of warriors is
noted in a "Hymn to the Birth-giver of God" (p . 336), as
is the anointing of kings "by the hands of the High
Priests." The Birth-giver of God, Mary, is seen as "a fruitful olive-tree, in the abode of thy God, O Mother of the
Creator, and thereby the world is seen to be filled with
mercy ." "Thy seal is a sword against demons ."

The Oil of Gladness

O Lord who, in thy mercies and bounties, healest
the disorders of our souls and bodies : Do thou, the
same Master, sanctify this Oil, that it may be effectual for those who shall be anointed therewith,
unto healing, and unto relief from every passion,
every malady of the flesh and of the spirit, and
every ill ; and that therein maybe glorified thy most
holy Name, of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto ages of
ages . Amen .

(pp. 340-41)

With this the priest blesses the oil, pouring it and wine
into the shrine lamp on the table by the devotee . The
deacon and priest read the Epistles and gospel, which are
drawn from biblical texts that develop the typology of oil :
James 5 .10-17, Luke 10 .25-28 . James instructs the early
Christian elders to anoint the sick with "oil in the name of

An additional list of images is given: that of saints who

in their struggle for union with God have shown a way
through the awfulness of death. Each is invoked with
specific reference to his or her genius in this regard : the
Great Martyr Demetrius (died at Thessalonica, A.D . 306)
whose bones still exude chrism and are famous for their
healing powers ; and Nestor, a young Christian who conquered the Emperor's favourite gladiator, an accomplishment for which he was duly martyred ; St . Panteleimon of
Nicomedia, an early Christian physician and miracle
worker (martyred A .D . 296) ; the "Unmercenaries," so
titled as disinterested benefactors who alleviate the pangs
of soul and body, most of whom were physicians of the
early Church . St . Nicholas the miracle worker, perhaps
the most popular of saints, is invoked as well .

the Lord : and the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the
Lord shall raise him up ; and if he has committed sins, they
shall be forgiven him ." The gospel reading gives an
instruction, not to the sick but to those gathered to
anoint . Typically of this ritual tradition, its focus is
cosmic, touching on all aspects of reality presented by the
existential situation . The gospel is the parable of the good
samaritan . It is the response of Jesus of Nazareth to a
lawyer who questions him about what to do to inherit
eternal life . Unsatisfied with the answer Jesus gives (the
classical Jewish answer), "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy strength, and with all thy mind ; and thy neighbour as
thyself," he queries, "who is my neighbour?" To this Jesus
replies with the parable, which paints a rather rude
picture of the priest and Levites, leaving the salvific action
to the "untouchable" samaritan who "had compassion on
him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring
in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought
him to an inn, and took care of him" (p . 343) .

Images of biblical and sacred tradition are all brought

to bear on the situation facing the suffering servant . In a
concrete sense the sufferer is placed at the centre of
scripture and tradition. He and his experience are "offered
up," like Christ and the saints . The experience of suffering
is informed by, and through identification with, these
grand images of meaning . They are "saint and martyr ."
All the images offered in the rituals are images with which
the devotee can possibly identify . All can be drawn on as
sources of meaning in the midst of the utterly meaningless
circumstance of one's suffering and possible death. All can
be identified with as a kind of sanctification of one's pain
and sorrow . And this is true for all those who are present,
the dying and'those who mourn .

The priests are gathered around to anoint a sick and

suffering devotee . The gospel reading indicts priests and
points out that "one's neighbour" is in fact anyone who
responds to the tragic circumstances of life . The priest
presiding does so as "neighbour" ; indeed, it is as neighbour that the priestly function, the sacramental life of
healing is lived . To the extent that their action is neighbourly, the priests fulfill the gospel .

The entrance of suffering into the world is a consequence of sin, and the identification of the sufferer with
Christ and the saints of the tradition suggests not that he
or she is "personally" suffering for sins committed, though
the personal-sins too must be offered up, but that like

In a prayer that follows the gospel reading the priest

invokes the sanctification of the holy oil .

The priest then takes one of the wands, and dipping it

into the holy oil, anoints the sick person, in cross-form (in
exactly the form used in baptism) on the brow, the
nostrils, the cheeks, the lips, the breast, and both sides of
the hands. This action is accompanied with a prayer that
summons all those servants of God, apostles, saints and
martyrs, who have been invoked throughout the service;
now, they are all, in one crisp prayer, brought to bear on
the situation . This prayer calls on a range of figures from
the Bible and the tradition, each of which has embodied
the sacred in the midst of their own dying. It ends by
proclaiming the Creator as the "fountain of healing" in the
midst of life, in the midst of dying (p . 345) .
A further gospel is read, that of Jesus' call and visit to
the house of Zaccheus, the publican, which typifies the
openness to the healing presence of Christ . The prayer
calls to the named servant (the sufferer) to open himself to
Christ through confession and invokes God, "who lovest
mankind," to impart his good gifts to the penitent (pp.
347-48) .
The office of Holy Unction is structured to be sung by
seven priests . Seven gospels fill out the service, with each
priest reading one and anointing the supplicant with holy
oil . The gospels, punctuated by long expository prayers,
give a typology of sin and of the forgiveness and healing
that come through the Spirit of God, symbolized by the
anointing with oil .
Prior to the benediction, the final distinct ritual
gesture occurs . If the sick person is able to rise from the
bed he joins the circle of priests . If not, the priests gather
around . They take the gospel book, open it, and with the
text side down, place it on the head of the sick person .
This little ritual action of placing the gospel on the head of
the devotee is also done at the initiation to the ministries
of the church . In the rubric for this action, explicit
instructions are given that the priest not lay his hands on
the sick . The priests pray :
I lay not my sinful hand upon the head of him (her)
who is come unto thee in iniquities, and asketh of
thee, through us, the pardon of his (her) sins, but
thy strong and mighty hand, which is in this, the
Holy Gospels, that is now held by my fellowministers, upon the head of thy servant, N .

(p . 358)

The prayer beseeches the Creator for mercy and compassion, invoking the typology of such blessings and
linking this circumstance to the biblical narratives of
Nathan, the penitent David, and Manasse, all of whom
suffered greatly .
The gospel book is then taken from the head of the sick
person where the priests held it and given to the sick

person to kiss and adore . The gospel, where the life,

suffering and death of Christ, the God-man, is
proclaimed, and through which the devotee learned that
all of God's creation is holy and through His grace can be
transfigured, is adored . It speaks of the redemption of
death itself, the snatching from the darkness of that horror
death, and the restoration of the mystery of mortality to
the mystery of the Creator.
The Office of Holy Unction has been discussed in some
detail . This office illustrates the marvelous way the ritual
of St . John Chrysostom weaves sacred word, gesture and
object around the experience of suffering and draws the
devotee into the Body of Christ, thus sanctifying creation
and redeeming the horror of dying . The ritual pattern, far
from merely providing an abstract set of ideas about the
meaning of life and death, provides the dying and those
who stand in the presence of death with language and
gesture-indeed, with the necessary world through which
to experience the movement of what is occurring . By
"trampling down death by death," the Christ has freed the
devotee to enter into the mortality that characterizes
creation in all its sacredness .
The Ritual of the Parting of the Sou1 from the Body, the
Burial and the cycle of memorials through which the
devotee is initiated into the cosmos will be briefly dealt
with next . The connection each has with the cycle of
pascha liturgies, deepening the identification of the
deceased with the cosmic Christ . In all cases the rhythm of
the ritual, like that of Unction, is woven of word, gesture
and sacred object, binding the dead with the living Christ
of all creation .

The Agony of Calvary

In the various rites and liturgies 7 that make up Holy
Week we see how the Eastern Christian imagination and
tradition have seen fit to contemplate the mystery ofdeath
as it was experienced by Christ . Here the myth is given
ritual form, a pattern that carries over and structures the
rituals surrounding the death and burial of the devotee.
Holy Friday begins on Thursday evening (liturgical
time, taking its cue from the creation story in Genesis,
begins with the creation out of darkness) with the service
of "the twelve gospels ." The name is taken from the juxtaposition of gospel texts ordered into twelve parts and
read throughout this moving and mournful service. An
account of the passion is formed out of every detail given
in scripture . It takes up the agony of the arrest of Jesus in
the Garden of Olives, the proceedings against him, the
scourging, the crowning with thorns, his bearing of the
cross, the crucifixion, death and burial . Each "gospel" is
punctuated with the response, "Glory to Thy longsuffering, 0 Lord, glory to Thee" (p . 154) . Following the fifth

11

gospel" a remarkable antiphon is sung . While it is sung,

a cross, often life size, is assembled in the middle of the
church in place of the lesser altar, the usual site ofdevotion
for the Orthodox devotee upon entering church . The
people come and adore (contemplate) and kiss the cross
with its corpse .

Today hangs from the Cross Hc who hung the earth

over the waters . He who is King of Angels is
crowncd with thorns . Vain Purple is thrown over
Him who casts the sky over tile CIOUds .8

In some Eastern
Orthodox for example,
the twelve candles that
extinguished, one by
readings .

Christian churches, Romanian

the teue%rac (fig . 2) model is used :
glow, at the start of the liturgy are
one, after each of the gospel

are readings and prayers about various aspects of suffering

and death . They describe the circumstances of death; they
call out about the experiencc of dying . Each liturgical
hour has readings from three psalms (except Terce, which
has two), a reading from the Old Testament, and an
epistle and a gospel . The whole typology of dying and
death is built, as noted in the previous section on Unction,
in this tapestry fashion, invoking the world of biblical
images and ideas related to the experience .
As in the study of all rituals, it is important to note
what has been left out of the general pattern . Indeed, Holy
Friday is a unique day for Eastern Christians in that it is
the only day of the liturgical year when no eucharistic
liturgy is celebrated .
During the afternoon of this day of sorrows a "burial
service," the Vesper of Holy Friday, is celebrated . Three
()Id Testament readings develop the typology of the
death . In the first one (Exodus i i . 11-2 3) God is saying to
Moses: "While my glory passeth by . . . I will put thee in a
cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I
pass by ." This is a curious INassage, Which the Church has
taken as a comment on the entombment of Christ . God's
glory remains, and in some sense is, incarnate in his
servant's descent into the darkness . There is a reading
from Job as well . It is a portion of scripture, perhaps the
most poignant of all biblical literature, in which the
agony of human suffering at the hands of the inexplicable
is described . The passion according to Isaiah, referred to
also as the "suffering servant psalm," is the final reading :
"despised and rejected of men ; a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief. . . . Surely he hath borne our griefs,
and carried our sorrows . . . . But he was wounded for our
transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities . . . and
with his stripes we are healed . . .he is brought as a lamb to
the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb so

Fig . 2 . Ta-nebrae service, in which the candles are blown out one
by one, signifying the movement through the crucifixion to the death of Christ (neg . no . H2 .-'l . 185) .
The lengthy readings that structure this service contemplate the way consciousness of his impending doom
dawns on the Saviour . The texts narrate the behaviour and
response of those close at hand, and slowly, with unfailing
step, record the journey in coming to grips with dying :
the struggle to carry the cross, the agony of the cross-all
the pathetic elements . The crucifix (fig . 3) with its lifesize corpus moves to centre stage in the imagination and
hearts of the devotee . All are invited to adore it, to claim
it . For the devotees the death of Christ, in all its agony, is
to be absorbed and identified with . All humankind will
most assuredly find themselves at the same gate . Death,
the death of God himself, is engaged as one's own .
Throughout the canonical hours of Holy Friday there

Fig . 3 . The adoration of the cross, at which the faithful

prostrate and kiss the cross as part of the contemplation
of the death of the Christ (neg . no . 82 .4 . 193) .

lie upeneth not his Mouth . . . he bears the sins of many, and
made intercession fur the transgressors .'*
In the epistle reading that follows Paul claims that the
only thing he is determined to know is "Christ crUC-fiICd(Cor . l . l8-?2), suggesting a kind of reorientation of the
very centre of how we know the world and the meaning of
creation . It is the death of god in Christ that illuminates
the meaning of the creation . The gospel picks up on this
theme with a composite reading, which narrates the path
to the cross and the "actions" of divinc love even unto
death pointing to the meaning of the creation and how it is
redeemed .
Fig . 5 . The epita/rlurm is adored by the f:urhful just as the
corpus is given its final kiss prior to burial (neg . no .
8? .4 .?r)U) .
three times . In a number of communities the epitaphion
(fig . 4) is held high at the door of the church and the faithful re-enter the church by passing under it . The church has
become the tomb, the place of the burial of the Christ and
the place of the descent . The people are to pass, with
Christ, into the darkness, into the agony of God's death .
While the circumambulation takes place outside the
church, the cross with its corpus is replaced with a
sarcophagus . The sarcophagus sits in the same place as the
coffin of the deceased at the funeral service . The priest is
the last to enter the church, and with the assistance of the
bearers of the icon of the dead Saviour, lie moves into place
beside the sarcophagus and places the "corpse" In its
resting place . Incense abounds as the "body" is prepared
for the journey, in the ritual of the initiation of the Godman into the eternal .

Fig . 4 . The procession with the epitu/rhiou, a tapestry with a

painting of the corpus of Christ, proceeds around the
church and culminates with the faithful passing under
it back into the church (neg . no . )i? .4 .280) .

The rite of the burial takes place next . The devoted

form a procession and are led around the church by the
priest and the bearers of an epita/rhirrn, a rectangular cloth
with the image of the dead Christ painted or embroidered
on it . The procession is flanked by the banners of the
church bearing the image of the saints . The procession
moves out of the church and around it counterclockwise

The Song of Simeon, used in many liturgies of the

Church as a bridge from worship into the mundane world,
is the final benediction : "Lord, now lettest thou thy
servant depart in Peace ." A fascinating shift in the use of
this text can be noted . The Song of Simeon is intoned
around the sarcophagus, a litany to the release of the clead
God . A tr-opnriorr, "The noble Joseph takes Thy immaculate Body down from the Cross, lie wraps it in white linen
with spices . . . and places it in a new tomb, "9 completes the
hymns and the development of the imagery and ethos of
the service . Along with the adoration and kissing of the
image of the dead Christ (fig . 5), the priest anoints (fig . G)
the "corpse" just as one would see him do at a funeral and
burial service . The mythic pattern is complete . "On this
day, the Lord of creation stood before Pilate, and the
creator of the universe is handed over to be crucified .
So
it is with the devotee . The time of dying, of death, of
being handed over destroys not only the body, but in a
profound way, the world and cosmos that one's life shaped
and shared in . The ritual pattern is complete . The King of
All Creation is entombed .

Within

the mythic pattern of Eastern Christian

wrath that still bears upon the mind or heart of the dying,
anything unconfessed or-and note this -unforgiven? The
priest's invocation begins, "Blessed is our God always,
now and ever, and unto ages of ages . " Psalm 51 (quoted in
part at the beginning of this paper) is prayed, and a series
of canticles are sung to God the Creator and to the Birthgiver of God, Mary . The pattern woven by the canticles
focuses with singular clarity on the experience of dying,
its alienation and horror .
The night of death, gloomy and moonless, hath
overtaken me, still unready, sending me forth on
that long and dreadful journey unprepared . But let
thy mercy accompany me, O Lady .
Lo, all my days are vanished, of a truth, in vanity,
as it is written, and my years also in vain ; and now
the snares of death, which of a truth are bitter, have
entangled my soul, and have compassed me round
about .
(Canticle 7, p . 16,11)
The struggle for life, the struggle not to be humiliated
in death, not to be vanquished at the end of life, is firrmed
by the canticles . The Mother of God is invoked amidst the
reality of this eternal moment . "As the mother loving
mankind of the God who loveth mankind, look thtru with
calm and merciful eye when my soul from its body shall
part ; and I will glorify thee forever, O holy Birth-giver of
God" (p . 3G4) . The holy Birth-giver of God is central to

Fig. G . The priest anoints the epitnlrhiart just as the corpus is

anointed prior to burial (neg . no . 82 .-'F .3 I?).

Culture, the sanctification of time is accomplished in the

feasts of the Church, of which pa.rrha is the pinnacle . The
experience of dying, death, and burial is "formed" by the
journey of the God-man, Christ . The model for the
devotees is not Peter, the apostle who followed afar off,
but Christ's mother, the beloved Apostle John, and the
holy women, who in the gospel narrative went step by
step, down the Via Dulorosa (the Way of Sorrows), up
Golgotha (the Hill of the Skull) and stood, as the iconography depicts, at the foot of the cross completely present
to the dcath of the beloved one .

The pattern, form and material, both gesture and

object, of pa.rcha is brought to bear in the rituals for the
dying, death and burial of the devotee.
The Passion of the Devotee: The OJjice of the Parting
-~fthc Sonl Jroa the (3,ul)
The Office of the Parting of the Soul from the Body
begins with the inyuiry as to the spiritual state of the
dying person . Is there any word or deed, any baseness or

this petitionary ritual . The movement across the boundary of life into the mystery ofdeath, the initiation into the
eternal, falls into the hands of her who gives birth to God .
Curiously, she was the one to clothe God in flesh, in the
person of the Christ ; and at the time of dying, it is she, the
mother of incarnation, who is called upon to ease the
movement of the soul from the body . She, the Birth-giver
of God, is asked to watch over and assist at the journey to
the eternal . So it ends : no resolution, no panacea . A
simple extended conternplation of the agony of the final
giving over all graphically depicted and offered up to the
Creator . Mary, the channel of the incarnation of (rod, is
asked to assist in the reverse process : the giving up of the
forms of the world and the claiming of mortality . She is
the guardian of this strange and horrid journey, this initiation into the mvsterv of death .
trtitiatiurt into the

Chri,vl

It is still quite common in rural communities in

Western Canada fur the deceased to be laid out at home . A
vigil is kept throughout the night, and on the morning of
the funeral the coffin is brought outside to the waiting
hearse . The procession moves in it direct way to the final
resting place fur the body . This path, however, is determined by the life of the deceased . Mourners linger outside
the home, move slowly throughout the neighbourhood

stopping at places in the vicinity meaningful in the

deceased's life, such as the fields in which he worked or the
ancestral home (fig . 7) where childhood was spent . One
senses a kind of in-gathering of experience, a collecting of
the particulars of this person's life . The door of the hearse
is opened, the lid of tile coffin is lifted, bread and a candle
are placed on tile road at the foot of the deceased, and
prayers of blessing are said . A final glance at the playground of life is offered to all .

resolution to their lives. The great Psalms of God's

majesty and of his faithful servants are chanted in responsory style (Psalms )1, 119) .
The voice of tile deceased then enters the ritual . The
devotees gathered for the funeral form a chorus giving the
refrain . It is a long series of reflections on human experience, on its folly and on its redemption in faith:
I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost ; O seek
thy servant . . .The Choir of tile Saints have lound
the Fountain of Life and the Door of Paradise . May

I also find the right way, through repentance . I am

a lost sheep . . . . Ye who preached the Lamb of God,
and like unto lambs were slain . . . . Ye who have trod

the narrow way most sad . . .I am an image of thy

glory inefftble, though I bear the brands of rransgressions: Show thy conlhassions Upon thy creature, O Master, and purify him (her) by thy lovingkindness . . .make

me
again
a
citizen
of
Paradise . . . . 0 thou who of old didst call me into
being from nothingness, and didst honour me with
thine image divine . . . . restore thou
image, and to my pristine beauty .

Fig . 7 . During the procession from the home of the deceased to

the church the hearse stops by the homestead of his
childhood for a final "glance," a final blessing (neg . no .
8? .-1 .11 I ) .
When the procession arrives at the church, the body is
taken through the gathering and placed as a kind of "lesser
altar" in front of the iconostasis, forming an axis with the
Great Altar . The Order for the Burial of the Dead gives
structure to the ritual initiation . It notes that when an
Orthodox believer has died tile priest comes into the place
in which the "remains of the dead man lie, and hath put on
his priestly stole (epztrakbil), and hath placed incense in
the censer, censeth the body of the dead, and those
present ; and Gegiuneth as usual : Blessed is our God always,
now and ever, and unto ages of ages" (p . 368 emphasis
added) . The temporal is within the eternal . "The reference
throughout this ritual calls upon God tile "Holy Immortal
One" in counterpoint to tile mortality that lies before tile
devotees .
The ritual begins by invoking God to bring the
deceased to eternal rest . It is apparent from examining
such rituals that this invocation is for tile bereaved as well .
All wish the memory of the deceased to bring peace and

me

to that

(p . 379)

The central issue in the anthropology of Eastern

Christian culture is focused on in this final call of the voice
of the deceased : man as tile image of' God . In death the
final petition is that He "who of old didst call tile into
being from nothingness . . . restore thou me to that image,
and to my pristine beauty" (p . 379) .
The Church takes up the cause of tile deceased, not in
any juridical sense, but rather as a type and model of the
human condition itself, requesting forgiveness for all
shortcomings and asking that rest be given to tile soul of
the departed . This, of course, is a plea as much for those
who live as for tile dead . In the ritual surrounding death
tile community prays for the redemption of the memory of
the deceased and freedom from any taint of tile tragic
circumstances of life . They pray that it be healed even now
as they contemplate the mortality of life in him who has
died . Along with this plea tile ritual goes on building the
full spectrum of human feelings and thoughts that flood
into the midst of death . In canticle after canticle the
existential reality is offered up :
What earthly sweetness renl:rineth unmixed w~ith
grief% What .glory shrrl(lerh In1n1lItAbII' on earth'
All things are but shadoWs most teeblc, hut most
deluding dreams : yet one moment only, and Death
Shall Supplant Cht'rll all . But in tile light of rhy
countenancc, O Christ, and in the sweetness uf thy
beauty, give rest unto him (her) whorll thou h:ast
chosen : forasmuch as thou lovest mankind .

(n . ~}i51

This anthem by John, the Monk of Damascus, continues to immerse consciousness in the spectrum of human
agony . Again we find the voice of the deceased speaking as
for all mankind :
Woe is me! What manner of ordeal doth tile SOLII
endure wliun from tile body it is parted' All mort,tl
things are vanity and exist not after death . Where
is the hornh 4 the ehhcrneral creatures of'a day, All
dust, all ashes, all shadows . . . What is this mystery
which rluth befall us' VG'h) have .ve been given over
unto corrul)tion, and svhy have tie been wedded
unto (leath'
(pp . 3R5-8G)

The Beatitudes, hart of the Divine Liturgy, follow .

They note that the INath to the Beauty of Holiness is
through a kind ot giving-up.
The epistle and gospel readings speak directly about
death ( I Thess . 1 . Ii-lh, John 5 .21- i()) . Both claim the
(lead fur Christ, identifying them with the Christ who
took death into himself, redeeming all the righteous to
the "resurrection of lite ."
With the final invocation of God's mercy, the priest
moves close to the deceased lying in the coffin . In most

churches tile body is laid Out \ahere the sarcophagus is on

Holy Friday all(] Saturday . It is open throughout the
ritual, a stark tell ninclcr Of the human image created in the
image of' Gud, of currul,tiun in death, and of the redemption of the creation in Christ's body .
Standing near the head of the deceased with .t cross in
hand the priest prays, "O God of-spirits, " the prayer given
at the beginning of this paper . This prayer runs through
all the rituals under consideration as it kind of- quiet
priestly Counterpoint to the "Ilublic" actions of the ritual .
He concludes the prayer Nvith the proclamation, "for thou
art the resurrection and the Life ." He then leans forward
and gives the "last kiss" to tile deceased .
Come brethren, let us give the last kiss unto ill('
dead, rendering thanks unto Gox1 . For he (shr) hath
vanished frorn aniong his (hcr) kin, and hresseth

onward to the ) ;rave, and vexeth himself (herself)

no longer cuncernin) ; v.utiueti . and concerning the
flcsh . %\'hich suftcrcth sorc di,trc,s . . .

Now is life's artful triwnhh of vanities destroyed .

For the spirit hath vanished from its w1mmucle ; its
clay groweth black .

'..5 J

Fig . 8 . The community gathers for para_rtas, the Blessing of the Graves . Following the blessing of each grave, the
the names of the deceased, a feast takes place in the rnidst of the graves (ne); . no . 82 .4 . 10()) .

invoking of

ll'lenaory Eterucrl

The vessel is shattered, voiceless, bereft of feeling,

motionless, dead : Committing which unto the
grave, let us beseech the Lord that lie will give him
eternal rest .
(p . j59)

A cycle of memorials titled "The Requiem Office for

the Dead," or Panikf.udl, is prayed on it sequence Of
memorial days dating from the death of the beloved . This
ritual is also used for the blessing of the graveyard, an
annual "feast" (fig . S) in the liturgical calendar which falls
between pasrh<< and the feast of~Ascension . In many of the
Slavic and Romanian communities in Canada this "village
feast" constitutes an in-gathering of friends and relatives
to the graveyard (fig . 9) ; after the service at the altar in the

The Birth-giver of God and the prayers of Cltrist, the

forerunners, apostles, hierarchs, holy ones, and saints are
called upon to grant rest to the deceased and to those who
stand in the vigil .
A final benediction marking Christ's resurrection and
redemption of all creation, even in its mortal state, is
given, reminding us of God's love for all mankind .

cemetery, each grave is blessed and the name of the

deceased is read into the blessing . A linen cloth covers a
portion of the grave . A basket of fruit, usually with
grapes, bread, a candle and perhaps a favourite sweet of
the deceased, is placed on the grave for the blessing (fig .
10) . All identify the deceased with the body of Christ and
with his gospel . The service follows a form very similar to
those noted above : petitions for God's grace, the contemplation of human mortality, adoration of the Creator and
the cosmic nature of the Christ .

A Prayer of Absolution printed on a separate sheet of

paper is said and every type of sin and shortcoming is forgiven . The page is laid on the hands of the deceased in
preparation for the burial . All join in singing, "The earth
is the Lord's and the fullness there of: The round world,
and they that dwell therein ." The priest anoints the body
with oil from the shrine lamp ; he takes ashes from the
censer and spreads them on the corpse . The coffin is closed
and with processional cross and banners the deceased is
"led" to the cemetery and lowered into the grave . The
faithful assist in placing earth on the coffin as the final
hymn is sung :
With the souls of the righteous dead, give rest, O
Saviour, to the soul of thy servant, preserving it
unto the life of blessedness which is with thee, O
thou who lovest mankind . . . . 0 Virgin alone Pure
and Undefiled, who without seed dicdst bring forth
God, pray thou unto him that his soul may be
saved .
(p . 393)

Fig . (0 . A linen cloth, symbolic of tile cloth in which the body

of Christ was wrapped after the crucifixiun, is laid on
the grave . The baskets are blessed along with the
grave . The food is eaten during the feast following the
ritual . Often a favourite candy bar of the deceased is
included and shared with a child, a kind of "sweet
link" with the death (neg . no . H2 .=i . lU2) .
t>nclusion

Fig . 9 .

Far from the parlour ritual characteristic of burial from

Ii
funeral homes, the Orthodox ritual for the suffering, the
dying and the dead, and in memory of the deceased,
contemplates death, first by anointing the body in its
suffering, then at its death and just prior to burial . The
human form, corruptible as it is, is adored, just as the
epit,aphiort is adored at pa .a6ra . Loved in life, the "broken
vessel" is loved in death. The raw material of life, bread
and wine, which in Holy Week comes to be understood as
the Body and Blood of Christ, who "trampled down death

Processional cross and banners lead the faithful

through the graveyard . Bishop and priest bless the
graves invoking the name of each person who is buried
(neg . no . 82 .4 . 101) .

11

by death," is identified with the beloved dead . Their body

and blood, their suffering and death, are as those of
Christ . To the degree that they share in Christ, they are
redeemed . They are victorious over the bondage of sin and
guilt, and their memory participates in the Eternal .
Here we find no screening of the bereaved from the
community, no "dressing" of the body as if death was anything but a horror . The circle of identification is

complete : the bereaved with the deceased, the deceased

with the Christ ofpascha, all with the God of all creation
who set the world in the firmament. The earth from which
mortal flesh is made and to which it returns is sanctified in
the Body of Christ . Deification, the perfection and return
of the human form to the Creator, is complete . Suffering
and mortality are sanctified, are part of the mythic structure of meaning made concrete in the cosmic Christ . The
death of God at pascha and the death of the devotee are one .

NOTES
1 . All quotations followed by a page number are from Service Book of
the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, rev . ed . (Englewood,
N.J . : Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese, 1975) .
2. See Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Vol . 2 : Front
Gautanta Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity (Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1982), for a consideration of the religious
structure of Eastern Christianity . Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian
Tradition, Vol. 2: The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700), is a
fine historical study of the theology of the tradition . For Orthodox
theological studies pertinent to this paper see Boris Bobrinskoy,
"Old Age and Death : Tragedy or Blessing'," St . Vladinrir'r
Theological Quarterly 28, no . 4 (1984) : 237-244 ; Veselin Kesich,

4. See Lev Puhalo, TheSoul. The Body, and Death (Sardis, B.C . : Saints
Cyril and Methody Society, 1981), and Alexander Schmemann,
"Trampling Down Death by Death," in For the Life of the World
(Crestwood, N .Y . : St . Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1973), pp . 95106. Thomas Hopko, The Lenten Spring, Readings for Great Lent
(Crestwood, N.Y . : St . Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1983), is a
devotional meditation on the liturgical readings of the feast.
5. There are numerous studies of the tradition of iconography central
to Eastern Christian Culture. Of primary importance to this study
see Constantine Cavarnos, Orthodox Iconography (Bclmont, Mass . :
Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1977);
Anthony Cutter, Transfigurations . Studies in the Dynamics of Byzan-

3.

6 . T.S . Eliot, "The Four Quartets" in The Complete Poems and Plays,
1909-1950 [by) T.S . Eliot (New York : Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1971), p. 129.
7 . The cycle of Great Lent services is contained in The Lenten Triodion,
transl . Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware (London:
Faber and Faber, 1977) .
8. Quoted in The Year of Grace of the Lord, by a monk of the Eastern
Church (Crestwood, N .Y . : St . Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1980),
p. 154.

The First Day of the New Creation, the Resurrection and the Christian
Faith (Crestwood, N.Y . : St . Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1982);
Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology . An Introduction (Crestwood,
N.Y . : St . Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1978); John Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology . Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New
York : Fordham University Press, 1974); Alexander Schmemann,
For the Life of the World. Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood,
N.Y . : St . Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1973); l.ars Thunderg, Alan
and Cosmos . The Vision of St . Alcrximct the Confessor (Crestwood,
N.Y . : St . Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985) .
See Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent, rev. ed . (Crestwood,
N .Y . : St . Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974) for a discussion of
pascha (Easter) from an Orthodox theological perspective. The
liturgical and sacramental structure of the Orthodox tradition are
given thorough consideration in Casimir Kucharek, TheByzantineSlav Liturgy of St . John Chrytottom, Its Origins and Evolution (Allendale, N .J . : Alleluia Press, 1971), and his The Sacramental
Mysteries : A Byzantine Approach (Allendale, N.J . : Alleluia Press,
197G) .

tine Iconography (Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania State University,

1975) ; George Galavaris, The Icon in the Life of the Church (Leiden:
E.J . Brill, 1981); Andre Grabar, Christian Iconography. A Study of
Its Origins (Princeton, N .J . : Princeton University Press, 1968);
Leonide Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon (Crestwood, N .Y . : St .
Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1978) .

9 . Ibid ., p . 157 .
10 . Ibid ., p . 157 .

I1 . The Orthodox burial service requires a church with its rich

symbolic significance . Burial from a funeral home, bereft of the
cosmic symbolism appropriate to the actual rite, is simply a prayer
service .

Beautifying the Boneyard : The Changing Image

of the Cemetery in Nineteenth-Century Ontario
Roger Hall and Bruce Bowden
RestanaelAbstract
Les historiens canadiens n'ont gnere effectaae jttsqaa'ici d'ettades historiqties star la ntort. Les cittretieres, notatntnent, qaai sont s~aas doacte les
niartifestations tangibles les plus cbarables de la ntort et des coutaames liees a la tnort, ont airtsi ete negliges .
Des recherches anericaines et hritanniqaaes donnent ei entendre qtae la creation, a l'epoqaae victorierane, de grandr cinretieres non c onfes.rionnel.r naqaait de considerations sanitaires et fiat aan phenonrene exclrtsiventent aarhain . Des anontaanents conrane le cinieNre Mount Auburn, it
Boston . etaient d'intportantes institutions culttarelles et notas apprennent beatccoaap sur lea societe victorienne . Ces -clinetl6vs ruraux, . qui
t'teiieiit ~ -onstriti'is ii 1'extirieur des villes, devinrent dans les grands centres des jardins oaa des parcs paysagers, e-onzane en tentoigrne It,
cintetiere Mount Pleasant de Toronto .
Nous savors, d'apres les archives qaai noaas sont parvennes, que clans des petites villes . conanre Norwich . en Ontario, sont nes des cianetieres
non confessionnels, nzais sotavent encore protestants, qtai, grdce ei lenr entretien et a leur etnplacetnent . conservent trne place irnportante dcans ces
localites. Dans les centres urhains, la tendance a faire de bearux c-irnetieres a elirnine en grande partie les barrieres corafessionnelles et a
.Dans ces nouveaux e intetieres, constanrtttent entretenus et dotes de jolies chapelles. l'enterrecatutitue aan pas vers line certaine secularisation
aan
cadre
ronrantiqtae
it caractere rural, . Les synaboles de la ntort ayant disparai, le citaaetier-e-parc- contr'abaaa atnst, a
naent avait lieu dans
Prentiere
nzotdiale,
a -lei tort de la rnort .
1'c%poque de la
Guerre
Scant attention has been paid by Canadian historians to the historical study of death . One neglected area is scholarly study of cetneteries arguably the rno.rt durable artifacts of death and death-ctastorrr .
British and Arnerican research suggests that the Victorian creation of large, non-sectarian c0nmaainity ceaneteries resnlted fi~oan health
considerations and was entirely an urban phenovienon . Nlonurnents like Boston's Mount Auburn were substantial cultural institutions and
tell Its anuch about Victorian society . These so-called "ratral cenreteries" tvere built beyond city lianits and evolved in large centres into architecturally designed '''garden" or "park" cemeteries, as -well illatstrated by Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cenietery .
Surviving records of .rrnall-town cemeteries, such as in Nortuich, Ontario, show the developrnent of non-sectarian . although often still
Protestant . cerneteries which, by upkeep and location, remained an integral part of the contntunity . In urban centres, the beautification
tnovenrent challenged the sectarian aspect of burial and represented a degree of secularization . These neru ceineteries featured the concept of
perpetaaal care and built picturesque chapels so that the entire process of burial could be catered in the setting of a rontantic rural sepulchre.
Diurnal interaction it vth death's synrbols was thereby ended, with the result that the cernetery park ntovernent contributed to "the dyig of
death" by the First World War.

Scant attention has been paid by Canadian historians to

the historical study of death . Although British, American
and especially French scholars have explored the topic in
multidisciplinary detail, Canadian interest has largely
been either genealogical or antiquarian .

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . It is hoped that

this discussion will convey something of the broad scope
of this uncharted topic, reveal the difficulties in conducting research, and suggest some of the benefits which
perseverance can produce .

The study of death in the past offers considerable opporI

tunities for the cultural and social historian of Canada .
One obvious and almost entirely neglected area is scholarly study of cemeteries - arguably the most durable
artifacts of death and death-custom . What follows are
some preliminary ideas relating to discernible trends in
the establishment of Ontario burying-grounds in the

As with so many other aspects of Canadian life,

cemetery planning and establishment have been largely
derivative . The historical literature suggests that in
England and the United States early Victorian trends toward the establishment of large, non-sectarian cemeteries
were almost exclusively urban impulses ; the bourgeoning
population created a variety of pressures which could not

be met by sectarian burying-grounds within city limits . A

further, equally bourgeois, consideration was the matter
of health : British and American journals of the period are
filled with references to the dangers of disease-ridden and
crowded "boneyards," where visible rot, vandalism, stray
dogs and insufficient coverage of remains combined to
create severe health hazards . To these very practical
matters might be added the less tangible but intense
psychological and emotional preoccupation with death
and mourning that developed in the Victorian age .
Romanticism, combined with an appreciation of the
naturalness of death and a renewed spiritual emphasis
upon its implications, created new attitudes towards the
subject . Burial-grounds were no longer cast-off, melancholy boneyards, but were dignified with names from the
classical lexicon like necropolis or cenretery . They were to be
planned places of beauty where the dead and the living
might mingle in restful reflection .
The classic prototype of such a cemetery in the United
States was Boston's Mount Auburn, opened first in 1831 .

Good British examples were the Glasgow Necropolis,

London's Kensal Green or the better-known Highgate
Cemetery . All reflected a change in attitude towards
death, but they also conveyed certain other attributes .
From the beginning they were celebrated for their beauty,
both contrived and natural . They were, in today's
parlance, "showcases" for the aesthetic arts of the time .

They pre-dated the enthusiasm for massive public parks

and may have had something to do with generating that
enthusiasm . They reinforced, indeed celebrated, the
bourgeois fabric of nineteenth-century life, providing an
opportunity for discreet pride and restrained boastfulness
in achievement to be paraded by successful Victorians . In
North America they were strong declarations of coming of
age and sophistication, and confidently declared to
Europe's older civilization that civilization was well and
truly entrenched in the New World too . They were, in
short, substantial cultural institutions and much can be
learned of Victorian society through their study .'-

The name accorded to these new types of burialgrounds was "rural" cemetery . The adjective is misleading
for they were rural only in the sense that they tended to be
somewhat larger than the typical churchyard and were
placed on the outskirts of the community ; they certainly
did not reflect the contemporary state of most country
burying-grounds . Early Ontario models of what might
more appropriately be termed "garden" cemeteries were
Kingston's
Cataraqui
Cemetery
and
Toronto's
Necropolis, and late nineteenth-century examples abound
in such Ontario towns and smaller cities as Durham,
Paris, Brantford, and Belleville .
By the time garden cemeteries became common in
southern Ontario the cemetery movement in the United

States had evolved further towards a philosophy of

cemetery design which might most appropriately be
called a "park" cemetery . The new "cemetery beautiful"
exponents wished to curtail the use of iron-railed plots
(such as the joint Strachan-Robinson site at Toronto's St .
James) and the tall headstones which so characterized the
garden cemetery . Preferring name plates embedded flat
into the ground, these planners designed sweeping parklike vistas . A somewhat unconvinced public, not to
mention monument manufacturers, resisted the demise of
upstanding monuments and therefore the complete
realization of a "natural" scene, but the general design
features sought by these landscape architects are well laid
out in parts of Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery . The
entire park movement was, in fact, wrapped up with the
growth of professionalism in cemetery superintendence
and wedded as well to the nineteenth-century paradigms
of efficiency and progress . Strong links with the "city
beautiful" movement in the period 1880-1920 might be
suggested . ;
New Canadian cemeteries were behind, but not fu
behind, British and American rural cemetery models .
Canadians faced similar problems . The cities of midnineteenth-century Ontario, for example, might not have
rivalled the number and sizes of their American or British
counterparts, but places like Toronto, Kingston and
London also faced difficulties of overcrowding, commercial clamour for land, and public concern over the health
hazard . Canadians, as well, read British and American
literature on the subject ; in addition, because the garden
and park cemeteries were considered showpieces, many
Canadians had visited celebrated American and British
cemeteries when travelling abroad .`'
In fact, changing modes and attitudes toward burial in
Ontario can be considered as a reflection of the province's
degree of urbanization . In the cemeteries of Ontario one

sees an evolution from the predominance of religious and

"communal" cemeteries, towards the ascendency of the
cemetery beautiful as an ideal . Originally the buryingground was organically part of the social and geographic
landscape in early Ontario communities, rural and urban .
From the growing cities, however, emerged the beautification movement, which at core and from both private
and public inspiration, encouraged the formation of nondenominational, well-planned and strictly kept-up
cemeteries . Disgust or dismay was often expressed over
the state of existing country burying-grounds by those
who expounded the establishment of more of the
"beautyspots that mark our non-sectarian cities of the
. . . ..
dead .
5 Although the creation of a cemetery park, to
which mid-Victorians often would walk for a Sunday
outing or picnic, provided another amenity for the town,
and certainly helped to sustain local florists in business,
not everyone thought that the change had enhanced a
sense of community :

Since it has become the custom in Kingston to

desert the city cemeteries and to carry the honoured
dead to the far-off Cataraqui Cemetary [sic] beyond
Waterloo, it has become quite an irksome task for
persons, and relatives, wishing to pay respect to the
family of the deceased, to follow the funeral cortege
so far - more particularly as it envolves [sic] the
expense of a hired carriage . The consequence is that
funerals are not now so generally well attended as
heretofore ; but were it the universal etiquette, as it
is the partial practice, to accompany the corpse as
far as the limits of the city only, and were such an
accompaniment considered fully satisfactory, the
Canadian custom of large and long walking
funerals would again be in vogue . We threw out
this hint, hoping to see it followed up by observance . Let friends and acquaintance follow the dead
on foot to the limits of the city, and thence let
blood relations and intimate friends of the deceased
carry his body to the distant Grave Yard and see it
decently interred .6

By their very nature, early Ontario burying-grounds

left few records . Documentation of them is in part dependent on critical perceptions by the exponents of garden
cemeteries and by public health officials . Nonetheless,
records of at least two rural cemetery companies of Old
Ontario have survived .7 These records reveal that
although the winds of change did blow through rural
Ontario, they had little impact on small communities .
Not surprisingly it would only really be in the larger cities
that fresh ideas about cemeteries took firm hold .
The Burgoyne Cemetery Company of Arran Township
in Bruce County was founded in 1877, during the middle
stages of the beautification movement; still, it remained
immune therefrom and may be regarded as a traditional
communal burying-ground . There was a friendly quality
to the activities of those who participated in the running
and upkeep of places like the Burgoyne Cemetery . When
the original sale of stock in 1877 raised insufficient
working capital,
[$250] was borrowed on the personal security of
the Directors . . . It was found that the normal
receipts of the company would not be sufficient to
wipe out this liability[ .] at the commencement of
1885 the Barrowed [sic] liability was $124 inclusive of interest[ .] it was resolved to hold a Swoiree
[sic] in Knoxs [tic] Church and it proved to be most
successful[,] sufficient money being raised not only
only to wipe out the Borrowed liability but also to
redeem the Stock unrepresented by Land . . ."

The Burgoyne Cemetery was kept by a traditional rural

means, the bee, as the company's 1909 minutes tell us :
Moved by Alex Esplen seconded by Geo Esplen
that a bee be called for the 25th day of June for the

purpose of straightening up stones in cemetery and

repairing fence . . . . 9

Indeed, as late as 1942 the Burgoyne Cemetery was still

very different from the "groomed" cemeteries which had
sprung up around the cities ; in that year "A bee was held
in cemetery and grass cut after which Annual meeting was
held ."' o
The Norwich Cemetery Company, located in a larger,
more settled community, sheds further light on the nature
and limits of the beautification movement's impact .
Although its directors were aware that the ideal cemetery
was cultivated, planned and attractive, they had only
mixed success in achieving these goals. In 1882, they
attempted to control the location and types of trees that
might be planted in cemetery plots ." In 1889 they made
the first arrangements for regular grass cutting, ' Z and in
1898 they "inserted in the local paper, a notice forbiding
[sic] bicycle riding in the Cemetery ."' 3 Despite their
partial awareness that the ideal cemetery was aesthetically
appealing, they still decided to raise a barbed wire fence
around the grounds in 1896 .'4
The directors were scarcely less successful as business
managers . The interment of bodies in lots not wholly paid
for was at first permitted, resulting in many disputes . On
1 February 1869 it was resolved and carried
. . .that all persons having taken up Lots in the
Cemetery grounds and [having] used them and not
having paid for them that they be duly notified that
unless paid within three months from the twentieth instant that the bodies which are interred will
be removed to the potters field and the lots resold . ls

Twenty-four years later, on 12 May 1893, the directors

were still threatening to "evict" some lot owners and
several bodies, but by January 1894 they had retreated
from their socially unacceptable threats and were
16 In January 1915,
arranging schedules for repayment .
the directors were informed by a local undertaker that the
caretaker was incompetent and "crooked," trying often to
"soak" people for more than the regulation price for
17
digging a grave.
Although the need for a perpetuity
fund, an essential factor in maintaining a cemetery's
appearance, had been recognized as early as the 1880s, it
still did not exist in 1915 . The Norwich Cemetery at the
opening of the First World War remained a fairly typical,
haphazardly maintained, small-town burial-ground .
The country and small-town cemeteries of Old Ontario
tended to have a strong denominational element. Even
major cemeteries in cities and towns often were connected
to a church . Burgoyne Cemetery was in all likelihood an
outgrowth of the Presbyterian community of Arran

Township, as evidenced by frequent references in the

records to Knox Church . Mount Pleasant Cemetery in
London was begun by prominent businessmen from St .
Andrew's Presbyterian Church . London's Woodland
Cemetery is actually run by St . Paul's Cathedral; the
Board of Directors includes elected members from the
cathedral as well as a church warden, the rector and the
dean . The Norwich Cemetery had at least strong informal
ties to the Anglican community ; after 1877, those buried
in the "Episcopal burying-ground" were allowed to be reinterred at no charge in the potter's field of the new
18
cemetery .

non-sectarian cemeteries were always larger and had a

greater net acreage: twenty-eight per cent of the religious
cemeteries and forty-one per cent of the non-sectarian
cemeteries were larger than two acres. Even among
cemeteries over ten acres, only eight of twenty-one were
not attached to a church . Two things should be kept in
mind : first, the region in question had only four substantial urban areas, Ottawa, Kingston, Cornwall and
Brockville, and second, even those who might have
moved to a city would still often choose to be buried in the
country churchyard in the rural community that still
represented the "family home ."

Useful in determining the religiosity surrounding

death in Ontario is a document in the Board of Health's
records . 19 This report by a district officer of health, dating
from March 1922, enumerates the number, size, and
ownership of nearly all cemeteries in District V, comprising the eleven eastern Ontario counties of Frontenac,
Carleton, Prescott and Russell, Renfrew, Stormont,
Dundas, Glengarry, Lennox and Addington, Leeds,
Grenville, and Lanark . The following table, compiled
from this report, demonstrates the extent to which death
and burial remained an overwhelmingly religious event :

Nevertheless, while death and the act of interment

were strongly religious, the beautification movement
challenged the sectarian aspect of burial . This was perhaps
an outgrowth of the greater degree of "rational" city
planning increasingly present from the mid-nineteenth
century on . Rather than having dozens, if not hundreds,
of small churchyards spread throughout and around the
city, taking up valuable land and presenting a serious
public health problem, what could have made more sense
than to bury all denominations in one spacious location
outside the populated area? This desire, combined with
the Christian spiritual need and social impulse to assert
the eternity of the soul when that became threatened by
"scientism," found expression in Ontario just as it did in
Boston or England .

Type

Size (acres)

Attached
to a

church

Family

and

private

Secular
and

non-private'"

Total

0-2
2+-5
5+- IO
10+-50
50+
Nosizegiven

304
71
13
11
2
24

33
1
0
0
0
7

68
22
8
7
I
10

405
94
21
18
3
41

Total

425

41

116

582

While the garden cemetery represented a degree of

secularization in that it discouraged burial in the ill-kept
churchyards, the new, beautiful cemeteries were not
without religious backing, a factor that might indicate
adaptation by Ontario's churches both to the changing
religious nature of the province and to Victorian sensibilities about the place of death in life . In Brockville, the
degrees and progression of community adaptation are
singularly visible . The "Old Catholic Cemetery" became
enclosed first by a Protestant, and then, on the north side
of present-day Highway 2, by a large non-sectarian
cemetery ; in 1893 a new Catholic cemetery was created
near these three cemeteries and not on the grounds at the
host parish of St . Francis Xavier Church . Ontario's first
truly beautiful cemetery, the Cataraqui cemetery, commenced in 1850 near Kingston, with its sweeping, well
laid out paths and roads marked by such picturesque
names as Fern Path and Clover Path, was labelled as
"Protestant" in the 1922 Board of Health inventory of all
cemeteries in District V .Z Above all, whatever antisectarian claims are to be found for the beautification
movement, it can be safely stated that it arose from Protestant Ontario.

Community, public, cemetery co ., etc.

Fully five per cent of the cemeteries mentioned in this

report were religious and of a size less than two acres ;
seventy-three per cent were connected to a church . By far
the majority therefore must have been in churchyards .
While this statistic might not be entirely representative of
the province as a whole, because of the above-average
Catholic population of the district and because of the
propensity of Catholics to avoid non-denominational
burying-grounds (any perusal of burial registers will confirm this), it is still sufficiently representative to permit
the conclusion that the movement for non-sectarian,
beautiful cemeteries must have been a relatively recent
addition to Ontario's culture of death . Only twenty per
cent of the burial-grounds were of the extra-religious
types : public, municipal, owned by a cemetery company,
or a "community" ground . Thus one cannot argue that the

London's Mount Pleasant is an excellent example of

how the beautification movement was functional in
permitting the principle of church involvement in death

16

and burial to adapt itself to the growing cities . As a 1955

pamphlet tells us,
By 1875 the needs of the growing city of London
for burial space could no longer be met by the
churchyard cemeteries . A group of citizens, representing nearly all the Protestant churches in the
city, decided that a large cemetery was necessary to
provide burial facilities for all faiths . In July,
1875, they picked a beautiful height of land overlooking the city as the most desirable location in
the area . 21
Woodland and Mount Pleasant Cemeteries in London,
like most beautiful cemeteries, embodied this transitional
religious aspect : they had formal and informal links with
churches, but labelled themselves as non-denominational .
Although Woodland was controlled by St . Paul's Cathedral (Anglican) in London, all faiths were allowed to bury
there .ZZ Mount Pleasant, while integrated into the
general Protestant community (as Cataraqui must have
been in Kingston), proclaimed itself as non-denominational :

The Mount Pleasant Cemetery Company of

London . . .was organized in July, 1875, with the
object of providing for the public a suitable and
attractive burial place, free from any denominational or sectarian character, where friends of the
departed might feel at liberty to use any form of
burial service they may choose, and where all
clergymen would be equally free to officiate .2i

Toronto was more denominationally diverse than other

Ontario cities and had larger problems regarding questions of the death of paupers, indigents and travellers . The
establishment of potter's field, or the "Stranger's BurialGround" as it was called by Toronto businessman Thomas
Carfrae and others, was a giant step towards secularization . Interments here, at the northwest corner of what is
now Bloor and Yonge streets, began in 1826 and nearly
seven thousand were made before the press of population
forced re-interment elsewhere by 1855 . Potter's field was
a civic-minded project, a non-sectarian and non-profit
organization, but, although graced with a fence, a small
mortuary and a decorated entrance, it was little more than
a field bordering on the city limits . It did, however, act as
a forerunner for the establishment of the first real garden
cemeteries of Toronto - those of the Toronto General
Burying Grounds Trust- the Necropolis (1850), with its
serene and shady view of the Don Valley, and Mount
Pleasant (1871), skilfully laid out and superintended by
the Cincinatti-trained and experienced landscape
gardener H . A. Engelhardt . A sectarian claim to an early
beautiful cemetery in the city, however, might be made
by the Anglican-affiliated St . James Cemetery, designed
by Toronto architect John G . Howard in 1844 . Toronto,

without question, would be the enduring focus of the

garden cemetery for Ontario, and because of the city's
size, its cemeteries would exhibit the cultural manifesta24
tions shown in large American and British centres.
The maintenance of an attractive and pleasant physical
appearance was, of course, a central theme in the beautification movement . Dismay over the run-down churchyard
or the less than beautiful rural burying-ground was
general . As was declared in a 1925 promotional pamphlet
for the Toronto General Burying Grounds,
One of the problems which the management of any
cemetery has to consider is that of the proper upkeep of it after it is filled, or after revenue for any
reason ceases to be received from it . Nothing is
more melancholy than the sight of some
cemeteries, neglected and decaying, and unfortu25
nately this sight is by no means rare .

There is ample evidence that cemeteries pre-dating the

beautification movement were becoming eyesores and the
objects of public concern and disgust . As D .A .
McClenohan, District Officer of Health for District V,
informed Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health in
1922,
. . .rougly one-third of the cemeteries are in bad
condition, and there would be many more in like
condition were it not for the activities of the
Women's Institute particularly in the rural
districts . It is difficult in many cases to locate the
.116
owners of cemeteries[

London's Mount Pleasant sought to remove the fear that

one's own remains or those of loved ones would go
neglected after a few years. A perpetual-care scheme was
discussed and adopted as early as 1878, "to make provision for the care of. . .lots for all future time, so that all
sections might be uniform in neatness and beauty ." Five
dollars would buy perpetual care, and an obligatory fifty
cents annual charge was Imposed on all lot holders who
27 Toronto's Necropolis,
did not opt into the scheme .
while "not originally laid out [in the 1850s} under the
perpetual care plan," adopted one as its necessity for the
28
maintenance of an attractive cemetery became evident .
London's Woodland established a sinking fund into which
all permanent-care charges were deposited . This fund
provided for grass cutting and cleaning up of plots "for all
29
time ."
Important in the beautification movement was the
notion of a rural sepulchre-burial beyond the city limits .
This expressed both the romantic streak in the Victorian
celebration of death and the more simple desire not to have
the dead on one's doorstep . In 1876 those in charge of
Toronto's Mount Pleasant announced that

During the last few years . . .a great change has

taken place in the public sentiment of our community . It is not now necessary to urge the manifold
evils of intramural interment, or to present and
portray the immense advantages of rural sepulture .

the proposal . To the people of the district, it

sounds outrageous to even suggest locating a
cemetery anywhere in the vicinity of the Britannia
Height district, as it is a beautiful residential
locality in which hundreds have invested for home
sites . You can readily understand, therefore, how
seriously the property would be affected if a
cemetery were located rhere ."

Although many of these early beautiful cemeteries have

now been swallowed up by the cities that created them,
they were all originally situated just outside the cities .
Not only was this viewed as desirable, it was required by
law . 3 1

At a public meeting, the major objections to the proposed

cemetery were aired : funerals taking place near one's
residence, depreciation of property by up to one third, the
hazard to health, and the fact that children would have to
pass the cemetery on the way to school .34 What a stark
contrast this represents to the earlier attitudes towards
burial and death, as exemplified so simply in the
Burgoyne Cemetery Company, where the buryingground was an organic aspect of the community, it being
the duty of all to see to its upkeep .

By the First World War attitudes towards cemeteries

were changing again. The park movement, which had
seen the creation of a few new cemeteries before the war
and the park-like development of new sections of older,
established cemeteries, was now firmly favoured by
professional cemetery supervisors . But the park movement could also be considered to have contributed to what
some scholars have called the dying of death in the period
of the First World War. The physical evidences of death,
such as they were, in the form of headstones for example,
were missing from the park cemetery, the design of which
presented an elaborately contrived visage which served to
heighten the conflicting tensions inherent in the
Victorian attraction to and repulsion from death . There
was supposedly little to remind the visitor of death at all.
Clearly the modern attitude towards death, an event more
to be endured than celebrated and usually an occurrence
entirely removed from the home into the impersonal
settings of hospital rooms and old age homes, followed by
funeral parlour rather than parish church services, was
taking hold .

In the Christian tradition, the soul never dies, only the

body . At a time when this was generally accepted, the
immortality of the soul was seldom asserted . But once the
dominance of this Christian theology was questioned, as
happened as the province industrialized and urbanized,
the ideology was asserted more and more aggressively .
What distinguishes the beautification movement from
the cemeteries of Old Ontario is not the degree to which
death was seen as a religious event, but the general socioeconomic context in which the culture of death was
unrolling . In the pre-beautiful burying-grounds, it was
not as necessary to assert one's presumed immortality with
one of the ten-foot obelisk headstones which can still be
seen today in the province's early beautiful cemeteries ;
rather, the immortality of the soul was never challenged .
The assertion of death and of immortality emerged only as
the province secularized ; but one must never accuse the
beautiful cemeteries of being secular, only of being nonsectarian.

Although rural sepulchre might have been in part a

romantic Victorian vision, by the twentieth century there
was also a nascent dislike of living near cemeteries that
must have contributed to the exile of the burying-grounds
to the city limits . They were health hazards, but they also
depressed the value of surrounding real estate . Such sentiments evidently formed the basis of opposition to the
establishment of a cemetery in Britannia Heights, just
outside Ottawa, but too close for the liking of the wealthy
suburbanites in whose midst the cemetery was to be
placed . A petition in opposition was submitted to the
District Officer of Health, who was legally required to
advise on the suitability of the location for the purposes of
interment. One sheet was even reserved for objectors,
who, in 1922, possessed over $75,000 in real estate . In
all, there were eighty objectors . 32 The President of the
Britannia Ratepayers' Association sought the Chief
Medical Officer of Health's support in preventing the
establishment of the cemetery :

Sectarian religion was not necessarily the dominant

context for death in the nineteenth century . Changes in
attitude towards death resulted, as is shown by the evolution of cemetery design, even more substantially from the
impact of growing urbanization . It is this urban context,
the early development of the anonymous industrial and
multi-service city, and the threats therein contained for
established familial and social patterns, that should reveal
the real relationship of death to Victorian Ontario society .
Likewise, because of the enormous intrinsic and symbolic
importance of death to Victorian society, no study of
urban industrialization can be considered complete without addressing questions of death, including, through
cemetery study, the disposal of its detritus and the
creation of its public reminders .

We sincerely trust that you will refuse to sanction

18

Evolving Cemeteries : A Portfolio

Photo : B . I3owden

St . Peter's Cemetery

The mid-Victorian ideal remained the parish churchyard within sight of the place of worship . St . Peter's Cemetery in the
Talbot Settlement at Tyrconnell overlooking Lake Erie is a good example, showing extended family plots, changing styles
in monuments, and the adjacent interments of three generations . (Col . Thomas Talbot lies beneath the prominent flat
stone in the foreground .)

Frequently the small rural cemetery became a forelorn and

desolate remainder by the roadside . Fate was even less
kind to Toronto's first civic burial place, potter's field, at
the corner of Bloor and Yonge streets. An evocative
reminder of both fates is shown in this 1948 picture of a
memorial, taking its name from Toronto's potter's field,
which marked the burial mound of German labourers on
the road between Cobourg and Peterborough .

Photo : Archives of Ontario, S90 I

St . Thomas's Church

Photo : R . liuwclen
In smaller, well-settled towns, the transPlanted English churchyard exemplified the

integral role Of the church in the community .

Local residents still term this Anglican
Church in St . Thomas "the old English
church ." It dates from 1822 and was altered in
1824 . Although more crowded than St .
Peter's, Tyrconnell, new burials still occur .

In the cities, however, land pressure inade the

I'deal of the parish Churchyard Unreal Izable . St .
Michael's Cemetery, established in 1856 near
Yonge Street and St . Clair Avenue in Toronto,
is far from the downtown cathedral .The parish
cemetery, built outside the city, has the charm
of age but not of tile churchyard . Its spikey
verticality in irregular rows is an excellent
example of the visage which litter garden and
park cemeteries wished to transform .

St . Michael's Cemetery

Photo : B . Bowden

20

Many small towns were not endowed with large

churchyards . Such was the case for the 1810 Quaker
settlement at Norwich in Oxford County . The initial
gravesite was replaced by the Quakers with a picturesque
country burial-ground and meeting-house (demolished in
1946) . The solution for the rest of the town was the
Norwich Cemetery Company, located on the south bank
of a stream, two blocks from the main intersection . The
town has spread around the commodius burial-ground ;
the barbed wire fence is gone, and large monuments,
although present, do not assault the horizon . Whereas St .
Michael's Cemetery is given a claustrophobic, Iiemmed-in

atmosphere by its monuments (let alone by the city's

nearby towers) and became too small almost in one
generation, this community plot suggests continuity,
security, space and a relaxed atmosphere . The picture also
suggests why this intermediate stage between the
churchyard and the garden cemetery was aesthetically
wanting to Victorian cemetery designers .

Norwich Cemetery

Woodland Cemetery

Photo : B . Qowden

Photo : Regional Room, D .B . Wcldon Library, University of Western Ontario, Postcard Collection, 1912 .

London's Woodland Cemetery (at times mistakenly called Woodlawn) is more formal, possesses burial sections, a
crernatorium and chapel, and at one time this attractive gate, featured on postcards, through which visitors entered when
arriving by boat along the Thames River. (The gate has since been demolished and the river entrance blocked off.)

Toronto's Necropolis still possesses the handsomest

cemetery gate and chapel in the province . Although not
designed by a landscape architect, the interior views are in
keeping with the churchyard atmosphere which the
chapel's architect, Henry Langley, in 1B7?, had sought to
evoke . Not only do modern photos show the continuing
success of this goal, but this turn-of-the-century view
demonstrates how the Necropolis was the perfect restful
and romantic garden with a horse-drawn, plumed hearse
in attendance .

I~I~III'III~I

Necropolis view, c . 1900

Gateway to the Necropolis

Photo : Archives of Ontario, ST I i i

Photo : B . Bowden

The garden cemetery was the place where Victorian Ontario's celebration of death was most perfectly portrayed - where the
living and the dead co-mingled comfortably as exemplified by a striking 1890s photograph from St . James' Cemetery in
Toronto .

St . James' Cemetery, c . 1900

Photo : Archives of Ontario, ST 97

LONDON MEMORIAL PARK

TF, (,m.v.n Be .nivl

INVITES INSPECTION

No 6w.
No
.lunsnnn.
NaMonw .cM,
fo p,"rcMw o"

WuMn AncF
nl All

P.v ..""r. io Le
m.dv da.~ eo
T6 . C.n .d.
T- . Ce .
T"anee

." ke~ aoa

dm o.lv "_+~

London Memorial Park

Photo : Regional Room,
CJniversitv of Western Ontario,
Pamphlet Collection

Wde< le"
n.uon; ~ .dl
91,d1v
<m,Fed irc..

MIRROR LAKE
LUND()h' MEF9OR1 .1L PARK

/),In, not till lonorro :c lo be eci.to",

Tonuirroec's .rum to Ihee mar ot.cv~ rire. ~ erc ~
Add-, kq-K . to " " London Memorial Park
Limited

PHONE METCALF 7681

604 BELL TELEPHOW BUILDING. LONDON

The Necropolis and St . James did not adopt the rigid decorative artificiality of the American park cemeteries . However,
the proposed fountains, ponds, memorial walls and temples which were displayed and extolled in the advertising for the
London Memorial Park in 193() offer a glimpse of the elaborate denial of death which was an intrinsic component of the
cemetery park conception .

NOTES
l . This article is based upon research funded by the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council . The authors wish to thank
David Fraser and Janet Trimble for their invaluable assistance in
the preparation of this paper. See also the authors' article "The
Impact of Death : An Historical Archival Reconnaissance into
Victorian Ontario," Archivaria, 14 (Summer 1982), pp . 93-105 .
2 . A good introduction to this topic is provided in Stanley French,

20 . Ibid ., "The Act of Incorporation of the Cataraqui Cemetery Co .,"

AO, Pamphlets, 1854, no . 21 .
21 . "Regulations : Mount Pleasant Cemetery," 1955, UWO.
22 . "Rules & Regulations . . . of Woodland Cemetery," St . Paul's
Anglican Cathedral's Cemetery Register, intro. sheet, UWO.
23 . "The Mount Pleasant Cemetery Company of London, Ontario,"
leaflet, microfilm, 1877, UWO .
24 . York Commercial Directory, Street Guide, and Register, 1833-4 (York :

"The Cemetery as Cultural Institution : The Establishment of

Mount Auburn and the'Rural Cemetery' Movement," in David E .
Stannard, ed ., Death in America (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1975), pp. 69-97 .
3 . See James J. Farrell, Inventing the American T'cry of Death, 15301920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982), pp . 99 ff.

1833), p~ 131, AO, Microfilm B-70 Series D-S, Reel 2. See also
Elizabeth Hancocks, ed ., Potter's FieldCenietery (Agincourt, Ont. :
Generation Press, 1983), intro., and Pleasance Crawford, "1-I .A .
Engelhardt (1830-1897) : Landscape Designer," in Landscape
Architectural Review (July 1984), pp . 30-38 .

4 . See "An Act to Authorize the Formation of Companies for the

Establishment and Management of Cemeteries in Upper Canada,"
Provincial Statutes of Canada, 13 & 14 Vic., Chap . 76, p. 1414 .
5 . Augustus Bridle, "The Veterans' Burial Plot, Prospect Cemetery,
Toronto" (Toronto : Trustees of the Toronto General Burying
Grounds, 1921), p. 7, Archives of Ontario, (hereafter AO),
Pamphlets, 1921, no . 21 .

25 . "Public Cemeteries of Toronto," p . 25, AO, Pamphlets, 1925,

no . 66 .

7. The Burgoyne Cemetery Company of Arran Township in Bruce

County, and the Norwich Cemetery Company, in the Regional
Room, D.B . Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario,
(hereafter UWO) .

Regulations pp . 5, ff, AO, Pamphlets, 1914, no . 55 .

29 . "Rules & Regulations . . . of Woodland Cemetery," p. 18, UWO.
30 . "Rules and Regulations of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery,
Toronto, . Ontario," p . 4, AO, Pamphlets, 1876, no . 12 .
31 . "An Act to Authorize the Formation of Companies for the
Establishment and Management of Cemeteries in Upper Canada,"
13 & 14 Vic., Chap . 76, no . 1414, Provincial Statutes (if Canada,
1850, Vol. 111 . "Whereas it has become necessary to the health of
many towns in Upper Canada that Public Cemeteries should be
established near to, but without the limits of the said towns upon
the plan now adopted by the Inhabitants of many of the cities in

26 . DOH Reports, D.A . McClenohan, no . 159, March 1922, and

J .J . Fraser, DOH District 11, no . 25, 7 March 1922, AO, RG I(l,
1-B-2-a, Box 455.
27 . Notice, "Mount Pleasant Cemetery Company of London,
Ontario," 2 May 1878, UWO .
28 . The Trustees of the Toronto General Burying Grounds, Rules and

6 . The Weekly British Whig, Kingston, 27 April 1860, p . 1 .

8 . Records, "Minutes Burgoyne Cemetery Co .," Introduction, UWO .

9 . Ibid ., I June 1909 .
10 . Ibid ., 17 June 1942 .

11 . Norwich Cemetery Company, "Minutes," 16 January 1882,

UWO.
12 . Ibid ., 28 June 1889 .
13 . Ibid ., 16 June 1898 .
14 . Ibid ., 30 June 1896 .
15 . Ibid ., I February 1869 .
16 . Ibid ., 12 May 1893 ; 15 January 1894 .
17 . Ibid ., 14 June 1915 ; 18 January 1915 .
18 . Ibid ., 15 January 1877 .
19 . Department of Health (DOH) Reporrs, P.J . Moloney, District V,
no . 264, AO, RG 10, 1-B-2-a .

Europe and America. . . ."

32 . "Petition against a Cemetery on Britannia Heights," DOI-I
Reports, P.J Maloney, District V, no . 261, 25 March 1922, AO,
RG 10, I-B-2-a, Box 456 .
33 . Ibid ., President of the Britannia Ratepayers' Association to
J.W .S . McCullough, Chief MOH, 15 February 1922 .

34 . Ibid ., "Meeting held March 3, 1922 ."

24

The Transformation of the Traditional Newfoundland

Cemetery: Institutionalizing the Secular Dead
Gerald L. Pocius
ResumelAbstract
Le choix de l'enplacemett des premiers cimetieres crees ia Terre-Neuve obeissait a diffirentes traditions locales, notamment: qtte le mort soit
inhume sur tene colline sttrplombant la mer et sitttee au sein du village . Avec l'arrivee du clerge au XIX` siecle et sous l'inflnence des monventents de reforme des cimetieres dans les grands centres urbains, les villages de pecheurs ntodifierent l'enaplacentettt des lietix d'inhttntatiott . De
nouveaux cimetieres fitrent cries, a l'Wart de l'eglise nettve ou en ntarge des lieux habites . Par aillettrs, certaines confessions consacrerent les
lieux d'inhtentation, inrposant des regles strictes quant a lettr usage. Mais, plutot qtre de placer les cintetieres sons la domination totale de
1'Eglise, ces interdits donnerent naissance a de nouvelles traditions locales esoteriques. Qrroiqire d'irn point de vne spatial, les morts aient ete
mis a l'icart de la commuttattti et soient passes sotu l'atttorite institutionnelle de l'tglise, les habitants rettssirent a considerer le cinretiere de
jaf on a conserver des liens personnels avec leurs morts.
The siting of the earliest cemeteries in Newfoundland communities was influenced by a number oflocal traditions : that the dead be buried
on a hill, overlook the ocean, and be located in the midst of the community itself. With the arrival of clergy in the nineteenth century, and
influenced by the cemetery refornz movement in major urban centres, the location of the place of burial in the outport community changed. Netu
cemeteries were created, either outside the immediate vicinity of the recently constructed church, or beyond the bounds ofthe living spaces ojthe
community. As avell, some denominations designated these spaces as sacred by consecrating then, thereby initiating strict rules as to who could
be buried there. instead of bringing the place ofburial under complete church control, however, these requirements fostered a netv set of esoteric
local traditions . While spatially the dead had been removed from the community and placed under religious institutional control, local
residents still managed to regard the cemetery in ways that maintained a personal link with the dead.

During the summer of 1848 the Anglican bishop of

Newfoundland, Edward Field, visited many of the
scattered communities that lay within his charge, sailing
along the south and west coasts of the island, as well as
coastal Labrador . ' Field preached, distributed Holy
Communion, and celebrated Confirmation for these residents, who at the time rarely saw a clergyman, let alone a
church leader . As well, he performed one other important
religious function - he consecrated community
cemeteries . Z Field's desire to officially sanction the places
for the burial of the dead was not an isolated concern ;
indeed, the early nineteenth century in western Europe
and other parts of North America saw an increasing
obsession with the entire issue of planning and regulation
of cemeteries . Religious and civic leaders became more
and more desirous of imposing some kind of spatial order
on the places where people were buried, wrestling with
local practices and attitudes, until the norms of rationality
would hopefully prevail over local custom and belief. Such
a trend seems to be the case in rural Newfoundland .
Throughout the many small communities of outport
Newfoundland, the cemetery has seen a change in what
were considered the norms of spatial appropriateness that
governed it since the earliest years of use. Residents of
European origin, either summer fishermen or permanent

settlers, obviously buried their dead in this New World

outpost as early as the seventeenth century, yet
documented places of burial usually date - using the surviving gravestones as evidence-from not much before the
mid-eighteenth century .' A series of cemeteries is still
evident today in most communities, a group that in its
spatial chronology mirrors the transformation of social
attitudes toward burial spaces in each place . The basis for
the comments in this study on spatial chronology come
primarily from a survey of cemeteries conducted during
the summer of 1974 in two areas of the province : the
Southern Shore South of St . John's, which includes communities between Petty Harbour and Cappahayden; and
the communities of western Conception Bay between
Harbour Grace and Holyrood . Both areas had seen settlement from the early seventeenth century, with Europeans
migrating from southwest England and Southeast Ireland .
This geographic sample has been supplemented by field
work over the last twelve years on the Bonavista Peninsula," Codroy Valley, and Southern Labrador, as well as by
documentary materials from the Newfoundland Archives"
and the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore
and Language Arch ive.5 The same spatial transformations
that occurred in these surveyed communities obviously
went on in urban centres like St . John's ; in these centres
documentary sources are richer, but actual landscape

e v'ideilce is rriore difficult to find because the need for

sound of the sea - just across from the 'pond' when

the boats dock . Most of the older people were
fishermen and would have liked to remain near th(
c
sea .

living space has often obliterated early traces of cemetery

patterns .

The changing forms of the traditional cemetery in the

Newfoundland community are moulded by one very
important factor . Although most outport communities
examined in this current study had settlers living there
since at least the seventeenth century, most did not have
resident clergymen until the nineteenth century . Thus,
the form that earlier cemeteries took was strictly determined by local practices, rather than by the powerful
persuasion of any theologically tinged clergy . Early
cemeteries that can still be seen today, therefore, were
burial places spatially situated without the hand of
organized religion to point the way .

Women who spent long hours working in the fishery had a

similar desire, according to several reports, to be buried
where thev could see the water.

The earliest cemeteries, used roughly from around

1750 to 1850, were influenced in their spatial location by
attention to three concerns : they be situated on a higher
level of ground ; they be in sight of some important locus
of human activity ; and they be near the community .
Early cemeteries were situated attentive to a belief that
the dead ultimately retain some personal concerns that
they had while living . In most instances, this meant
burial in a cemetery that overlooked the sea . Certainly, in
many cases, it would almost be impossible that anything
other than this might be the case, since the entire outport

Fig . ? . Witless Bay cemeter)

was oriented towards the water (figs . 1 and Z) . However,

there are certainly reports that the selection of such a
cemetery site was intentional, and that the wishes of the
dead were quite clear in this regard . For example, a resident of Branch, St . Mary's Bay, reported that :
Many older people say the graveyard must be where
the dead can see the boats come in from fishing .
The old graveyard is situated within sight and

Fig . 1 . Early cemetery in Tors Cove, located on a high cliff at

the edge of the harbour .

It.

f ,

\ "-

' i 3'

'100;'

Fig . 3 . Early nineteenth-century cemetery in Brigus

Besides this desire to locate a cemetery in view of the

ocean, many early cemeteries were also situated on hills.
This may simply be explained by the fact that Newfoundland communities are often located on hilly ground (fig .
3) . As well, such land was possibly not considered useful
for ordinary purposes such as for gardens or to dry fish .
Yet, the cemetery was often put on a point of ground that
was high even in relation to the rest of the land in the
community . Obviously, this practice draws on the long
Western tradition of a preference for hilltop burials' and
may also have had more local influences .
Cemeteries in Newfoundland were likely placed on
hilltops because of the damp climate; the grave could
become filled with water even after burial was completed .
There are reports of graves having to be bailed out before
they were used," and placing a coffin in a grave filled with
water was certainly considered a sign of disrespect .

Fig . 5 .

Early

Grace

Roman

Catholic

burial-ground

in

H,u

Of all the values and concerns revealed by the study of

older cemeteries one stands out : burial was believed to
most appropriately take place in the midst of the living . In
all the surveyed communities, the earliest site for burials
was almost always in a cemetery contiguous to the actual
living spaces (figs . 4 and 5) . In certain instances, this

involved a series of scattered family or neighbourhood

burial plots (fig . G) . More frequently, however, it took the
form of a single cemetery, in some cases, where people of
different denominations were buried . The cemetery
usually was in full view of daily community activity,
situated in a prominent place that visually spoke of the ongoing presence of the dead in normal life ."

Fig . 6 . Burial-ground in Sandy Cove, neai

places in atiomalous spaces, places not in the midst of
community file . These "cemeteries," whether thev were
reall)? used for burials is often unclear, are not considered
as an appropriate location for the dead ; they are said to
contain the remains of those who died under unusual
circumstances - ship\vreck or epidemic - or to be Indian
burial-grounds . '' Located in remote coves or on hillsides
quite removed from the community, these cemeteries
have no markers to give evidence of burials ; depressions in
the earth are often pointed out as proof of burials .

Fig . 4 . Tors Cove cemetery, overlooking both the ocean and

the community . The upright of a cemetery cross is at
the left .

These centrally located cemeteries, often on a hill overlooking the water, obviously had become the accepted
spatial locus for burial in the early years of Newfoundland
permanent settlement . Local traditions report burial

The first half of the nineteenth century, the time when

the early cemeteries in outport communities were being
used, saw a movement throughout the British Isles and
North America of what is often referred to as the "rural
cemetery movement ." Spurred on by landscape reformers
like J .C . Loudon, and an increasing compulsion for
hygiene in all areas of life, there was a growing concern
that cemeteries were becoming overcrowded, that they
were endangering the health of residents who lived
nearby, and that they should be more closely regulated in
spaces away from residential areas .'' Largely an urban

phenomenon, cities such as London, Boston and Toronto

developed new burying-grounds that could follow what
were considered these more hygienic norms. ' Newfoundland certainly was not untouched by this
movement . A growing concern over the state of
cemeteries in St . John's is evident in a series of articles
Published in local newspapers that described the reform
measures taken by some cities to eliminate buryinggrounds from the midst of the living . Excerpts of accounts
from British publications describing the major reforms
that transformed a Glasgow cemetery into a park-like
setting, or the new cemetery built in Liverpool, obviously
were aimed at convincing St . John's readers to push for
similar reforms ." This movement in St . John's finally
culminated in "An Act to Prohibit Interments within the
Town of St . John's," which was passed in 1849, 1 -' forbidding burials within the city's limits and establishing
tour new cemeteries - two Roman Catholic establishments (Mount Carmel and Belvedere), one Anglican
(Forest Road), and one Dissenter (General Protestant)
(fig . 7) - outside the inhabited spaces . These new parklike settings were certainly quite Popular, for some city
residents obviously moved burials from their older
cemeteries to these spaces .

clergymen became permanently established in many communities, and all aspects of daily life became increasingly
under the purview of the representatives of official religion . Part of this regularization involved beliefs regarding
death and the burial place .
The St . John's landscape gradually evolved until the
early cemetery patterns disappeared ; today many early
cemeteries have been built over and are largely forgotten .
But the outport landscape still clearly shows the changes
burial places underwent through the nineteenth century .
The arrival of the permanent clergyman had a major
impact on the burial pattern in the outhort community .
Partly fueled by the rural cemetery movement, and partly
through a desire to impose order on all aspects of cornmunity life, in outport after outport this representative of the
church usually made sure that sorne control was Impose(]
on local mores . Numerous accounts remark on the life-

styles that offended the sensibilities of the educated I :uroPean . " One of the easiest aspects to bring tinder yuick
control was norms relating to the burial of the dead . With
Anglican and Methodist denominations, cemeteries were
usually created that surrottuded it newly built church
building . In most outhort communities, the time of
church construction can be determined quite readily from
the dates of the earliest gravestones located in the
churchyard outside . The establishment of the church was
linked with the creation of a churchyard ; the church
building surrounded by place of burial became one spatial
unit .

In Roman Catholic communities, a new burial-ground

was often situated at some distance from the settled areas
of the community . In the case of Petty Harbour, for
example, Bishop Fleming established a cemetery a mile or
so from the community, in Part out of concern for the perceived health hazards of a cemetery in the midst of the
living . "' All along the Southern Shore, ,I predominantly
Roman Catholic region, church-organized cemeteries are
found removed from the community, while the older
places of burial can still be seen nestled within living
areas .

Fig . 7 . General Protestant Cernetery, St . ./ohn's .

The reform movement that transformed the (cinctery

landsathe Of' St . John's, the I-)ushint ; of the Visible Iitndscal>es of death beyond the daily life of ordinary citizens,
coincided ~~~ith another major shift in Newfoundland
society, a shift that v~as Occurring primarily in the rural
areas outside the city . As the nincteenth centurv wore on,

However not only tile Roman Catholic denomination,

which obviously had less a concern about having a churchchurchyard shatial unit, created cemeteries away from tile
community . As the nineteenth century progressed, some
Anglican and Methodist churches (It(] not continually
expand their churchyard, in some cases, no doubt, because
contiguous land was not available . In these instances,
cemeteries were also created at the fringes of the community, again moving the dead Out of the realm ofdaily life .
This change in location was probably at times met with
some resistance, for it no longer permitted residents to
address the concerns of the dead, such as the desire to be
buried on a hilltop overlooking the water . One example
may be typical of many . In Pouch Cove, an Anglican

church was built around 1840, and burial in the churchyard replaced burial on a nearby hill overlooking the
water . In 1914, the clergyman decided to stop burials in
the churchyard since it was almost full, and started a new
burial-ground on a high hill overlooking the community .
Even before the churchyard was completely filled, some
residents were expressing a desire to be buried on this hill
rather than around the church . When questioned about
this, a resident recently explained :
But I'll tell you this much, that when they put the
cemetery up on the hill there's lots of people made
their wish before they died that if they, ah, that
when they died they wanted to be buried up on that
hill .

This feeling, hearkening back to the earlier spatial

pattern, was so intense that one woman decided she
wanted to be buried on this hill rather than with her
husband who had been interred several years before in the
churchyard .
The arrival of clergy meant one other important
element of regulation with regard to the burial of many of
the dead . The organized churches, following a long tradition, dictated that the actual place where people were
buried was sacred space, and a specific ritual was actually
conducted to consecrate the place of burial, conferring on
it this special status . Thus, cemeteries could be transformed only by a church official into this special category,
and once buried, the departed faithful would be incorporated into a sacred community of the dead under this
17
institutional control .
Along with this necessity to have officially sanctioned
places of sacred burial came an important corollary. Since
only the church had the power to consecrate the cemetery,
and thus had control over it, officials could determine who
would be permitted burial within its boundaries . The
unsanctified dead - those who had died in some socially
unacceptable way, such as suicides, murderers or unbaptized children, or those who were not considered
members of the particular religious group - were usually
prohibited from being buried in this consecrated ground,
denying them the necesai"y rites of incorporation into the
community of the dead . 1'
A report from the Bonavista Peninsula is a common
one:
Suicides or unbaptized children were not granted
burial in consecrated ground in the older days . I
learnt recently that our meadow in Maberly contains the grave of a tiny still-born child . In a garden
in Sandy Cove rests a poor Catholic woman . She
became insane and in her disturbed state slit her
wrists . In spite of the circumstances of her death
and the loneliness of the location of her grave, I

have never heard of anyone having "seen" her .

Many people hated to pass that way alone at
night . 1 9

A resident of Portugal Cove, just outside of St . John's,

noting recent changes regarding burial in consecrated
ground remarked :
Till a decade or so ago {mid-1960s], children dying
before receiving baptismal rites were buried just
outside the fences of the R .C . cemetery . It is
estimated that 50 children are buried outside the
fences and on the lands formerly held by John
Travers who apparently took no objection to such
20
children "limbo-ing" in his horse pasture .

In short, such unsanctified dead were often placed in

graves not only outside the community, but also outside
the community of the dead as well, the extreme form of
ostracism by religious officials .
Yet, because of this insistence on the need for burial in
consecrated ground by local chuch officials, incidents
sometimes occurred that revealed the tensions between
the persistent desire to have residents buried with the
others of the community of the deceased, and the official
desire to regulate the space of the dead . Several reports
point to the kinds of conflicts that were typical .
A local resident of Pouch Cove related that when he was
young, a fisherman from the community was drowned one
fall, and his body could not be located before the harbour
froze. In the spring, a body was discovered floating in the
bay . A canvas sail was slipped under it, and it was lifted
from the water . Church officials had decided that it should
be buried outside the churchyard, since it could not be
properly identified to determine whether, indeed, it was
the suspected member of the church's congregation . The
widow of the drowned fisherman, however, was convinced
that this was her husband's body, and that it should be
buried in consecrated ground . No positive identification
could be made, but officials finally decided to yield to the
widow's pleadings, and the body was buried in a corner of
the churchyard . The grave, however, was to remain
unmarked, a compromise to church officials that would
maintain the sacred nature of the space.
In a more extreme case, however, there was a clearly felt
need to include the deceased with the other members of
the community of the dead, ignoring the fact that only the
specific area of ground had been designated as sacred :
Another suicide, an old man who tied two fifty-six
pound weights around himself and then jumped
over his own stage-head, was not granted burial in
the graveyard . Later his relatives surreptitiously
altered the line of the fence to include his grave
inside the yard . Z ~

Local belief obviously considered the inclusion with other

of the community's dead more important than whether or
not the exact piece of ground had been designated sacred boundaries of inclusion winning out over theological
transformations of space.
The churches sometimes placed objects in these new
cemeteries to underline their connection with official
beliefs, to signify their sacred character and to emphasize
their institutional control. In some cases, as in the
cemetery at Bay Bulls, a type of large ornamental gate
marked the entrance, and actually gave the space a
religious name (fig . 8) . Naming per se was a linguistic
manifestation of institutional control, for the earlier
cemeteries in each community had no names .-- Large
crosses were often placed in Roman Catholic cemeteries,
usually at some central location (fig . 9) .2 Although the
church had theological reasons why such crosses added to
the sanctity of this space, local explanations often
developed to explain their presence . For example :
Every graveyard in the area of Merasheen had a
prominent six toot wooden cross . The belief goes
that Christ was exactly six feet tall, and the only
man who ever attained this exactlv .-'
Indeed, the increasing control exercised over cemeteries
by local churches - removing them from the community,
designating their space as sacred, and excluding the
socially unacceptable - did not mean that local practices
were obliterated . Local beliefs persisted, although
obviously not encouraged by official church teachings,
and some components of local practices relating to the
cemetery still remained governed by community traditions .

K:K~..,~~'`~t~iR .

l~iF .

~a

Fig . 9 . Cemetery cross in the Roman Catholic burial-ground,

Bay Bulls .

Designating the place of burial as sacred ground by

church officials encouraged people to consider the actual
objects in that space as potentially sacred, with a wide
range of attendant beliefs . The soil of the cemetery might
be considered powerful,-5 and thus the actual vegetation
in this space as sacred as well . Things found in that space,
because of their sacred nature, should remain where they
are, and their removal might cause potential harm . Ironically, while the rural cemetery reformers might have
emphasized that the sacred nature of the cemetery required that it be kept free from uncontrolled growth, local
traditions often considered such feelings in ways quite
opposite, and many sections of cemeteries are still characterized by an overgrowth of weeds and brush (fig . 10) .
Disturbing plants, for some residents, would be
paramount to disturbing sacred ground, and therefore
they were not to be touched . Primary among the kinds of
vegetation that must be left undisturbed were blueberries ;
a report from a Bishop's Falls resident is typical:
When we were children, we often times went berry
picking on the hill on which the cemetery is located
and heeding our grandparents' words, we would
never attempt to pick the blueberries that grew
within close range of the cemetery . We figured

Fig . 8 . Cemetery gate in the Roman Catholic burial-ground,

Bay Bulls .

30

Fig . 10 . Family burial plot, surrounded by overgrown areas, Bishop's Cove cemetery .
that these berries were blessed and sacred and if we
picked them we would surely meet with some
disaster during the year . Most of us believed that
we would lose some member of our family . I often
went berry picking from the ages of eight until
about fourteen (1956-C4) and never once would I
attempt to venture near the graveyard to pick
berries . 26

The removal of any object from a cemetery was taboo; a

resident of Grand Falls, for example, reported that as a
child he once picked flowers from a cemetery and brought
them home with him . His father became very upset when
he noticed this, and angrily demanded that the child
throw them away ." A resident of Bishop's Falls also
mentioned that "my grandfather always told me it is bad
luck to carry anything out of a graveyard . "'"
If church officials could gradually bring the spatial
location of the outport cemetery under their control, local
traditions still held sway with more specific spatial issues
such as grave orientation . In the British, Irish and
Newfoundland traditions, graves have usually been
oriented on an east-west axis, connected to the general
belief in the resurrection of the body on judgement Day .
The dead are customarily buried facing the east, and

Walter Johnson cites several early church leaders who

commented on this practice . Durandas claimed that the
"eastward position is properly assumed in prayer ." Bede
stated that the "Sun of Righteousness" will come on the
last day, and therefore the dead should face the sunrise.
Reference was also made to 7.echariah's prophecy, which
refers to Christ's coming on the last day, standing "upon
the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the
East . "'9 The tradition of burying the dead facing eastward
is much older than Christianity, however, and it is the
proper orientational form reported for most of the British
Isles and North America . "'
Most Newfoundland burials followed this east-west
orientation, but often not for the reasons offered by official
church theology . In Western Bay, for example, a man reported that the corpse must face the east because this was
"where Our Lord was born ."" In Hermitage Bay, a man
stated that burial had to take place with feet pointing to
the entrance to the cemetery . In this way, "when the dead
rise again they will be facing the entrance ." ;-' In Twillingate, a resident explained that the graves face east because
"Christ rose facing east (His tomb being toward the east) .
Also when you are alive you walk feet first as you do on
earth so vou should do in death ." ;'

In the British Isles, the maintenance of this proper eastwest orientation was considered essential to the salvation
of the dead . Only those who were facing the east would
hear Christ's call to arise on judgement Day . Burials along
other axes were reserved for those who would be excluded
from future heavenly reward . Thus, graves with a northsouth orientation were sometimes used in England and
other parts of North America for suicides, murderers and
dissenters . 34 Like the prohibition of interment in consecrated ground, this form of burial was used for those
considered unworthy of being a part of the normal
community of the dead .

each community, now no longer used, functioned more as

historic sites relating to the general past than as burialgrounds having a connection with actual living relatives ;
they were now places of the collective dead rather than
individual loved ones . 38
The creation of the later cemeteries, in their new locations, with various religious rules and regulations, was
fostered, it seems by an increasing concern to bring
aspects of outport life under religious control . Like
missionary efforts in far-off lands, visiting clergy found
many local customs bordering on a state of
"primitivism," 39 in need of drastic and major change . The
regimentation of the death space was part of this crusading
effort to eliminate what were considered elements of the
irrational in the outport community.

In contrast to these other regions, the use of this northsouth orientation for undesirables has not been reported in
Newfoundland . In fact, there have been several accounts
that north-south orientation was the accepted burial mode
in various communities . A comment from a resident of
Old Perlican is typical:

Ironically, however, this regimentation spawned a new

set of attitudes and beliefs that was equally beyond the
scope of institutional control. Before the arrival of the
local clergy and the pleas of Victorian cemetery reformers,
no theological guidelines existed, and cemeteries were
shaped largely by non-religious concerns . However, with
official theology, which espoused the need for burial in
consecrated ground, came an entirely new set of concerns,
and ironically just as many were beyond the reach of
complete regulation . Official teaching did not eliminate
the local and idiosyncratic ; it merely replaced one set of
concerns with another, a trend not unknown in the
general history of Western cemetery development."

It is the custom in Old Perlican for the person to be

buried with his head toward the north . I asked
several people why this was done and it seems nobody really knows . All that is know [sic} is that it
has been done for hundreds of years, and perhaps
the people who did it then had some reason for it,
but now it is just done out of habit or custom . 35

The use of north-south orientation as the burial norm has

been reported from all parts of the island .'6
Obviously, local orientational traditions could be much
stronger than official church positions . Clergymen could
spatially regulate where the actual cemetery should be
located, conferring on it a sacred status which permitted
officials to decide ultimately who gained entry and who
did not . But local traditions obviously were still strong
enough to guide what was considered the proper burial
orientation of the individual . While church officials were
granted a say in the spatial regulating of the community of
the dead, local people still maintained control over the
fate of the individual .

This spatial dichotomization, then, did not lead to a

cultural dichotomization when it came to the community
of the dead . Although the dead had been removed from
the living spaces of the community, they were still of
prime concern . Removing and regularizing the dead did
not eliminate local belief traditions ; rather, a new set of
concerns was added to those already existing . The movement to transform what were originally merely secular
dead into dead deemed sacred by religious institiutions
contributed to increased beliefs relating to the cemetery
landscape, even if it had now been removed from a central
spatial focus . While removal of the place of burial from
the midst of the community indicates the general reforming tendencies of clergy and landscape planners in the
mid-nineteenth century, the local beliefs, some surviving
from before this era of reform, that are still widespread
show how much a part of daily life the dead in a Newfoundland community continue to be .

Throughout the nineteenth century, then, a spatial

dichotomization occurred in community after community, '7 removing the dead from places of daily visibility to
areas outside the realm of everyday life . Regularization by
institutional mandates led to this major transformation of
the cemetery as cultural landscape. The early cemeteries in

32

NOTES
I . 1 would like to thank Violetta Halpert, John Widdowson and
Raymond Lahey, who assisted in the preliminary stages of research
for this essay. Shane O'Dea offered suggestions on an earlier draft.
Richard Mackinnon provided documentary materials while work-

ing as my research assistant .

2. See Edward Field, Journal of the Bishop of Nete foundland't Voyage of
Visitation and Discovery (London: Society for the Propagation of
Christian Knowledge, 1849), p. 121, for a list of the cemeteries
that were consecrated . Individual descriptions can be found on pp .
44-45, 47-48, 50, 55, 73, 79, 81, 87, 97 and 101 .
3 . For a chronological discussion of Newfoundland gravestones, see
Gerald L. Pocius, "Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century
Newfoundland Gravestones : Self-Sufficiency, Economic Specialization and the Creation of Artifacts," Material History Bulletin 12
(1981) : 1-16 .
4 . While funding another project, the Social Science and Humanities
Research Council of Canada provided support for a research
assistant, who located a number of sources dealing with
Newfoundland cemeteries . 1 would like to thank the council for

this support .
5 . References from the Memorial University of Newfoundland
Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA) are quoted by
accession number . 1 thank the Director of MUNFLA for permission to use these materials.
6. MUNFLA 71-26/51-52 MS ; MUNFLA 71-13/43 MSC . For an
account of a riverboat captain asking to be buried overlooking a
river "so he could see the riverboats passing by," see Larry W.
Price, "Some Results and Implications of a Cemetery Study,"
Professional Geographer 18 (1966) : 201 ; cf . Alexander Ross, "The
Burying of Suicides in the Highlands," Inverness Scientific Society
and Field Cluh . Transactions 3 (1887) : 286-89 .

7 . For a discussion of the beliefs concerning hills and mountains, see

Cora Linn Daniels and C.M . Stevans, eds., Encyclopaedia ofSnperrtitioUJ. Folklore and the Occult Sciences of the World (Chicago : Yewdale,
1903), 11, pp . 968-71 ; J.A . MacCulloch, "Mountains, MountainGods," in James Hastings, ed ., Encyclopaedia of Religion ad Ethirs
(New York : Scribner's, 1908), V111, pp . 863-68 . For the tradition
of hilltop burials, see Thomas J . Hannon, Jr ., "Nineteenth Cen-

tury Cemeteries in Central-West Pennsylvania," Pioneer America

Society Proceedings 2 (1973) : 27 and 29 (table 1) ; Richard W.
Brown, "Graveyards," Vermont Life28, no . 3 (Spring, 1974) : 44 ;
Mrs. Elizabeth Stone, God's Acre: or . Historical Notices Relating to
Chur'(l)yardJ (1-ontlon: Parker, 1858), p. 6 ; D. Gregory Jeane, "The
Upland South Cemetery : An American Type," Journal of Popular
Culture 1 1 (1978) : 896 ; David B. Knight, Cemeteries at Living

I-andfailles (Ottawa: Ontario Genealogical Society, 1973), pp . 7-8;

Anita Pitchford, "The Material Culture of the Traditional East
Texas Graveyard," Southern Folklore Quarterly 43 (1979) : 278.
8. An account of the bailing ofa grave at Chance Cove, Trinity Bay, is
found in MUNFLA 69-16/78-79 MS . In Illinois, people believed
that water in a grave would cause the dead to haunt the living ; as
well, water was thought to petrify the body ; see Harry Middleton
Hyatt, Folk-Lore froru Adcruct County Illinois (Hannibal, MO : Alma
Egan Hyatt Foundation, 1965), p . 7 12, nos . 15379 and 15380.
9 . In Hungary, the dead were buried overlooking the village so that

they could observe the living and ensure proper behaviour; see
Erno Kunt, Folk Art in Hungarian Cemeteries (Budapest: Corvina
Kiado, 1983), p. 22 .
10 . For a report of similar unmarked burial places in Pennsylvania
explained as being of Indian origin, see: Theodore K. Long, Tales
of the Corolrasiis (New Bloomfield, PA : Carson Long Institute,
1936), p. 64 ; for a discussion of unmarked burial places for disease
victims in England, see Mrs . Basil Holmes, The London Burial
Grounds: Notes on Their History front the Earliest Times to the Present
Day (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896), pp . I17-32 ; also see
MUNFLA 75-153/23 MSC .

11 . The most influential work was J .C . Loudon, On the Laying Out,

Planting . and Managing of Cemeteries and on the Improvement of
Churchyards (1843 ; reprint, Redhill, Surrey : Ivelet Books, 1981);
also see G .A . Walker, Gatherings from Graveyards (1839; reprint,
New York : Arno Press, 1977) . For Loudon and his work, see
James Stevens Curl, A Celebration of Death: An Introduction to Some
of the Buildings . Monuments . and Settings of Funerary
Archite ur i
the Western European Tradition (London: Constable, 1980), chap .
8 . Cemetery manuals continued to be published into the
twentieth century advocating reforms championed by Loudon ; see

12 .

13 .

14 .
15 .

16 .

Edwin Austin, Burial Grounds and Cemeteries : A Practical Guide to

Their Administration by Local Authorities (London: Butterworth,
1907); Frederick L. Hoffman, Pauper BnrialtarrdtheInterment ofthe
Dead irrLarge Cities (Newark, NJ : Prudential Press, 1919) .
For London, see Curl, Celehratiorr of Death, chap . 7 ; for Boston,
Stanley French, "The Cemetery as Cultural Institution : The
Establishment of Mount Auburn and the'Rural Cemetery' Movement," in David E . Stannard, ed ., Death in America (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975), pp . 69-7 l ; for Toronto,
Hall and Bowden in this volume .
The discussions of the Glasgow cemetery appeared in Public
Ledger, 23 March 1849, 3 April 1849 ; the Liverpool cemetery, in
Royal Gazette, 9 November 1830 . The Glasgow cemetery under
discussion is depicted in Curl, Celebration of Death, pp . 21(1-11 ;
the Liverpool cemetery, p . 209.
Pnhlic Ledger, 27 April 1849 .
Typical comments can be found in Edward Wix, Six Months ofa
Neu foundland A9itsionary't Jrwrrtal . front February to August . 1835
(London : Smith, Elder, 1836), pp . 30-31, 75, 81, 120-23, 158,
168-73 ; J .G . Mountain, Some Account of a Sorrirr,r; Time oil the
Rugged Shores of Neufomrdlarrd (London : Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, 1857), pp . xiv-xv .
M .F . Howley, Ecclesiastical History of Newfoundland (Boston:

Doyle and Whittle, 1888), p. 333.

17 . For a historical discussion of this concept of consecrated ground,
see Raymond W.L . Muncey, A History of the Consecration of
Churches and Chtcrchyardr (Cambridge : W. Heffer, 1930), pp .
124-53 ; a description of the Roman Catholic consecration ritual
can be found in Benedictine Monks, "The Consecration of a
Cemetery," Homiletic and Pastoral Review 30 (1929-30) : 979-82 ;
Herbert Thurston, "Consecration of Cemeteries," Catholic
Encyclopaedia (1908), vol . 3, 508. For the theological reasons why
the dead were expected to be interred in consecrated ground, see
Rev. Cornelius M. Power, The Blessing ofCemeteries : An Historical
Synopsis and Commentary, Catholic University of America Canon
Law Studies No . 185 (Washington: Catholic University of
America Press, 1943), p. 25 ; Rev. Msgr . Thomas E . Simons,
"Cemeteries and the Canon Law," American Cemetery (October
1961): 44-45 .
18 . For a Roman Catholic statement about these exclusions, see James
H . Murphy, "Parish Priests and Christian Burial," American
Ecclesiastical Review 67 (1922) : 12-25; for the practice in modern
Spain, see William Douglas, Death in R4urelaga : Funerary Ritualin
a Spanish Basque Village (Seattle : University of Washington Press,
1969), pp . 72-75.

19 . MUNFLA 70-21/22 MS .
20 . MUNFLA Q74B-17-3 .

21 . MUNFLA 70-21/22 MS . Also see the official discussion of such

practices in "Enlarging of Cemeteries and Consecration," Homiletic
and Pastoral Review 36 (1936) : 971-72 .
22 . On this point see Wilbur Zelinsky, "Unearthly Delights :
Cemetery Names and the Map of the Changing American Afterworld," in David Lowenthal and Martyn J . Bowden, eds.,
Geographier of the Mind: Essays in Historical Geography i Horror of
John Kirtland Wright (New York : Oxford University Press, 1976),
pp . 171-95 .

23 . The absence of churchyard crosses in Anglican burial grounds in

Newfoundland may be due in part to an anti-Catholic sentiment
that would associate the cross with Roman Catholic beliefs.
Churchyard crosses were common in Anglican burial grounds in
England; see Pamela Gover, "Country Churchyards: Some
Glimpses into the Past," Commemorative Art 33 (1966) : 188;
Florence Peacock, "Concerning Crosses," in Wiliam Andrews,

ed ., Curious Church Gleanings (Hull : William Andrews, 1896),

pp . 65-91 ; Church of England, Central Council for the Care of
Churches, The Care of Churchyards (Westminster : Press and Publications Board of the Church Assembly, 1930), ppo. 15-17 .

24 . MUNFLA 69-8/104 MS .

25 . For the powers of cemetery soil, see George D. Henricks, comp.,

Mirrors. Mice and Mustaches: A Sampling ofSuperstition and Popular
Beliefs in Texas, Paisano Books 1 (Dallas : Southern Methodist
University Press, 1966), p. 56 ; Hyatt, Folk-Lore front Adams
County Illinois, p. 302, no . 6576 ; Rev. J . Edward Vaux, Church
Folklore: A Record of Some Post-Reforntatioa Usages in the English
Church . Now Mostly Obsolete (London: Griffith Farran, 1894), p.
308 ; Rev. R. Wilkins Rees, "Church and Churchyard Charms and
Cures," in William Andrews, ed ., Antiquities and Curiosities ofthe
Church (London : William Andrews, 1897), pp . 236-55 ; E . Estyn
Evans, Irish Heritage: The Landscape. the People and Their Work
(Dundalk : Dundalgan Press, 1967), p. 166; Mimi Clar,
"Graveyard Dirt Cure," Western Folklore 16 (1957) : 21 1 .

26 . MUNFLA 71-32/92 MS .
27 . MUNFLA 71-12/24 MSC .

28 . MUNFLA 71-32/92 MS . A writer in nineteenth-century

Cornwall reported that "to pluck branches or blooms from any
shrubs or flowers planted in a churchyard is considered unlucky;
and it is alleged that ghosts from the despoiled ground will haunt
the house of the depredator"; George S . Tyack, Lore and Legend of
theEnglish Church (London: William Andrews, 1899), p . 57 . Also
see Newman Ivey White, ed ., The Frank C . Brown Collection of
North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 : Popular Belief and Superrtitiaau fronr
North Carolina, ed . Wayland D. Hand (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1964), p . 94, no . 5496 ; Paul Geiger, "Grabblumer," in E.
Hoffmann-Krayer and Harms Bachtold-Stauble, Hartdworterbuc'h
det Deutscheu Aberglaubens (Berlin : Walter de Gruyter, 1930-31),
vol . 3, pp . 1103-1106; Hendricks, Mirrors, Mice, p. 80 ; Hyatt,
Folk-Lore from Adanrs County Illinois, p. 713, no . 15402 ; Daniel
Lindsey Thomas and Lucy Blayney Thomas, Kentucky Superstitions
(Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1920), p. 74, no . 773 ;
Earl J . Stout, Folklore from locua, Memoirs of the American Folk-

Lore Society 29 (New York : American Folk-Lore Society, 1936),

p. 151, no . 169.

29 . Walter Johnson, Byways in British Archaeology (Cambridge :

Cambridge University Press, 1912), pp . 243-44, 246-67 .
30 . For examples of east-west burials, see Vaux, Church Folklore, p.
154; Bertram S. Puckle, Fnnercrl Ciatonu: TheirOrigirc and Developnrent (London : T. Werner Laurie, 1926), pp . 148-49 ; Kenneth
Lindley, Of Graves arrd F_pitaphs (London: Hutchinson, 1965), pp .

86-87 ; England Howlett, "Burial Customs," in William

Andrews, ed ., Curious Church Customs (London : William
Andrews, 1898), pp . 136-37 ; Stone, God's Acre, pp . 391-92 ;
John Aubrey, Rentaies of Gentilisnte and fndaitnce, ed . James
Britten, Publications of the Folk-Lore Society, no . 4 (1881 ; reprint, Nendeln : Kraus, 1967), p. 166 ; E. E. Jarrett, Lessons on the
Churchyard and the Fabric of the Church (London: Masters, 1880),
pp . 8-9; White, Frank C. Brown Collection, V11, p. 91, no . 5482 ;
see this last citation for a sampling of references from North
America; also see Terry Jordan, Texas Graveyards : A Cultural
Legao, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), pp . 30-33 .

31 . MUNFLA 67-6/22 MS .
32 . MUNFLA 68-20/36 MS .
33 . MUNFLA 68-21/170 MS .

34 . See Vaux, Church Folklore, p. 154 ; Ora L. Jones, Peculiarities ofthe

Appalachian Mountaineers (Detroit : Harlo Press, 1967), p. 78 .

35 . MUNFLA 7I-60/20-2I MS .

36 . Other communities include: Conception Harbour, 66-3/36 MSC;

Merasheen, 69-8/104 MS ; Holyrood, 72-106/13 MS ; Lawn,
Q74B-9-7 ; Stephenville, Q74B-8-7 ; Mary's Harbour, Labrador,
Q7413- 1-7; Dunville, Q74B-20-7 ; Seal Cove, Q74B-10-7. Non
east-west orientations were also reported in Trepassey, Q74B-237 ; Croque, Q7413- 15-7 .
37 . Charles O. Jackson, "Death Shall Have No Dominion : The
Passing of the World of the Dead in America," in Richard A.
Kalish, ed ., Death and Dying: Views from Many Cultures, Perspectives on Death and Dying Series no . I (Farmingtlale, NY :
Baywood Publishing, 1980), pp . 50-51 .
38 . W. Lloyd Warner, The Living crud the Dead: A Study ofthe Symbolic
Life ofAnterirarzr, Yankee City Series (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1959), p. 319 .
39 . Ruth M. Christensen, "The Establishment of the S. P .G . Missions
in Newfoundland, 1703-1783," Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Chnrrh 20 (1951) : 228.
40 . Peter J . Ucko, "Ethnography and Archaeological Interpretation of
Funerary Remains," IKiorld Anhcreology 1 (1969-70): 277.

Research Reports / Rapports de recherche

Carved in Stone: Material Evidence in the Graveyards
of Kings County, Nova Scotia
Although gravestones reveal much information to the
trained eye, they have received little recognition as
artifacts of Canada's past . ' In addition to presenting
genealogical information and quaint epitaphs, gravestones reveal clues to the cultural background of and
influences on both the decedents and the craftsmen who
fashioned their stones . As well, these artifacts hold particular significance to the study of material culture in that
those surviving are in their original settings and continue
to function as intended . In Nova Scotia most of what is
known about life in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries has been gleaned from documents diaries, newspapers, correspondence, wills, deeds - and
the story they tell is far from complete . To understand
more of this period, we have begun to investigate Nova
Scotia gravestones, combining artifact information with
historical records, thereby relating material, maker and
location of the stones with what is known about the people
they memorialize and the communities in which those
people lived . This report discusses the findings of research
to date .

There are more than a hundred stones in this style, a remarkable number compared with other rural areas . This
concentration is due perhaps not so much to survival as to
the fact that this was one of the first English-speaking
areas of the province to develop a local economy capable of
supporting a resident gravestone carver .

A cursory examination of the old graveyards of Nova

Scotia reveals that gravestones pre-dating 1780 are
generally made of state, ornately carved in the style
common around Massachusetts Bay, and in fact, imported
from there . Z Between 1780 and 1840 most stones were
made locally by Nova Scotian craftsmen and can be
grouped by area, according to common characteristics of
material and style . For the most part, Halifax stones were
carved in sandstone in very high relief by Scottish
stonemasons who originally came to the capital to construct public buildings. A few stones of this style can also
be found in the nearest major towns to Halifax- Windsor
and Lunenburg - where they stand alongside more primitive local carving of the same period . From Liverpool to
Yarmouth there are imported New England slates (more
common and of later date), a few Halifax sandstones, and
an obvious "south shore" style of crude carving on local
scaly schist . 3 Throughout Cape Breton, as well as Pictou
and Antigonish counties, eighteenth- and very early
nineteenth-century stones are uncommon, but those that
survive are usually sandstone and of formal design . In
Cumberland and Colchester counties there are also few
early gravestones, and their style is more folksy . Around
the Annapolis River, the old stones tend to be sandstone
carved in a style popular along the Saint John River, just
across the Bay of Fundy . In Kings County, Nova Scotia,
another distinctly identifiable carving style can be found .

Prospective immigrants from the land-hungry agricultural areas of New England were especially interested in
the fertile alluvial farmland in the heart of Acadia at Les
Mines (Minas). The Nova Scotia government partitioned
this land as the townships of Cornwallis, Horton and
Falmouth . These townships were to be colonized as block
settlements, i .e ., each was granted to a group of families
and individuals who were expected to move from New
England to Nova Scotia as a community, and to occupy
the land, at least initially, in common . But as the colonization proceeded, forfeitures, vacancies and the influx of
non-grantees led to the settlements of the Minas
townships by a diverse group of proprietors . In Horton,
for example, three components can be recognized in the
final selection of grantees : 177 New Englanders, 14
soldiers and 11 placemen .4 Still, most of the grantees,
perhaps 88 per cent, were New Englanders . Male grantees
ranged in age between 15 and 66, more than two-thirds
were married and brought between one and ten, but most
often four, children under age 21 to the new land . Many
families included one or two sons aged 16 to 21 who were
not grantees and could labour on family farms.

Our research to date has focussed on the area of Kings

County that was set off in the 1750s as the townships of
Horton and Cornwallis . These townships were settled in
the early 1760s as part of a campaign by the Nova Scotia
government to attract New Englanders to the colony . Just
a few years before, and after almost one hundred and fifty
years of habitation, the colony's resident French Acadian
population had been forcibly deported and the land lay
empty. Between 1760 and 1764 more than five thousand
New Englanders took up grants of free land ranging from
250 to 1000 acres in eleven townships of approximately
100,000 acres each, located along Nova Scotia's southwestern shore, the Annapolis Valley, the Minas Basin and
the Chignecto Isthmus.

Little of the economic backgrounds of the New

England settlers can be known without reconstructing
their lives before emigration . While it is very unlikely
that the extremely rich or the very poor came to Kings

35

County, the sparse evidence suggests that the grantees

represented a broad economic spectrum . For instance,
such men as prominent Connecticut landowner Robert
Denison, Yale-educated lawyer Nathan Dewolf, and Col .
Charles Dickson (who personally financed a military company for the siege of Beausejour) came to Horton, but
other settlers could not survive the first few years without
food and grain subsidies from the Nova Scotia government . Although almost every man called himself a
yeoman farmer when he claimed a Horton share, the New
Englanders brought a variety of skills to the new land . A
small number identified themselves as blacksmiths, carpenters, cordwainers, weavers and traders, while others
relied on informal training to build their houses and provide their families with the basic possessions they had not
brought with them .
If the origins of the 79 New Englanders who settled in
Horton for whom we have data are typical, members of
this largest group of grantees came from a compact area of
southeastern Connecticut focussing on the port of New
London and including the towns of Lebanon, Colchester,
Norwich, East Haddam, Lyme and Stonington . A few
others came from communities along the Connecticut
River .
The gravestones that still stand in Horton as memorials
to these New Englanders are different from those found in
their hearth areas . In southeastern Connecticut, mideighteenth century gravestones are mainly granite, with
shallow carved angel-head motifs (soul effigies), predominantly the work of Benjamin Collins, the Manning
family and their imitators .' This style of carving contrasts
sharply with the ornate and deeply incised sandstones of
the Connecticut River Valley . Both major Connecticut
carving styles differ considerably from the slate carving
styles of Massachusetts and Rhode Island . ~' In fact, the
gravestones of Kings County bear little resemblance to
those found anywhere in New England from the mideighteenth century . 7
The oldest Kings County gravestones date from about
1770 to 1820 . The earliest are probably "backdated" carved some time later than the date indicated on the
stone . From the evidence of the stones, there does not
appear to have been anyone carving gravestones in Horton
before the 1780s . The oldest markers appear to be
primarily the creation of two stonecarvers, working exclusively in sandstone . The first is referred to as the "Second
Horton Carver" because his name is unknown and he
succeeded an earlier carver who worked only briefly in the
area .8 The second has been identified as Abraham Seaman .
These attributions have been made following a systematic
investigation of the older burial grounds in Nova Scotia .
Pre-1830 stones were closely scrutinized and grouped in
terms of material, shape, lettering, image, border, word

groupings, and any other visibly identifiable characteristics . Probate records were then studied for any reference to
individuals being paid to carve gravestones . This kind of
information is rarely noted in estate settlement papers .
Not every death involved an estate settlement (especially
those of young men, children and many women), and not
all probate records have survived . Thus the identity of the
Second Horton Carver remains a mystery.
Stones attributed to the Second Horton Carver date
from 1798 to 1805 (Appendix A) ." He carved crude, sad
faces with an elaborate carved "rope" edge and vining or
"bird-track" border . His earliest stones have deep outlines
around the winged-head image, or no image at all and a
plain curved shape at the top edge (fig . 1) . Later the top
edge shape became more elaborate and he added a plain or
beaded bracket around the "Here Lyeth" part of the
inscription (fig . 2) . There is also a further cutting away
above the head, and often the epitaph "Death is a debt that
is nature's due/Which I have paid and so must you." He
never mastered the depiction of hair . A curious distinguishing mark of the Second Horton carver is a tail on the
cross bar of the 'f' in "Here lyeth the body of. " Stones with
these characteristics are found in all the old burial grounds
of Cornwallis and Horton, with some at nearby Falrnouth
and Windsor. A few stones for former residents of Horton
have been discovered outside the area . There is one for
Charles Dickson at St . Paul's Cemetery in Halifax, and
another for Susannah, wife of Nathan Harris, at Liverpool .

Fig . l . Benjamin Peck stone, sandstone, 1801, Kentville,

Kings County, N .S . Attributed carver : Second Horton
Carver, first style . (Nova Scotia Museum collection :
.80 [N-13309] . Photo : Dan andJessie Lie
.8-a
P133/8-i
Farbcr .)


.IT7[

:I . .'

\L"Il)
o V\ 'r1,
t
-

I 1 l 1.

-a; ' =~ , I ) t l~- -1

l--

0 KA

,~~,r~..t l. l~l ~ rt

~'r ~-

()

C."l l-~lti~ ll~,-.f,~l .~

`

Fig . 2 . Eunice Harris stone, sandstone, 1803, Upper Canard,

Kings County, N .S . Attributed carver : Second Horton
Carver, second style . (Nova Scotia Museum collection :
P133 .29 .26 . Photo : Deborah Trask .)

Field investigation has revealed a second style of

carving in stones dated from 1805 to 1821 (Appendix
B) . tt' This carver also used the elaborate carved "rope"
edge, the vining or "bird-track" border, and added a swirl
to the cross bar on the "f " in "in Memory of," but he
executed these decorations with greater dexterity (figs. 3
and 4) . He generally carved the name of the deceased in
capital letters. His technique is undoubtedly derived from
the earlier style, as there is a clear visible link between the
two. He may have learned the trade of stone carving from
the Second Horton Carver . It is quite possible that this
carver and the Second Horton Carver are the same person,
and these stylistic variations show the evolution of carving
skill in one craftsman . t t

t' ~~ ._
`

tic t .t 41~ I

' ~, ( ~ ~~ l l 1

Fig . 3 . James C . and Thomas Griffin stone, sandstone, 1810,

Kentville, Kings County, N .S . Attributed carver :
Abraham Seaman . (Nova Scotia Museum collection :
13133/8 1-8-1 .59 [N-1 ;)] 11 . Photo : Dan and Jessie Lie
Farber .)

vv 'k `' ''1 C

- \ 1-c
~ [~,,N~l-

T`~~ . :ri .l~tl,

\~ \ r

;;rrm ~l ~ ~ ,

Documentary evidence identifies this carving as the

work of Abraham Seaman . Probate estate papers for three
decedents whose stones have these characteristics record a
payment to Abraham Seaman for gravestones . t ~ Seaman is
also mentioned in the journal of Edward Manning, minister of the First Baptist Church in Cornwallis . On April
30, 1818, six weeks after his daughter Eunice died,
Manning recorded : "Saw Mr . Abraham Seamans,
presented bill for Eunice "s gravestone, C pounds, 4 shillings, but he deducted 1 pound 4 shillings ." Ij
Abraham Seaman was the son of Jacomiah Seaman of
Westchester, New York . t' During the American Revolution, Jacomiah's four sons joined Col . Lowther
Pennington's Regiment of Kings Guards, and so became
members of the group known as the Westchester

"

:LC~l~.

Aml 1i .1IA1V

~~ i,~,

Fig . 4 .

l'

, ;- li, r. .
_-

Henry Magee stone, sandstone, 1806, Kentville,

Kings County, N .S . Attributed carver : Abraham
Seaman . (Nova Scotia Museum collection : PH~3/
81 .8-1 .73 (N-133071 . Photo : Dan and Jessie Lie
harber . )

considerable land holdings in Cumberland County . In

1802, Abraham Seaman "of Horton, Kings County,
merchant," bought some land at River Philip . In
September of 1806 he bought an additional 100() acres at
River Philip, and the next month, listed now as a mason,
he bought some more land in Horton . Years later, while
helping his brother Stephen settle a land dispute at River
Philip (now Pugwash), he swore that " . . .in 1806 1 went
from Horton to Pugwash Built a House on the West side
1
of Pugwash harbour the first there ever . . ." `' But, as tar as
we know, he continued to live at Horton . In March 1811
he bought dyke land at Horton ; in October of the same
year he bought five tracts of land including a half interest
in a sawmill at River Philip from his brother Hezekiah .
On all of these deeds he is listed as being "of Horton . r'`Z

Loyalists." After the war many Westchester Loyalists

received land grants in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia .
Jacomiah and his son Stephen each received a 500-acre
grant at "Cobequid Road," Cumberland County, and later
16
were granted a second tract near River Philip . Jacomiah
probably settled in the township of Fanningsborough
(now North Wallace) . " In 1788 his son Abraham "of the
township of Westchester, County of Cumberland,
yeoman" bought 50 acres on the north side of the main
road leading from Amherst to Cobequid (Truro), which he
sold less than two years later."' In October 1794, at the
age of twenty-four, Abraham Seaman of Westmoreland,
Cumberland County, bought a house and a one-acre lot in
Horton . 19 The following year he married into a prominent Horton family and lived there until 1821, when he
20
moved back to Cumberland County .

As a landowner, merchant and mason, Seaman was

probably involved in a variety of business activities during

In the intervening years, Abraham Seaman had amassed

e.a

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r t

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.

Map is from Thomas C . Haliburton, An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia (Halifax : Joseph Howe, 1829) . Reprint no . 51
(Belleville, Ont . : MIKA, 1973) .

38

I
Fig . 5 .

."Rachel Fitch stone, sandstone, Wolfville, Kings County, N .S ., evrnpanum detail . Attributed carver : Abraham Seaman . (Nova
Scotia Museum collection : P 133 . 134 . 15 . Photo : Deborah "l r.uk . )

the time he lived in Horton . One of his most enduring was

making distinctive gravestones for his neighbours . In
part, Seaman's stones have survived because of the
material he used . His stones are a high-quality, dense
brown sandstone that seems out of place in a settlement
bordering the Bay of Fundy . It bears little resemblance to
the material used by his son, Thomas Lewis Seaman, when
he made gravestones in Kings County during the 1830s
and 40s . z ; The younger Seaman relied on a more porous,
reddish sandstone which seems to be characteristic of the
Minas Basin area . This stone has succumbed over time to
water damage, and has become very crumbly . The
superior material used by Abraham Seaman is more like
the stone found at Remsheg (Wallace), Cumberland
County . Stone from the Remsheg quarry was used to build
Province House in Halifax, which was finished before
1819 . The architect, Richard Scott, bought the land on
the Remsheg River that included the stone quarries in
.2"
1814
The deed implies that the quarries had been
worked previously, but precisely when sandstone was first
quarried there is unknown . If sandstone was being transported from Remsheg to Halifax, could it also have gone
to the Horton-Cornwallis district? We know that the

house built for Charles Ramage Prescott in Cornwallis

Township, completed before 1817, has a sandstone foundation and lintels. Although the brick for the house was
made nearby, 25 the source for the sandstone has not been
ascertained . We do not know if Seaman had access to
Wallace sandstone . Until the early Kings County gravestones are analyzed by a geologist, conclusions about the
source of Seaman's sandstone are tenuous at best .
Still, if Seaman transported his raw material from north
Cumberland County, this would reveal patterns of trade
and perceptions of distance and travel in turn-of-thenineteenth-century Nova Scotia . Undoubtedly Seaman
himself travelled this route regularly to maintain his
family and business connections in Cumberland County
.
In addition to material, maker, and origins of the
people for whom the markers were made, the gravestones
were examined in the context of the lives these people
lived in Horton . An analysis of the stones according to
origin, religion and place of residence of the decedents,
their economic standing within the group of founding
settlers, and kinship ties to each other and to Abraham

different from those of the people whose memorials he

carved . He did not settle immediately in Kings County
when he came to Nova Scotia, and the fact that he may
have transported the material for his work from the area
where he first lived (and continued to own property) raises
some questions about why he moved to Horton . In
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century New England,
27 When
carvers usually lived near the stone quarry .
Abraham Seaman began carving in Horton, it was the
shire town of the most populated county in the colony
(except Halifax) and the first generation of settlers was
?28
dying . Had he located close to his market

Seaman reveals that the only connection most share is the

timing of their arrival in Horton . Almost all extant stones
for the period 1770 to 1820 for this area of Kings County
commemorate the township's grantees . Few exist for those
who took up residence after all the land in the township
had been granted, even though this group represented a
significant component of the population . Between 1770
and 1791 at least 177 men and their families became
residents of Horton .z6

In that time, restricted access to land resulting from

land granting policies, the accumulative impulses of a
handful of the largest landowners, rising prices and
increased pressure of population lessened everyman's
opportunity to own a farm . As a result, few latecomers
ever acquired land . For the most part they rented property
or laboured on someone else's farm . There were few alternatives in this subsistence farming community. Almost
immediately, society stratified on the basis of land ownership . Thus when Hortonians were finally laid to rest, it
was those who had taken part in the initial settling and
had obtained free land grants who were in a position to
have gravestones erected in their memory .

Like the Cape Cod cottages and Georgian houses that

dot the countryside, the old gravestones of Kings County
seem to be part of the New England cultural traditions that
are stamped on the landscape . As we begin to examine
these artifacts more closely, it is clear that the story they
tell is more complex than it purports to be . Memorials in
one area of Nova Scotia for pre-Loyalist settlers from
southeastern Connecticut were carved here by a Loyalist
stone carver from New York, but bear little resemblance
to markers in those areas. Although more research has to
be done in this regard, these gravestones were apparently
carved by Abraham Seaman in a style distinctive to Nova
Scotia .

The carver of these gravestones was a native of

Westchester, New York, and not a native of New
England, and thus his cultural traditions may have been

APPENDIX A

Gravestones attributed to the Second Horton Carver

Second style

First style
Jane Chipman
Nathaniel Thomas
Asa Wickwire

1775
1787
1795

Charles Dickson
Ann Blackmore
Lucy Haliburton
Hannah Best
Joseph Chase Jr .
Charlotte Curry
Handley Chipman
Eliza Wells
Joseph Chase
Nathan Rand
Lucretia Rogers
Benjamin Peck
Sabra Peck

1796
1797
1797
1798
1798
1799
1799
1800
1801
1801
1801
1801
1801

Stephen Post
Margaret Ratchford
Mary Forsyth

Chipman's Corner
Windsor
"Factory Cemetery,"
near Jawbone Corner
St . Paul's Cemetery, Halifax
Onslow
Windsor
Kentville
Upper Canard
Chipman's Corner
Chipman's Corner
Upper Canard
Upper Canard
Wolfville
Wolfville
Kentville
Kentville

Lydia Fitch
William Northup
William Freeman
Anna Fitch

Martha Harris
Nancy Chipman
Gilbert Forsyth
James Duncanson
Eunice Harris
Ann Bishop
Caroline Bishop
Susannah Harris
Perry Borden
Samuel Reed

40

1768
1794
1796
1797
1800
1801
1802
1802
1802
1802
1802
1803
1803
1803
1803
1805
1805

Chipman's Corner
Parrsboro
Wolfville
Simpson's Bridge, Maple Street
Falmouth
West Amherst
Simpson's Bridge, Maple Street
Upper Canard
Chipman's Corner
Wolfville
Wolfville
Upper Canard
Wolfville
Wolfville
Liverpool
Upper Canard
Wolfville

APPENDIX B
Stones attributed to Abraham Seaman
Simeon Porter
Mercy Bishop
John Bishop
Mary Benjamin
Silas Woodworth
George Oxley
Silvanus Miner
Thomas Watson
William Alline
Thomas Miner
William Giffin

1779
1783
1785
1786
1790
179?
1794
1796
1799
1801
1802

Margaret Brown
Mathew Dickie
Edward Church
Stephen Sheffield
Elizabeth Tonge
Isaac Deschamps
Joshua T . De St . Croix
Obed Benjamin
Henry Magee
Patrick Murray
John Dickie
Mary Peck
Rachel Fitch
Rebecca Alline
Mary Bishop

1803
1803
1804
1805
1805
1805
1805
1806
1806
1806
1807
1808
1808
1808
1808

Sarah Woodworth
James C ./Thomas Giffin
William Skene

1808
1810
1810

Barnabus Lord
Jarusha Dickie
Elias Tupper
Jonathan Shearman
Betsy Morton
William/Ann Dunkin
Catherine Simpson

1810
1810
1810
1810
1810
1811/07
1811

*Cyrus Peck

1812

Chipman's Corner
Wolfville
Wolfville
Wolfville
Chipman's Corner
River Philip (broken)
Wolfville
West Amherst
Wolfville
Wolfville
Fox Hill Cemetery,
Cornwallis
Wolfville
Chipman's Corner
Windsor
Upper Canard
Windsor
Windsor
Bridgetown
Wolfville
Kentville
Kentville
Chipman's Corner
Kentville
Wolfville
Wolfville
Simpson's Bridge,
Maple Street
Chipman's Corner
Kentville
Fox Hill Cemetery,
Cornwallis
Chipman's Corner
Chipman's Corner
Chipman's Corner
Upper Canard
Gagetown, N .B .
River Philip
St . Paul's Cemetery,
Halifax
Kentville

Samuel Gore
"Ezekiel Woodworth
Benjamin Jarvis

1812
1812
1812

John/Elizabeth Burbidge

1812

John Palmeter

1812

Daniel Wood
Polly Chipman
Thomas Ratchford
Dester Ratchford
Hannah Chase
Mercury Cumming
*John Bishop

1813
1813
1813
1813
1815
1815
1815

Thomas H . Woodward
Holmes Cogswell
Henry Burbidge

1815
1815
1815?

Captain Mason Cogswell

Levena Bishop
John Turner
Thomas Woodworth
*Eunice Manning
Elizabeth Barnaby
Eunice Forsyth
George Reid
Abijah Pearson
*Timothy Barnaby
Eunice Hamilton
John/Cynthy Moss
Deborah Cottnam
Ann Miner
Mary Calkin

1816
1816
1817
1817
1817
1817
1818
1818
1819
1820
1820
1820
1820
1821/20
n. d.
n. d.
n. d.

Jeremiah Calkin

n . d.

Isaac Graham

n. d.

Susannah Starr

Samuel Tupper

Wolfville
Chipman's Corner
Church ofSt . John,
Church Street
Fox Hill Cemetery,
Cornwallis
"Factory Cemetery",
nearJaw Bone Corner
Upper Canard
Chipman's Corner
Wolfville
Wolfville
Upper Canard
Chipman's Corner
Simpson's Bridge,
Maple Street
Wolfville
Upper Canard
Fox Hill Cemetery,
Cornwall is
Chipman's Corner
Wolfville
Starr's Point
Chipman's Corner
Wolfville
Upper Canard
Upper Canard
Chipman's Corner
Wolfville
Wolfville
Upper Canard
Chipman's Corner
Grand Pre
Wolfville
Windsor
Wolfville
Simpson's Bridge,
Maple Street
Simpson's Bridge,
Maple Street
Wolfville

* Stones known to have been carved by Abraham Seaman .

NOTES
I . Graveyards are specifically exempted from historic site status by
the Historic Sites and Monument Board, Parks Canada . Although
it is a felony to desecrate a grave, monuments on a grave are considered to be private property . Other than vague references to
"maintenance," gravestones as artifacts are not protected underany
legislation in Canada, to the best of our knowledge.
2. Deborah E. Trask, Life How Short, Eternity How Long: Gravestone
Carving and Carvers in Nova Scotia (Halifax : Nova Scotia Museum,
1978), p. 10-14 .

3. Deborah E . Trask. "The South Shore Carver," The Occasional 9, no .

2 (Halifax : Nova Scotia Museum, 1985).
4. For information on the settlement of Horton, see Debra A.
McNabb, "Land and Families in Horton Township" (M . A. thesis,
University of British Columbia, 1986).
5 . We are indebted to Dr . James Slater, of Mansfield, Connecticut,
and the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS), for identifying
carving styles in southeastern Connecticut, and to Susan Kelly and
Anne Williams, also of AGS, for their assistance in checking

gravestones in Old Lyme and New London . In relation to this

project, the authors have investigated graveyards in Mansfield
Center, Lebanon (Trumbull), Columbia and Windham, Connecticut. For specific information on Connecticut gravestone carving,
see a series of articles by Dr . Ernest Caulfield published in the
Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin between 1951 and 1967,
continued by Peter Benes and James Slarer from Dr . Caulfield's research, 1975-1983, particularly : "Connecticut Gravestones V111"
(27, no . 3, July 1962) on the Manning family ; "Connecticut
Gravestone IX" (28, no . 1, January 1963) on the Collins family ;
"Connecticut Gravestone XIII" (40, no . 2, April 1975) on the

Kimball family ; and "Connecticut Gravestone XV" (43, no . l,

January 1978) on three Manning imitators .
6 . To reduce the stylistic trends of gravestone carving in eighteenthcentury New England to three regional styles is a gross oversimplification . For purposes of this paper, this is adequate, but for
more information on New England gravestone carving, the main

texts are: Harriet M . Forbes, Gravestones of Early New England and

the Men IVho tllrrde Them, /660-1815 (Boston : Houghton Mifflin,
1927); Alan 1. Ludwig, Graven Images (Middletown, Conn . :
Wesleyan University Press, 1968); Dickran and Anne Tashjian,
Memorials for Children of Change (Middletown, Corm . : Wesleyan
University Press, 1975) ; Peter Benes, The Masks of Orthodoxy
(Amherst, Mass . : University of Massachusetts Press, 1977).
7 . A comparison of Connecticut and Kings County carving styles can
be found in the old Cornwallis Township burial ground at
Chipman's Corner, Kings County, where there stands a signed
Connecticut sandstone (Chester Kimball, New London) dated
1785, among the locally carved stones .
8. Trask, Life How Short, "The Horton Carver," p. 18-19 .
9. Ibid ., "The Second Horton Carver," p . 20-2 I .

10 . Ibid ., "The Seaman Family," p . 71-73 .

11 . We have considered that Abraham Seaman's father, Jacomiah,

who was a mason (see note 17), might have been the Second
Horton Carver, but there is no evidence that he ever carved gravestones, nor any indication that he was ever in Horton .
12 . Kings County Probate Records, Public Archives of Nova Scotia,
RG 48 . Estates of Timothy Barnaby, 1821 ("pd Abr' Simmons
for Grave Stones 5") ; John Bishop, 1815 ("paid Abram Seamans
7.0 .0") ; Cyrus Peck, 1812 ("paid Mr . Abraham Seaman Acct in
full 4 . 14 .-"); Ezekiel Woodworth, 1812 ("To Abraham Seamans

14 . A.W .H . Eaton, History of Kings County (Salem, Mass . :

Press, 1910), p. 814-15 .
15 . James F. Smith, The History of Pugteash (Pugwash, N.S . :
Cumberland Historical Society, publication no . 8, 1978),
16 . Marion Gilroy, Loyalists and Land Settlement in Nova

Salem

North
p. 3.
Scotia
(Halifax : Public Archives of Nova Scotia, publication no . 4,
1937), p. 41 .
17 . "1, Jacomiah Seaman of the township of Fannings Burrow and
County of Cumberland, Mason . . . ." Cumberland County Estate
Papers, Public Archives of Nova Scotia (PANS) RG 48, estate of
Jacomiah Seaman, probated August 8, 1808 .

18 . Cumberland County Deeds (PANS RG 47), Book D, p . 80 and

193 .
19 . Kings County Deeds (PANS RG 47), Book 4, p . 265 .

20 . Day Book of Timothy Bishop (1740-1827, Abraham Seaman's

father-in-law) covering 1775-1824 (PANS MG 3), "Abraham
Seaman moved to Pugwash November 27, 1821 ."
21 . Sworn statement of Abraham Seaman, 1827, quoted in Smith,

History of Pugwash, p . 9.
22 . Cumberland County Deeds (PANS RG 47), Book F, P. 44, 190,
and 334; Kings County Deeds Book 5, p. 218; Book 6, p. 223.
23 . For more on the work of Thomas Lewis Seaman, see Trask, Life
HowShort, p. 73 .

24 . Cumberland County Deeds (PANS RG 47), Book 1, p . 86 .

25 . C.J . Stewart, "Brick Investigation, Prescott House, Nova Scotia"

Historic Materials Research, Restoration Services Division, Parks
Canada, n.d ., c. 1974, unpublished report .
26 . McNabb, "Land and Families," chap . 3 .
27 . Harley J . McKee, "Early Ways of Quarrying and Working Stone
in the United States," Bulletin of the Association for Preservation
Technology 111, no . l (1971), p. 44-58.
28 . Most ofSeaman's stones are located in Kings County, in the area of
the old Horton and Cornwallis townships. A few can be found
around the old townships of Amherst, Granville, Londonderry
and Halifax, although none of his stones is in the Newport or
Falmouth township areas. Nor are there any gravestones in his
style of carving found in all of north Cumberland, except for two
in the present village of River Phillip .

Deborah Trask
Debra McNabb

for Grave Stones l:3 . 10 .-") .

13 . Journal of Edward Manning, in Special Collections, Vaughan
Memorial Library, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia,
courtesy of Dr . B. M . Moody.

Open Secrets : Fifteen Masonic and Orange Lodge Gravemarkers

in Waterloo and Wellington Counties, Ontario (1862-1983)
Nearly all gravemarkers contain a didactic element, if
only to inform the passerby of the deceased's identity . In
addition, cautionary, instructive, and religious verses are
common, and most specific visual motifs suggest the
religious and emotional response of those who have
erected the markers. A special case is the use of motifs indicating membership in a secret society or lodge, such as
the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of
Canada, and the Loyal Orange Lodge .
Gravemarkers that signify lodge membership are not

common in most Waterloo and Wellington County

cemeteries, but their occasional appearance creates a
distinct category of imagery . Most decorated stones
display representations that have at least some symbolic
resonance: lambs to indicate that the deceased was a child;
hands pointed heavenward or clasped in friendship ;
flowers as images of life ; birds as images of the soul ;
willow trees drooping to symbolize mourning ; funereal
urns ; inverted torches to show a life snuffed out. But the
symbol that reveals lodge membership conceals a secret
meaning.

An unusually large deposit of such stones is found in

Rushes Cemetery near Crosshill, Ontario . Seven stones four for members of the Orange Lodge, two for Freemasons, and one for a man whose stone declares his
membership in both groups - are found in this small
cemetery .' Eight other stones from four other regional
cemeteries, six Masonic and two Orangeist, will be discussed together with these, for the sake of comparison .
The stones found in Rushes Cemetery near Crosshill,
Ontario, Wellesley Township, Waterloo County (community founded in 1842), are for the following : Richison
Johnson (no date), Orangeist (fig . 1) ; Samuel A . Waugh
(1827-1864), Orangeist,, James McCutcheon ( 18251874), Masonic; George Oakley (1818-1877), Masonic ;
William A . Bryan (1873-1893), Orangeist ; Adam
Mc Kee Crookshanks (1893-1916), Orangeisr; and
Thomas Oscar Wilford (1891-1983), Masonic and
Oranf;eist .
Comparative stones in Wanner Cemetery near
Hespeler, Ontario, Waterloo Township, Waterloo
County (community founded in 1858), are Ralph M.
Hinds (1845-1862), Masonic (fig . 2) ; and Amos S.
Clemens (1852-1878), Masonic ; and in Preston, Ontario,
Waterloo Township, Waterloo County (community
Fig . 2 . Ralph M . Hinds, d . 1867., Masonic, Wanner
Cemetery, near Hespeler (Cambridge), Ont .

`r

_.

. !

founded in 1806), are Otto Klotz (1817-1892) and

Robert G . McIntosh (1883-1917) (fig . 3) . Others, in
Elora Cemetery, Elora, Ontario, Nichols Township,
Wellington County (community founded in 1832), are
William McConnell (1817-1881), Orangeist (fig . 4) ;
John MacDonald (1826-1908), Masonic ; and D . B . Miller
(1852-1924), Masonic ; and in Erin, Ontario, Erin
Township, Wellington County (community founded in
1821), James McCaig (1856-1930) (fig . 5) .

All fifteen men were born in the nineteenth century:

although Richison Johnson's dates are unknown, his stone
closely resembles another in the same cemetery bearing
death dates for a married couple of 1848 and 1853 . Nine
died in the nineteenth century and six in the twentieth.
While the distribution of births is relatively consistent
throughout the nineteenth century, the pattern of deaths
has a striking hiatus : all but one occurred with relative
regularity during an approximately sixty-five-year period
(1862-1930), yet there is a gap of almost the same length
before the next and last death in 1983 .

Fig . 1 . Richison Johnson, c . 1850, Orangeist, Rushes

Cemetery, near Crosshill, Ont . (Photo : all taken by the
author .)

Those whose place of origin is known were born in

Ireland (1817) and Germany (1817), England (1818),
Scotland (1826, 1852), and Canada (1827, 1891, 1893).
Of the latter, the parents of Thomas Wilford (b . 1891)
were born in England, and of Adam Crookshanks (b .

quickly spread to England and its colonies : Ogle R .

Gowan, the founder of Canadian Orangeism, arrived in
Canada in 1829, and in 1830 he founded the Grand Lodge
of British Noth America. ; A rapid spread, a decline in the
1840s, and a strong recovery between 1854 and 1864 offer
a rough parallel with the vicissitudes of Ontario
Freemasonry . Notably, the Orangeist stones of this study
begin with 1864 . Orangeism has been closely associated
with Protestant Irish settlement, and its concentration in
Wellesley Township is congruent with the Irish community there, though Germanic Waterloo County was noted
i
for its resistance to Orangeism .
The nineteenth-century funerals of Freemasons and
Orangeists can be reconstructed from their respective
manuals of that era . An Ontario Masonic Constitution of
18925 declares that Freemasons can display their regalia
publicly and participate in public processions only upon
the occasion of a Masonic funeral . The scroll, apron, and
emblem of the deceased were placed in his grave where his
surviving brethren also solemnly deposited evergreen
sprays . The ceremony concluded with a touching sentence
metaphor of Masonic
which reveals the central
symbolism : "At last when the gavel of death shall call us
from our labours we may obtain a blessed and everlasting
rest in that spiritual edifice not made with hands, eternal
Fig . 3 . Robert G . McIntosh, d . 1917, Masonic, Preston
Cemetery, Preston (Cambridge), Ont .
1893) in Ireland . The ethnic distribution of lodge
membership is as follows : of the above eight men, those
born in Ireland and Canada were Orangeists, and those in
England, Germany, and Scotland were Freemasons . All
were buried in Protestant cemeteries (Wanner and
Rushes) or in the Protestant section of ci cernetery
(Preston, Elora, and Erin) . This distribution accords with
the historical development of their respective lodges .

In 1717, a Grand Lodge was created in England,

followed by the Grand Lodge of Ireland (c . 1725) and of
Scotland (1716) .' An alternative "Grand Lodge of
England" was created in 1751 by the separation of the
"Ancients" and the "Moderns ." Ireland, Scotland, and
England's Ancients and Moderns were the four sources
from which Canadian Freemasonry was formed . The first
Provincial Grand Lodge of Ontario was created in 1802 : a
complex sequence of foundations and re-foundations,
including a decline which ended in the 1840s, produced
the Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of
Canada in 1858 . A number of the Masonic Lodges in
Waterloo, Wellington, and Perth counties were founded
in the 1860s, and it is notable that the dates of the
Masonic stones in this study begin in 1862 .
The Orange Lodge came into being about 78 years after
the official appearance of organized Freemasonry and

in the heavens ." In a similar manner, according to an

Orange Lodge manual of 1873," the mourning brethren of
the deceased, wearing their ceremonial regalia including
black crepe and orange ribbon, walked in procession to the
cemetery and there laid these ornaments in the grave .
Clearly the general characteristics of the stones erected
after such funerals were determined by popular culture,
and major changes were caused by forces outside of any
lodge-related considerations : all the stones dated in the
nineteenth century are white quartzite slabs with carved,
curved, flat, or undulating upper contours ; all those dated
in the twentieth century are of red granite in a wide variety
of shapes including a tall urn-topped stele . Evidently the
change of medium occasioned a change of form, while at
the same time the lodge motifs became smaller and
simpler, shrinking eventually into mere tokens .
There is one striking distinction between the lodge
motifs : all but one of those of Masonic declaration display
only the symbol known as the Square and Compasses,
while the Orangeist stones exhibit a dramatic variety of
arcane motifs . This is in keeping with their different
capabilities for public expression . The Orange Lodge
parades, associated with the "Twelfth of July," were used
not only to celebrate an event but to display publicly the
Orangeists' personal adherence . As we have seen, such displays were no longer permitted to Masons in the second
half of the nineteenth cenniry, VVith thc sOlc exrcptiun of
the tiineral .

Despite their repetition, the Square and Compasses are

accorded a varied treatment. On the Hinds stone (1862),
the Compasses, displayed on a circular field, are provided
with a curved scale, while one leg is before and the other
behind the Square, which is made of two overlapped parts
with blunt ends (fig . 2) . The McCutcheon stone (1874)
and the Oakley stone (1R77) may be by the same hand or
from the sarne shop : both emblems are strikingly similar,
with a circular ground upon which a graceful pair of
Compasses surmounts a slender Square with eroded ends
and an even more eroded letter G. On the Clemens stone
( IH79), the image, enclosed in a floral wreath, shows
simple Compasses fully superimposed upon a carefully
ruled Square . All four faces of the MacDonald stone
( 1908) display the same figure, slender Compasses
straddling a Square with one oblique and one square end .
The elegant Compasses of the Miller stone (192~4) and the
McIntosh stone (1917), the latter of which shows the
motif in a diamond field on the side of an uptilted block,
are superimposed upon a Square with concave ends ; the
tiny Compasses of the Wilford stone (19H3) surmount a
minute Square with sharply oblique ends . The central G,
present in every case, varies in relative size and style as
well as in legibility . The only Masonic stone with another
symbolic motif is that of Otto Klotz (1892), an extravagant structure that has, in addition to a large recumbent
scroll with a Square and Compasses placed on top, a large
six-pointed star on the side .

an Arch, that of the Waugh stone (1864) being simplest .

The Richison Johnson stone clearly owes its imagery to a
source like the panel displayed in a Courier and Ives print
which vw~as found in Bruce County (now in the author's
collection) or the membership certificate from the Loyal
Orange Lodge No . 369 now preserved by the Waterloo
Historical Society . ~ Similar imagery was used on banners
carried on the "Twelfth" and on badges worn by members .
The Arch and the Bible dominating the W<tugh stone are
even more forcefully expressed on the Bryan stone (1893),
where the mottoes used elsewhere are replaced by a tribute
to the deceased . In addition, the Arch is encased by a complex band of flowers, leaves, and scrollwork . The stylistic
sequence of these emblematic displays, from the modest
to the esoteric to the ostentatious, is concluded by the
speedy diminution of the twentieth century .
The Orangeist's central icon, the figure of King
William, makes only one appearance, on the stone of
William McConnell ( 188 1) at Elora, where, inside a trilobate arch, he rides his prancing mount uphi11, gesturing
with a slightly curved sword, his sash billowing behind
him (fig . 4) . This iconography, too, can be traced to
typical depictions in contemporary prints .

All the Masonic markers possess some ornament in

addition to their emblems . The Hinds stone (1H62) displays its inscription within a shield, and the Clemens
stone (157-+) features an elegant wreath of flowers and
leaves . The MCCutcheon stone (1874) is richly adorned
with Gothic finials and the Oakley stone (1877) displays
delicate calligraphic scrollwork . The McIntosh stone
(1917) supports its up-tilted block with a rich display of
scrollwork ; the Miller stone (1924) uses leaf forms as
space-fillers, while the MacDonald stone (190t;) includes
a three-dimensional urn . Tile Wilford stone (1953),
though simplest of all, possesses rusticated sides . In every
case, the impression is one of dignity and restraint,
ranr:ine from the severe to the refined .
In contrast, most of the Orangeist stones are more
densely packed with emblems and more complexly
adorned . The exceptions are the twentieth-century stones :
the Crookshanks market (191r;) is bold and massive but its
shield-shaped emblem is miniscule, while the McCaig
stone (19i0) flanks its small shield on a circular ground
with slender palm branches . "The much smaller Wilford
marker ( 1985) shows only two tiny circular emblems. The
nineteenth-century Orangeist stones, however, are
strikingly declamatory, filling their compositional fields
with esoteric imagery .
All of the Orangcist stones at Rushes Cemetery include

Fig . 4 . William McConnell, d .

Cemeterv, Elora, Ont .

1881,

Orangeist,

Elora

Certainly the most elegant presentation and perhaps

the most beautiful stone of this series is that of Richison
Johnson (fig . 1) . The stone is small and delicate, and the
refined cutting of its surface has survived remarkably well,
although perhaps a quarter of the stone is hidden beneath
the ground . This stone has evidently been sinking slowly
for a long time ; in 1921 enough of its inscription could
still be read to identify "RICHISON" as "son of Jane and
Robert Johnson. " Presumably the stone once stood tall
enough to declare his dates as well .

convictions, and even personal meanings are expressed in

visual terms which the passerby is intended to decipher
and receive .

The declaration of lodge membership on gravemarkers

constitutes a very specific example of the expression of
meaning through visual form . Only a lodge member
would so declare such membership or have such membership so declared by his survivors. Thomas Wilford's stone
stood awaiting him in Rushes Cemetery for several years
before his death, while Samuel Waugh's inscription states
that his stone was "Erected by Margaret Jane to the
memory of her beloved husband ." In both cases the lodge
symbolism must have been requested by the person who
purchased the stone . The use of such images not only
declares membership, but also declares the primary or
ultimate importance of that membership . The Lodge has
been a major fact of the life which the stone records.
Clearly these motifs are not used as mere ornaments (if
indeed any visual component on a gravemarker is so used).

The symbolism of this stone can be, at least to a degree,

identified, although it cannot be interpreted completely
by the uninitiated . Two great columns, reminiscent of
Jachin and Boaz which stood before the Temple at
Jerusalem, flank an Arch, bearing the motto "God is our
Guide ." The keystone bears the phrase "Fear God"
beneath the date, 1690, of the Battle of the Boyne. Under
the Arch is the Eye of God looking down upon the Sun and
Moon flanking a flambeau or lampstand . Three candlesticks and three tabernacles form a central register . The
lower register contains a Serpent upon a Standard, recalling the brazen serpent lifted up by Moses, a Ladder of
Virtue (representing the cardinal virtues, Faith, Hope,
and Charity), the Crossed Swords of Justice tempered by
the Heart of Mercy, and an Open Bible upon a coffin,
suggesting the Word of Life coupled with faithfulness
unto death . The organization of the Lodge, the foci of its
loyalty, and certain of its principal moral teachings are
figured here .

But there is another dimension of meaning in the case of

lodge symbols . Unlike other symbols, they are intentionally or at least supposedly unreadable . A cross offers an
unambiguous statement of religious affiliation . The
Square and Compasses may likewise declare membership,
but unlike standard religious symbols, in a powerful
paradox, they conceal even as they reveal . To use the
common oxymoron, they are an open secret .
The lodge symbol displays what is secret in two simultaneous ways . Esoterically, publicly, the lodge symbol
not only declares membership but declares that this
membership entailed secret knowledge . Hidden from all
but surviving lodge members, the symbol says something
only to the initiated, while at the same time asserting the
presence of this hidden message to every passerby .

It is the purpose of a gravemarker to mark a grave, to

reveal to the viewer what is hidden beneath the earth. The
names of the dead are needed to show who lies buried
where. But a gravemarker is also a brief biography, the
record ofa life . It nearly always includes not only the name
of the deceased but the date of birth and death. Sometimes
the information is more copious : the places of birth and
death, the profession of the deceased (in particular the
military rank), even the cause of the demise may be
recorded . These capsule biographies contain two simultaneous declarations : that a life has been lived from beginning to end, and that this life was that of a specific person .
Framing these matters may be references to family
relationships: father, mother, son, daughter, husband,
wife . If an additional element is present, it often refers to
the central theme or feature of the life of the deceased ; in
the present study, this is lodge membership .

Most of these images are symbols : they show one thing

while referring to another . Only King William is represented by an icon : a depiction of him truly refers to him,
although his image also stands for the idea of a Protestant
monarchy . He exemplifies the Orangeist motto, "Honour
the King ." One may also nominate the Bible for this
iconic category insofar as it becomes an object of veneration in itself: the degree of imagery borrowed by
Orangeism from Freemasonry is large enough so that the
Orange Lodge identity of Richison Johnson's stone was
recognized by the presence of the Bible in it .9 But everything else is a metaphor, a symbol . Some of these are
commonplaces of Western culture, like the Sword of
Justice and the Ladder of Virtue . Justice must divide and
discern as keenly as a sharp-edged sword, and the acquisition of virtue can be compared to climbing a ladder one
rung at a time .

In addition to all this, there is the role of the marker as a

visual form . Although this role may be cursory, it cannot
be absent . The forms of all gravemarkers are intentional as
well . If nothing else, all ornament implies value and
declares significance . Indeed, in certain religious groups
the absence of ornament contains an ideological import .
Despite their stereotyped elements, or perhaps because of
them, period, culture, style, religious or ideological

Other images are more difficult to identify, let alone

46

interpret,

without esoteric knowledge . The Arch, for

instance, means one thing in Freemasonry and another in
Orangeism . Another example is the formula "2'/_" which
refers to the "two tribes and a half tribe" (Numbers 32 :17
and 34 : 15) who fought in the vanguard of the armies of
Israel . This motif appears on the stone of James McCaig
(1K56-193()) in Erin, Ontario (fig . 5) . Touchingly, it is
also on the memorial of Adam Crookshanks, killed in
battle at Courcellette, France, in 1916, and buried in
Rushes Cemetery .

What is the meaning of this open secrecy? A secret is

the personal possession, the true property of the one who
knows it . Moreover, the initiated person is truly a
member of the group of the knowledgeable . Those who
are not initiated do not possess the secret and do not
belong to the group. Therefore, to display the emblem
declares membership, signals the secret to the initiated,
and signals the possession of that secret to the uninitiated .
As reverberant structure of opposing and interlocking
categories is evoked by the use of arcane symbols in a
mortuary context . Gravemarkers bearing lodge emblems
simultaneously disclose the lives of the hidden dead, and
reveal the membership of the deceased in the society
whose secrets thev conceal .

Fig . 5 . James McCaig, d . 1930, Orangeist, Erin Cemetery,

Erin, Ont .

NOTES
I . Nancy-Lou Patterson, "Be Thou Faithful Unto Death," Past and
Present (October 1984), pp . 5-6, and "The Gavel of Death: Masonic
and Orange Lodge Gravemarkers in Rushes Cemetery near Crosshill, Ontario (1864-1983)," Waterloo Historical Soi-jet)r Annual
Volume, 1984 (Kitchener, Ont . : Waterloo Historical Society,
1985), pp . 131-49 .
2 . Wallace McLeod, ed ., W'hence Come IY'e? Freeinasonry in Ontario
(1764-l9M0) (Hamilton, Ont. : Masonic Holdings, 1980): this
source has been used for the summary of Masonic history .
1 . Cecil J . Houston and William J . Smyth, The Sash Canada IK'ore: A
HiJtoriral Geography of the Orange Lodge in Canada (Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1980) : this source has been used for the
summary of Orangeist history .
9. C.J . Houston and W.J . Smyth, The Orange Order in Nineteenth
Century Ontario : A Study in Institutional Culture Transfer (Toronto:
Department of Geography, University of Toronto, 1977), Discussion Paper No . 22, p. 40 .

5 . J .J . Mason, The Book of Cunttitutirnt of the Grand Lodge of-the Ancient

Free and Accepted tylasons of Canada in the Province of Ontario (Toronto :
Hunter, Rose, and Co ., 1892), pp . 129-30 .
6 . Cited in Houston and Smyth The Sash Canada Wore, p. 13 1 .
7 . Patterson, "The Gavel of Death," Illustration, p . 1=i2 .
8 . "Minute and Account Book of the Burying Ground Known as
Rushes," the hand-written register of this cemetery .
9 . 1 wish to thank Dr . J .J . Talman, ProfessorofHistory, University of
Western Ontario, and Grand Historian of the Grand Lodge of
Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Canada in the Province of
Ontario, for all his gracious assistance in my research on these
matters, not least for pointing out to me theOrangeist signification
of the Open Bible.

Nancy-Lou Patterson

Research Note / Note de recherche

In Mourning
The practice of mourning symbolizes one of the most
dramatic and major differences between this century and
the last and is an integral aspect for the study of
nineteenth-century women and children . From the
hundreds of items that have been bequeathed and entrusted to Canadian museums, we know the customs were
widespread, but little has been written on the purely
(;anadian tc .itures.
The New Brunswick Museum is especially rich in
artifacts connected to mourning practices. Although these
have been documented, the isolation of mourning artifacts
is only a beginning . More research and study is necessary
to determine the psychological effects on women who
were obliged to wear unbecoming and even ugly clothes
for what must have been literally years of their lives .
Was there a difference in the attitudes of young girls
and boys to the prospect of dying' After all, boys did not
have to work mourning samplers or labour over
needlework verses that welcomed death . In addition,
women alone faced the ultimate risk almost yearly during
childbirth . Was this a factor in the seemingly calm acceptance of their fate as illustrated in this inscription taken
from a tombstone at Gagetown, New Brunswick,
Sarah Clark, Died 14 April 1803
Aged 25 years i mos & 28 days
My days and minutes rapidly did roll
Death, pale death arrived without control
Called me away in haste before t'was noon
My Sav'our Jesus thot it not too soon .
Of Gershom Clark, 1 was the lawful wife
In childbed was forced to resign my life
My still[?] born infant on my feet it lies
In the cold grave till we are called to rise .

The following text presents aspects of mourning

behaviour that would have been expected of New
Brunswick women in the nineteenth century, as well as a
sampling of the artifacts that were the outward signs of
I
that behaviour .
The realities of death in the nineteenth century were a
constant and accepted aspect of everyday life . Rather than
attempt to hide it away or shield themselves from the
harsh facts, the Victorians especially confronted it,
eulogized it, and finally, reduced it through mourning to
a test of class.

Fig . I . This photograph of Julia C . (nee Fairweather) Perley

shows her in mourning for her husband Henry Perley of
Saint John, N .B ., who died in 1897 . She is in the
second stage of mourning with white lace at her neck .
The bodice is heavily trimmed with crape . The earrings and brooch at her neck appear to be made from
bog oak . The hanging gold pendant probably contains
hair . (Courtesy : New Brunswick Museum)

The rules for mourning conduct and dress were complicated, sometimes conflicting but always obligatory and
expensive . It reached its zenith from the 1850s to the
1880s and affected not only the upper and middle classes
but the poor as well . Ostentatious and public displays
were necessary rites following death . Mothers who were
facing financial disaster still had to expend money on
mourning because non-compliance was regarded as a sign
of disrespect and the result could be social ostracism. In a
class-conscious society always searching for an upward
move, this was catastrophic . Unlike today, grief was not
considered a personal or private matter, nor was it meant
to be quickly put away ; rather it was intended as a long-

lasting public spectacle .

For the death of a child or an older unmarried girl, the

trappings at the funeral were white, but black was the
primary colour of mourning . After the funeral, men
needed only to wear a black armband to denote their loss .
The width varied according to their relationship with the
deceased - four inches wide was standard for a wife . However, the burden of mourning was borne more heavily by
women, especially widows . They had to go into deep
mourning for a year and a day . This required being
clothed, outwardly at least, from head to toe in dull black
with the addition of crape as a trimming . The manufacture of crape, a transparent crimped silk gauze, was a
major industry when mourning rites and rituals were at
their height of popularity . It was used extensively as a
trimming in the house and on clothing . It was sewn
lavishly on the bodice and skirts ofdresses and in addition,
bonnets were made from it and the long face veils were
edged with it .

These assertions are well supported in the book Canada

Home : Jreliana Horatia Ewing'.r Fredericton Letters, 18671869 .2 In a letter to her mother dated 2 October 1868,
Juliana, the wife of a British military officer stationed in
Fredericton, describes going to the home of a family who
had just lost their first-born child . She had never met this
family before but went with a friend and obviously felt
little compunction about intruding or sharing the funeral
dinner .
Funerals here are very solemn affairs - We had such
processions to see the poor wee waxen corpse-such
arrivals of feminine friends, such perfect self
possession & "capabilities" on their parts, such
sympathetic solemnity & utter awkwardness
among the male mourners who gradually thronged
the passage, such unnatural repression mixed with
conscious dignity in the boy mourners whose hats
were carried off by a capable female to be banded
with white tarlatan, & whose fingers were encased
in white gloves which fitted the occasion but not
them - (a country urchin gazing at the inch & a
quarter of white glove beyond each finger tip was
really a picture!) In the midst of it all the motherin-law announced to the other ladies that Mrs . H .
was so terribly grieved at having no photo . or
memorial of any kind of the poor bairn - which
gave me something to do, for I slipped into the
room where the coffin was & made a sketch of the
poor little face in its coffin & with flowers at its feet
- it was not unlike - though it looked dead & I
wrote under it-"But the Spirit unto God who gave
it" & sent it to her . She was very much pleased I
believe . Then they shut the coffin up, after an
active lady had taken in all the boys in turn, who
came out shuffling their feet, & sucking their
fingers, & looking as if they had been saying their
Catechisms! & so the little funeral set off in the
rain, & as it wound up the hill we could hear the
poor mother break out into moans & cries upstairs .

Although changing abruptly from deep mourning into

part mourning on the day specified was frowned upon, the
widow could gradually change from dull black to black
silk or satin. Of course, it still had to be trimmed with the
ubiquitous crape which could not be discarded until at
least eighteen months after the death of her husband . It
would be two long years before the addition of a shade
other than black was permitted . When half-mourning
commenced, white, grey or lilac could be included .
Mourning clothes were not just applicable upon the
death of a husband. It was also mandatory for women to
wear black and observe mourning for eighteen months
after the death of a parent ; six months for a brother, sister
or grandparent; and if she was married, mourning had to
be observed in exactly the same manner for her husband's
relatives as for her own .
The death of a child, so tragically common, meant
mourning clothes for twelve months . Nor were more
distant relatives ignored ; six weeks to three months
mourning was customary for a first cousin or an aunt or
uncle . Widowers were free to remarry as soon as they
wished . However, if it was within two years, the new wife
was expected to wear only black or shades of half-mourning in memory of her predecessor .

Some of the differences in dealing with death between

the nineteenth and late twentieth centuries are selfevident in this account . Juliana's off-hand approach could
be construed as mocking and almost unsympathetic . Her
constant referral to the child as "it" sounds callous to
modern ears, but in a time when almost one third of all
children died, an arms-length treatment was perhaps the
only way to live with reality. Women, who at this time,
were generally relegated to the background of any important event, assumed a major role in overseeing the maintenance of proper etiquette and behaviour and honouring
traditions and rituals . Hardly surprising, as all through
the nineteenth century women were used to portray the
family's respectability, Christian piety, social standing
and wealth . Mourning and its accoutrements were the
ultimate showpieces for these attributes .

Accessories, such as fans, gloves, handbags, and

parasols, were also made in black . In some cases, women
went so far as to have their underwear edged with black .
But the colour restriction went beyond clothing and accessories . Calling cards, another aspect of the polite society,
were edged in black, as were writing paper and envelopes .
In some instances, families went so far as to have mourning china .
The ban on glitter or shininess extended even to
jewellery . Bog oak, with-its dull black finish, was carved

50

and shaped into brooches, earrings, pins and necklaces.

Jet, originally a type of black slate, was extremely popular
for the same purposes . Later, jet was copied in black glass .
Memorial wreaths and jewellery made from hair, often
of the deceased, were ideal for the Victorian perception of,
or obsession with, death . Often hair jewellery was set into
gold, as this could be worn .
Preceding a long and complicated set of directions for
weaving or plaiting hair, this foreword appears in an 1855
fancy needlework instruction book :
Fig . 2 . Mourning china . The pitcher (cat . no . 15211) was

made by S . Alcock & Co ., Burslem, England, in 1855

to commemorate the Crimean War . The small plate
(cat . no . A65 .24), possibly meant for calling cards, is
also of English manufacture . Made of soft paste porcelain, it has a black enamelled border and a black transfer print picture . (Courtesy : New Brunswick Museum)

Hair, that most imperishable of all the component

parts of our mortal bodies, has always been regarded as a cherished memorial of the absent or
lost . A lock of hair from the head of some beloved
one is often prized above gold or gems, for it is not a
mere purchasable gift, but actually a portion of
themselves, present with us when they are absent,
surviving while they are mouldering in the silent
tomb . Impressed with this idea, it appears to us
but natural that of all the various employments devised for the fingers of our fair country-women, the
manufacture of ornaments in hair must be one of
the most interesting .'

Fig . 3 . Black lace fan with black wooden sticks and guards
(Courtesy : New Brunswick Museum)

Fig . 4 . Black-edged letters and envelopes received by Lady

Alice Tilley, wife of Sir Leonard Tilley, a preConfederation premier, a Father of Confederation, and
Lieutenant-Governor of the province of New
Brunswick . (Courtesy : New Brunswick Museum)

Fig . 5 . Cross-stitch mourning sampler ( 42 cm x 38 cm) made

by Ruth Easterbrooke, in 18i9 at the age of fifteen
years . It is inscribed "Sacred to the memory of Mary
Ann Easterbrooke who died Dec . 4, 1836 . Aged G
years ." The tombstone and the weeping willow are
normal components of a mourning sampler . The
Easterbrooke family was probably from Queens
County, N .B . (Courtesy : New Brunswick Museum)

It must also have been one of the most frustrating, laborious and time-consuming crafts devised by anyone . Yet,
the popularity of hairwork is shown by the many examples
existing in museums today. Although some pieces were
made by professionals, most were made by a female
member of the family as a labour of love . Pictures of the
deceased were often done when they were in their coffin .
Hair wreaths and wax flowers were popularly used to
surround these memorial pictures or an existing one,
which would then hang in a place of honour on the parlour
wall . If there was a portrait of the deceased already
hanging, it was usually draped in crape.
Far from being shielded from the horrors of the grave,
children were encouraged to accept their own and others
mortality . A cross-stitch sampler made by a twelve-yearold girl in 185 1, has this morbid message:
On the death of a little brother
How clay cold now these once warm lips
Which mine so oft have prest
And silent is that prattling tongue
In everlasting rest

Mourning or memorial samplers with designs that

usually included either a tombstone or a weeping willow
were commonly made by schoolgirls with needleworking
abilities that are the envy of adult women today. During
the latter part of the last century, "In Memoriam" cards
were mass produced and provided by the undertaking
establishments .
The study of the lives of eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury New Brunswick women and children is on-going
at the New Brunswick Museum . Understanding the
complex subtleties of their attitudes to death and
mourning will inevitably lead to greater understanding of
their total lifestyles .
NOTES
l . All artifacts are from the collections of the New Brunswick
Museum .
2. Margaret Howard Blom and Thomas 8 . Blom, eds ., Canada Home:
.Juliarur Horatio Etvirtg't Fredericton Letters. /8G7-G9 (V".1ncouver :
University of British Columbia Press, 1983).
3. Ann S. Stephens, ed ., Frartk Leslie's Portfolio of Fanq Needlework
(New York : Stringer and Townsend, 1855).

Valerie Evans

Bibliographies
An Introductory Bibliography on Cultural Studies Relating
to Death and Dying in Canada
Gerald L. Pocius
Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Rituals (New York :
Cambridge University Press, 1979); Maurice Bloch and
Jonathan Perry, eds., Death and the Regeneration of Life
(New York : Cambridge University Press, 1982) .

What follows is an introductory and obviously incomplete bibliography of English-language works dealing
with death and dying in Canada . To be more specific,

these works are concerned primarily with the cultural

practices and physical artifacts that relate to death and
dying in this country . 1 have omitted works dealing with
native peoples ; there is an enormous literature - often
based on archaeological samples of actual burials -on this
topic, and it merits a bibliography of its own . I have
omitted strictly demographic studies of mortuary trends
and the enormous amount of sociological material that is
aimed at helping the bereaved cope with death in modern
society . Finally, I have not included the numerous
accounts of supernatural narratives that often have an
obvious connection with the death phenomenon .

AUGIMERI, Maria C. "Death and Funeral Customs." In

Calabre.re Folklore, pp . 111-14 . Canadian Centre for
Folk Culture Studies Paper 56 . National Museum of
Man Mercury Series . Ottawa : National Museum of
Man, 1985 . Brief comments on mourning, funerals,
prayers and devotions relating to the dead .
BOWDEN, Bruce, and Roger Hall . "The Impact of
Death: An Historical and Archival Reconnaissance
into Victorian Ontario." Archivaria 14 (1982) : 93105 . A survey of some of the thematic issues that
provide possible directions for research on the
Victorian attitudes in Ontario toward death, using
various archival materials as the basis for suggestions. The wide range of primary source material
detailed by the authors maps out a number of
research areas as yet uninvestigated .

The material and cultural aspects of death have been

extensively researched for over ten years now in both
Europe and the United States, but the number of works
devoted to this topic here in Canada is still small . Those
interested in the range of research conducted in the United
States should consult: Thomas A. Zaniello, "American
Gravestone : An Annotated Bibliography," Folklore Forum
9 (1976) : 115-37 ; Nancy Buckeye, "Early American
Gravestone Studies : The Structure of the Literature," pp .
130-36, and "Bibliography of Gravestone Studies," pp .
137-41, both in Peter Benes, ed ., Puritan Gravestone Art,
The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual
Proceedings 1976 (Dublin: Dublin Seminar for New
England Folklife, 1976) ; "Bibliography of Gravestone
Studies," in Peter Benes, ed ., Puritan Gravestone Art II,
Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings 1978 (Dublin: Dublin Seminar for New England
Folklife, 1979), pp . 149-58 . Two periodicals in North
America now deal with this material : The Association for
Gravestone Studies Newsletter and Markers. An extensive
bibliography that includes a great deal of material on
gravestones and cemeteries in the British Isles and Ireland
can be found in my M .A . thesis (listed below), pp . 45188 . The classic European work is Philippe Aries, The Hour
of Our Death (New York : Alfred A . Knopf, 1981); also see
John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment: Changing
Attitudes to Death Among Christians and Unbelievers in
Eighteenth-Century France (New York : Oxford University
Press, 1981) . Anthropological introductions include
Richard Huntington and Peter Metcalf, Celebrations of

BUCKLEY, Anna-Kaye, with Christine Cartwright .

"The Good Wake : A Newfoundland Case Study."
Culture & Tradition 7 (1983) : 6-16 . A discussion of
the functions of the typical Newfoundland wake and
funeral, based largely on archival sources . Describes
the activities that take place during the wake and
funeral, relating them to the general community
social pattern . Ritual activities lessen the disruptive
nature of death, while social pressures ensure that all
community members participate in providing what
is considered an appropriate wake and burial .
BUTLER, Gary R. "Sacred and Profane Space: Ritual
Interaction and Process in the Newfoundland House
Wake ." Material History Bulletin 15 (Fall 1982) : 2732 . An examination of the spatial relationships that
develop within the context of the traditional
Newfoundland wake, including both the physical
deployment of space during the wake and the
practice of ritual separation during the symbolic
"distancing" of the dead . These features are
examined through a comparative analysis of wakes

53

in both Catholic and Protestant communities.

CAPLAN, Ronald, ed . "How We Buried Our Dead ." In
Down North: The Book of Cape Breton's Magazine, pp .
231-39 . Toronto : Doubleday Canada, 1980 . Interviews with various Cape Breton residents about
practices relating to wakes, funerals and cemeteries .
CARNOCHAN, Janet . Inscriptions and Graves in the
Niagara Peninsula. Niagara Historical Society, no .
19 . Niagara-on-the-Lake: Niagara Advance Print,
1910 . Primarily a collection of epitaphs, with some
comments about the cemeteries of the region .
CARTWRIGHT, Christine . "Death and Dying in
Newfoundland ." Culture & Tradition 7 (1983) : 3-5 .
A survey of research conducted in Newfoundland on
death and dying .
COUMANS, Camilla C. "Ornamental Iron Grave
Markers." Waterloo Historical Society Annual Volume
49 (1962) : 72-75 . A brief discussion of several iron
Waterloo
County
gravemarkers
found
in
cemeteries .
CREIGHTON, Helen . "Death ." In Bluenose Magic:
Popular Beliefs and Superstitions in Nova Scotia, pp .
147-50 . Toronto : Ryerson, 1968 . A listing of
various beliefs connected to death, wakes and
funerals .
FORDYCE, A.D . The Auld Kirk-Yard, Fergus : In It, and
About It . Fergus : author, 1882 . Primarily a list of
inscriptions with some cemetery data .
. Gleanings from the Chnrch-)'ard: A Selection of
Old Inscriptions . Fergus : author, 1880 . Primarily a
list of inscriptions .
. The Monumental Inscriptions in the Cemetery at
Belleside, Fergus (Ontario) . Fergus : author, 1883 .
Primarily a list of inscriptions .
HANKS, Carole . Early Ontario Gravestones . Toronto:
McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1974 . Mainly a pictorial
survey of gravestones . Brief introductory chapters
examine materials, craftsmen, forms, epitaphs and
motifs .
HOWLEY, Michael Francis. "The Old Basque
Tombstones of Placentia." Royal Society of Canada .
Transactions, 2nd set ., 8, sec . 2 (1902) : 79-92 . A
description of the early Basque tombstones in
Placentia, Newfoundland, their possible origins and
dates .

KLYMASZ, Robert B . "Speaking At/About/With the

Dead : Funerary Rhetoric Among Ukrainians in
Western Canada ." Canadian Ethnic Studies 7, no . 2
(1975) : 50-56. A discussion of three verbal genres
used by Ukrainian-Canadians to communicate and
maintain contact with the deceased : the traditional,
oral funeral lament ; the obituary and/or commemorative piece found in the pages of the press; the
funeral sermon delivered by the priest officiating at
the funeral service .
KNIGHT, David B . Cemeteries as Living Landscapes .
Ottawa : Ontario Genealogical Society, 1973 . One
of the few studies that examines the cemetery as a
cultural artifact, addressing issues such as cemetery
status and layout, and burial location as indicators of
cultural values . Based primarily on Ontario
materials .
. "Geographic Education and Field Exercises:
Cemeteries as a Site for Analysis ." The Monograph
(Ontario Geography Teachers Association) no . 2
(1970-71): 16-18 . Comments on cemeteries as a
learning resource for local studies .
KOBAYASHI, Teruko . "Folk Art in Stone : Pennsylvania
German Gravemarkers in Ontario." Waterloo Historical Society Annual Volume 70 (1982) : 90-1 13 . A
survey of the types of gravestones made by Pennsylvania-German immigrants to southern Ontario.
The essay lists a series of cemeteries and discusses the
major motifs found in each place .
MILLIGAN, Betty Ann, and Deborah Trask. A Cemetery
Survey : Teacher's Manual . Halifax: Nova Scotia
Museum, n.d . A student's guide on how to analyze
cemeteries for a class project in order to learn about
the history of a local community .
MORSE, William Inglis . "Gravestones of Acadie ." In
Gravestones of Acadie, and Other Essays on Local
History, Genealogy and Parish Records oAnnajolir
f

County, Nova Scotia, chap . 1, pp . 2-15 . London :

Smith, 1929 . A listing of several cemeteries, with
brief notes on origins, materials, and the evolution
of gravestone form .

. "Monumental Art of Nova Scotia ." In The

Land of the New Adventure: The Georgian Era in Nova
Scotia, chap . 3, pp . 92-133 . London : Quaritch,
1932 . A survey of gravestone types and epitaphs,
with comments on early craftsmen and their work .
Provided are descriptions of various stones, their
inscriptions, and some commentary on actual
designs.

OSBORNE, Brian S. "The Cemeteries of the Midland

District of Upper Canada : A Note on Mortality in a
Frontier Society ." Pioneer America 6, no . 1 (1974) :
46-55 . A study of mortality using gravestones as a
data source . The author examines the periodicity
and seasonality of death and the age of the deceased .
He finds that this frontier society was characterized
by high infant and female mortality, pronounced
seasonal differences in mortality, and peak years of
mortality associated with outbreaks of epidemics .

examination of gravestones and cemeteries in eastern

Newfoundland, looking at both historical and
ethnographic factors that have shaped current
patterns . Gravestones remained primarily a
specialized artifact that had little input from local
traditions . Other practices, however, such as the
elaborate decoration of graves, enabled the living to
maintain continued social bonds with deceased
loved ones .

PATTERSON, Nancy-Lou. "German-Alsatian Iron

Gravemarkers in Southern Ontario Roman Catholic
Cemeteries ." Material History Bulletin 18 (Fall
1983) : 35-36 . A brief discussion of cross-shaped
iron gravemarkers made by local blacksmiths in the
Waterloo region .

RUSSELL, Lynn, and Patricia Stone . "Gravestone Carvers

of Early Ontario ." Material History Bulletin 18 (Fall
1983) : 37-39 . A discussion of the photographic
survey of the province's gravestones which the
authors are conducting . General comments on the
initial findings dealing with symbols and style
chronology are given, as well as some details on
several carvers .

. "The Iron Cross and the Tree of Life : GermanAlsatian Gravemarkers in Waterloo Region and
Bruce County Roman Catholic Cemeteries ." Ontario
History 68 (1976) : 1-16 . A survey of the iron
gravemarkers in this area of southern Ontario, concentrating primarily on the typical symbols used .
The author offers interpretations of the historical
backgrounds for these images . Some mention is
made, as well, of the cemeteries in which these
markers are located .

SALO, Matt T., and Sheila M.G . Salo . "Death ." In The
Kaldera.r in Eastern Canada, pp . 162-74 . Canadian
Centre for Folk Culture Studies Paper 21 . National
Museum of Man Mercury Series . Ottawa : National
Museum of Man, 1977 . A summary of beliefs about
wakes, funerals and burial, as well as post-funeral
memorial feasts, and customs relating to cemetery
visits .
.
SHIMABUKU, Daniel M., and Gary F. Hall . St . Paul's
Cemetery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada : Description
and Interpretation of Gravestone Designs and Epitaphs .
Occasional Papers in Anthropology No . 10 .
Halifax: Department of Anthropology, Saint Mary's
University, 1981 . Using archaeological theory and
methods, the authors develop several typologies to
analyze gravestones in St . Paul's Cemetery . Detailed
analysis is provided by decade on gravestone iconography, form and epitaphs . Contains several
extensive appendices listing demographic information, and a partial inventory of gravestone forms and
epitaphs .

POCIUS, Gerald . L . "Eighteenth- and NineteenthCentury Newfoundland Gravestones: Self-Sufficiency, Economic Specialization, and the Creation
of Artifacts ." Material History Bulletin 12 (Fall
1981): 1-16 . A discussion of the origins of
Newfoundland gravestones, an artifact tradition
originally dominated by imported markers, but
gradually replaced by locally made varieties by the
mid-nineteenth century . The earliest gravestones
used in Newfoundland came from England and
Ireland ; when the economic base shifted to St .
John's in the early 1800s, many trades, including
gravestone carving, developed locally. Far from
being an artifactually self-sufficient culture in
earlier times, Newfoundland was marked by a high
degree of division of labour .

TRASK, Deborah E. Life How Short, Eternity How Long :

Gravestone Carving and Carvers in Nova Scotia .
Halifax : Nova Scotia Museum, 1978 . A survey of
gravestone types and carvers in Nova Scotia, with
sections that deal with particular craftsmen, and
specific styles and motifs . An extensive checklist is
provided of stonecarvers and marble works found in
the province .

. "The Place of Burial : Spatial Focus of Contact

of the Living with the Dead in Eastern Areas of the
Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland ." M .A . thesis,
Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1975 . An

55

Mort et religion traditionnelle au Quebec :

Bibliographie
Madeleine Grammond
Benoit Lacroix
Les monographies, il va sans dire, sont plus qUe rates
dans cet inventaire et c'est clans le but de susciter en meme
temps que de favoriser les recherches sur la mort, les rites
et coutumes funeraires au Quebec qu'une premiere
exploration bibliographique a justement ete entreprise .
Nous lui confions une double mission :

On a dit d'elle, la mort, qu'elle etait une ,piece majeure

d'une civilisation traditionnelle . Jusqu'a quel degre
peut-on discerner les attitudes populaires devant elle?
Deja nous nous en doutons, la mort autrefois est un evenement normal et naturel, inevitable mais en quelque sorte
apprivoise . Aujourd'hui, la mort devient plutot un
incident, un accident de fin de semaine, un fait a eviter, a
oublier, a renier . On voit ds lots apparaitre la mort sans
paradis, sans cimetiere, sans rituel, loin des eglises, la
mort etatisee, embaumee, fardee .

- deceler les aspects sous lesquels la mort et les coutumes

qui 1'entouraient autrefois ont ete saisis par les auteurs
d'aujourd'hui et par les ecrivains plus directement
relies, de fa~on chronologique, a cette epoque qui nous
interesse encore ;

Comment en arriver a cerner les faits, les croyances, les

ideologies en cause? Tout de suite, une bibliographie
s'impose : c'est le present propos de la presenter.

- decouvrir les tendances selon lesquelles evoluent actue!leinent les mentalites et la sensibilite religieuse
quebecoise face a la mort .

Des methodes de recherche diversifiees, allant de

1'utilisation des instruments traditionnels de reference a
l'interrogation des banques de donnees bibliographiques
ordinolingues, ont revele une grande pauvrete de
documentation ecrite sur le theme de la mort au Quebec .
D'ou le souci d'operer parfois des depouillements qui
n'ont pas cours dans les syntheses bibliographiques plus
abondamment pourvues .

I
A.

1.

La presente bibliographie se propose donc principalement un itineraire clans le temps. Elle cherche la souplesse
et 1'adaptation du cadre de classement plutot que 1'exhaustivite des references . Sous chaque titre de chapitre, ces
references sont introduites dans un seul ordre
alphabetique d'auteurs et de titres .

LA MORT AUTREFOIS

D'apres les auteurs contemporains (1950-1985)

Etudes thematiques, historiques ou litteraires

Les cadavres, a la mer!, No .r racines: !'histoire vivante de.r

Quebecois, 2 (1979) : 40 . Le titre specifique de ce
numero, La traver.ree et .res perils, explique le recit
d'une mort en met au debut de la colonie. Les rites
religieux sont presents .

BELISLE, Jean . Les enclos paroissiaux quebecois,

Decormag, 3, 5 (janvier 1975) : 18-19 . L'article est
une illustration et une explication de ce qu'etaient
les cimetieres quebecois au debut de la colonie. II
fait ressortir les similitudes de ces derniers avec les
enclos paroissiaux bretons.

CHARBONNEAU, Hubert . Vie et mort de nos ancetret,

Coll . Demographie canadienne n 3 . Montreal,
Les Presses de 1'Universite de Montreal, 1975 . 267
p. Une des premieres etudes resultant des travaux de
l'auteur au Departement de demographie historique
de 1'Universite de Montreal .

BLACKBURN, Marthe . Rites de la mort au debut de la

colonie, Medium-Media, 13 : La mort : 5-6 .
L'auteure relate plutot comment mouraient les
Amerindiens, premiers habitants du pays . Nos
ancetres, dit-elle, ont observe ethnographiquement leur maniere de faire mais pour eux ces rites
n'etaient que superstitions, sorcelleries et charmes .

CLICHE, Marie-Aimee . Les attitudes devant la mort

d'apres les clauses testamentaires dans le gouvernement de Quebec sous le Regime fran~ais , Revue

56

d'histoire de 1'Ameriqice franl~ai.re, 32, 1 ()'uin 1978):

57-94 . Apres une analyse de 799 testaments,
I'auteure conclut que la presque totalite des
testateurs, clans 1'espoir d'aller au ciel et d'abreger
leur purgatoire, ordonnent des paiements de dettes,
des legs charitables, des fondations de messes et
affirment sans contredit leur foi catholique . Etude
serieuse et bien documentee .
. L'evolution des clauses religieuses traditionnelles dans les testaments de la region de Quebec au
XIX` siecle, Religion poprrlaire, religion de clercs?,
Benoit Lacroix et Jean Simard, dir. Coll . ,Culture
populaire n 2 (Quebec, Institut quebecois de
recherche sur la culture, 1984): 365-388. Nombreux tableaux . Evaluation des traditions .
DORION, Jacques . tbloyens de communication non verbaux .
Coll . Presence du passe n 21 . Montreal, Maison
de Radio-Canada, Service des transcriptions et
derives de la radio, 15 mars 1979 . Sont signales : la
cloche, les crepes aux portes clans les cas de deces, le
deuil. . .
DUSSAULT, Gabriel . La representation de.r fins dernieres
dans la culture religieuse poprrlaire de 1900 au Quebec
.
These de licence en theologie, Faculte de theologie
de la Compagnie de Jesus, 1971 . 77 p .
GENEST, Bernard . Reflexion methodologique sur un
corpus d'objets funeraires, Religion populaire,
religion de clercs?, Benoit Lacroix et Jean Simard, dir.
Coll . Culture populaire n 2 (Quebec, Institut
quebecois de recherche sur la culture, 1984): 339363 . Tout le Quebec a ete parcouru a 1'exception des
grandes villes . Approches historique, descriptive,
iconologique, semiologique et symbolique . Nombreuses photographies .
HUDON, Jean-Paul . La veillee au mort d'Albert
Laberge et La guerre, yes, sir! de Roch Carrier, CoIncidences, 3, 2 (mars-avril 1973): 46-53 . Etude
litteraire comparative qui montre les eeuvres de
Laberge et de Carrier comme des caricatures de la
societe canadienne-fran~aise et comme une maniere
pour eux de s'interroger sur la mort . La religion est
davantage presente et attaquee clans 1'oeuvre de
Carrier.
LAPORTE, Annie . Suffrages pour les defunts dans les
commrenaretes religieuse.r canadiennes de 1870 It 1970 .
Manuscrit de 33 f.
OLIVIER, Daniel . Des veillee.t au mort . . .a la mort . Manuscrit de 11 p. Inedit . Etude comparative de -La
veillee au mort d'Albert Laberge (Visages de la vie et
de la mort, pp . 228-257) et de La guerre, yes, sir! de

Roch Carrier, pp . 44-124 .

PELLETIER-BAILLARGEON, Helene . Autrefois, la
mort etait une histoire de famille , Ch~rtelaine, 18,
11 (novembre 1977): 49, 82, 84, 86 . Description de
la mort familiale de nos ancetres et des coutumes,
celle du deuil entre autres, qui leur rappelaient
constamment les fins dernieres .
PORTER, John R . Le chretien devant la mort , L'Eglise
catholiqice et le.r arts an Quebec - Le grand heritaq
(Quebec, Musee du Quebec, 1984): 311-328. A
partir d'une analyse detaillee des materiaux, codifies
et souvent illustres, 1'auteur ecrit une histoire
rituelle des mentalites .
RHEAUME, Yolande . Le.r revenants . These de licence,
Universite Laval, 1969 . 277 p . Theme rattache a la
mort, au culte des ancetres et a la devotion aux ames
du purgatoire .

2.

Etudes regionales

Les etudes regionales sur la mort apparaissent ici vers

1950 . Nous les devons a :
BERUBE, Susan et Michel Rioux. Repertoire des croyance.t et
pratiqtret populaires du Bas-Saint-Lanrent. Rimouski,
College de Rimouski, 1974 . 177 p. Les auteurs
abordent la mort dans une section intitulee Evenements de la vie- et dans une autre partie qui
.
regroupe des Contes et legendes de notre region))
Leur texte est celui de collegiens integres a un projet
interdisciplinaire et conscients d'avoir trouv6 clans la
litterature orale de leur region une sorte de miroir
magique ou se reflete fidelement Fame de notre
peuple .
DES RUISSEAUX, Pierre . Croyancer et pratiques popnlaires
au Canada franfais . 2e ed . Montreal, Editions du
Jour, 1973 . xxii, 224 p. Le chapitre 9 de 1'ouvrage,
un survol, rapporte surtout les presages qui ont trait
a la mort et mentionne generalement la region ou
circulent les croyances, au Quebec, au NouveauBrunswick ou a File-du-Prince-Edouard .
. Magie et sorcellerie populaires au Quebec.
Montreal, Editions Triptyques, 1976 . 204 p. Le
volume apporte un supplement d'information sur les
presages qui sont deja inventories clans 1'ouvrage cite
plus haut .
DORMS, Louis-Jacques . La vie traditionnelle sur la cote
de Beaupre, au debut du XXe siecle, Revrred'histoire
de 1'Amerique franfaise, 19, 4 (mars 1966): 547-548.
L'auteur decrit, tres sommairement, les coutumes
funeraires de la population qui 1'interesse .

MARIE-URSULE, Soeur. Derniere maladie et mort ,

extrait de Moeurs lavaloises , Civilisation traditionnelle des Lavalois . Coll . Les Archives de folklore
nos. 5-6 . (Quebec, Les Presses de 1'Universite Laval,
1951): 131-135 . L'extrait se situe dans un projet
plus vaste qui est de presenter une monographie de
au
point
de
vue
Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval
folklorique . Bref et honnete, il est documente,
semble-t-11, a partir de temoignages oraux .

DOYON-FERLAND, Madeleine . Rites de la mort dans

la Beauce, Journal of American Folklore, 67, 264
(April-June 1954): 137-146. Cet article est un
classique . Les chercheurs d'autres regions du
Quebec doteraient leurs concitoyens d'un outil
precieux pour la connaissance de leurs traditions en
renouvelant pour leur compte la demarche de
madame Doyon-Ferland .
FAVREAU, Bernard. R4onographie de la paroit.re de SaintHilaire. Etude de la natalite, de la nuptialite et de la
mortalite a partir des regi.rtre.r de la parois.re et de la
de.rserte: interpretation sociologiqtre de.r changements .urrvenrrs . These de M .A ., Universite de Montreal,
1965 . 140 f. L'influence de la religion est signalee
dans 1'interpretation des faits .

1a legende de la mort ,
ROY, Carmen . Mort et
Lea
litteratrtre orale en Gaspe.rie (Ottawa, ministere du
Nord canadien et des Ressources nationales, 1955):
103-105 ; 124-135 . Le premier extrait recueille les
presages de la mort vehicules en Gaspesie par la
tradition orale . Le contenu de second est clairement
indique par son titre .

FORTIER, Yvan . La mort : le reel et l'imaginaire en

Charlevoix, La vie qrrotidienne au Quebec: hi.rtoire,
mitiers, techniques et traditions, Rene Bouchard, dir.
(Sillery, Quebec, Presses de l'Universite du Quebec,
1983) : 135-158 . ,Melanges a la memoire de
Robert-Lionel Seguin publies sous les auspices de la
Societe quebecoise des ethnologues . L'article
resulte d'une enquete ethnographique qui a permis a
l'auteur de recueillir des elements relatifs a la pensee
populaire autour de la mort .

Si le present inventaire ne permet pas encore de conclusions, il autorise deja a poser, a la suite d'une constatation,
quelques questions. Les etudes regionales Wont pas encore
couvert tout le Quebec . Sont-elles indispensables a
1'avenement des grandes syntheses? Ont-elles actuellement la faveur des ethnologues, sociologues, folkloristes
et historiens? Pourquoi? Sur 25 auteurs deja cit6s, 12 ont
accompli des recherches de ce genre . La regionalisation des
Archives nationales du Quebec exercera-t-elle une
influence sur l'orientation des travaux futurs en ce sens?

JACOB, Paul . Les revenants de la Beaurce. Montreal, Boreal

Express, 1977 . 159 p . Cette monographie livre le
fruit d'une recherche pour laquelle 1'auteur a
recueilli, dans huit paroisses de la Beauce, des
recits et temoignages sur les connaissances que les
trepasses communiquent aux vivants . Descriptive,
l'etude ambitionne aussi de degager les finalites des
communications d'outre-tombe .

3.

Etudes sur les sources

11 faut aborder maintenant de pres I'archivistique par la

mention d'auteurs qui ont etudie les sources de 1'histoire
et, plus part iculierement, les registres paroissiaux . Si des
etudes comme celles de Marie-Aimee Cliche ont et6
realisees A partir d'archives notariales, d'autres pourraient
etre elaborees A partir des archives paroissiales : registres,
cahiers de prones, sermons, etc . Une bibliographie sur la
mort ne peut garder le silence sur ce materiel archivistique
imposant par le nombre, l'anciennete, la continuite . Et
comment 1'utiliser si on ignore le contexte qui a vu naitre
cette immense documentation de meme que la reglementation qui a regi la majorite de ces pieces? Citons, a titre
d'indication :

JAMMES, Fran~oise . L'e.rpace .racre et le .rens de la ntort au

Quebec . Religiographie du cirnetiere de Terrebonne . These
de maitrise en sciences religieuses, Universite du
Quebec a Montreal, 1982 . vi, 1 10 f., ill .
MAILHOT, Jose . Description des pratiques frrneraires a Tetea-la-Baleine . Manuscrit depose au Musee national de
1'Homme a Ottawa en 1969 . 108 p .
. Le.r relations entre le.r vivants et les mortt a Tete-ala-Baleine, d'aprer une analyse de ligende.r . These de
M .A ., Universite de Montreal, 1965 . v, 136, 46 f.
Le dernier chapitre degage a partir des legendes un
systeme de croyances articule autour de la mort et de
ses consequences, et ce systeme est mis en rapport
avec le christianisme .

BOUCHARD, Gerard et Andre Larose . Sur 1'enregistrement civil et religieux au Quebec depuis le XVII`
siecle : presentation de textes et commentaires,
Andre Cote, Sources de l'hiatoire du Saguenety-LacSaint Jean, Tome l: Inventaire de.r archives paroissiales
(Quebec, Direction generale des Archives nationales
du Quebec, 1978): 12-31 . Cette etude preliminaire
a I'Inventaire procure la connaissance de base
indispensable pour aborder les registres paroissiaux
et refere, pour un supplement d'informations, ih des

. La mort et le salut des defunts a Tete-a-laBaleine, Recherches sociographiques, 11, 1-2 (janvieraout 1970): 15 1-166 . Article de synthese .

58

sources telles que les editions successives du Rituel de

Quebec, le Code civil de la Province de Quebec, deux
articles de Romeo Lemelin parus clans La Revue de
l'Univerrite Laval, 1, 9-10 (mai-juin 1947), et
d'autres encore .
LAROSE, Andre. Les registres paroissiaux au Quebec avant
1800 : introduction a l'etude d'une institution eccle.ria.r-Etudes
tique et civile . Coll .
et recherches archivistiques n 2 . Quebec, ministere des Affaires
culturelles, Archives nationales du Quebec, 1980 .
xix, 298 p. Texte base sur un memoire de maitrise
en histoire depose par 1'auteur en 1976 a la Faculte
des etudes superieures de 1'Universite de Montreal et
intitule : Les registres paroissiaux au Quebecaux XVlle et
XVIIIe siecles: introduction a l'etude d'une institution
religieuse et civile .
LEMELIN, Romeo. Le.r registres parois.riaux de la province
civile de Quebec. These de Ph .D . (droit canonique),
Universite Laval, 1944 . 333 f.
Le Repertoire des actes de bapteme, mariage, sipulture et de.r
recensements du Quebec ancien, Hubert Charbonneau et

B.

1.

Narrations et/ou descriptions

La criee pour le.r arnes

Nos

ROY, Raymond et Hubert Charbonneau . Le contenu

des registres paroissiaux canadiens du XVII` siecle,
Revue d'histoire de l'Amerique franfaite, 30, 1 (juin
1976) : 85-97 .
Signalons aussi, hors du cadre de cette bibliographie et
a titre d'exemple: Bouchard, Gerard et Michel Bergeron,
Les rapports annuels des paroisses et l'histoire
demographique saguenayenne : etude critique , Archives,
10, 3 (decembre 1978) : 5-33 . Avec la parution d'inventaires et de repertoires de plus en plus nombreux publies
en collaboration avec les Archives nationales du Quebec, il
faut regretter, en fonction de la recherche dans le domaine
des traditions religieuses populaires, la penurie d'etudes
critiques qui guideraient les chercheurs dans 1'interpretation et 1'utilisation de masses documentaires desormais
accessibles .

D'apres les auteurs anciens (. . .-1950)

Les auteurs plus anciens sont souvent temoins oculaires

de ce qu'ils racontent, ou heritiers d'une tradition orale
tres proche . Leurs ecrits sont descriptifs, empreints d'un
realisme qui nous fait assister en quelque sorte aux evenements . Regroupons-les sous des themes distincts :
a)

Jacques Legare, dir . Montreal, Les Presses de

1'Universite de Montreal, 1980v. Information
contenue dans les registres plutot qu'information
sur les registres . Remplacera avantageusement les
repertoires nombreux et fragmentaires publies
surrout en vue de la recherche genealogique .

traditions nationales, Almanach du peuple

(Montreal, Beauchemin, 1924): 289. La criee pour
les ames est racontee et vue grace a une illustration de
E .J . Massicotte .

RIVARD, Adjutor . La criee pour les ames , Chez nosgens

(Montreal, Bibliotheque de 1'action fran~aise,
1923) : 57-64.
ROY, Pierre-Georges . ,La criee pour les ames, extrait de
Nos coutumes et traditions franpises, Les Cahiers
des Dix, 4 (1939) : 73-74 .

b)

Le viatique et l'extreme-onction

FERLAND-ANGERS, Albertine . Essai stir la poisie

religieuse canadienne . Montreal, 1'Auteur, 1923 . Cet
ouvrage cite : Beauchemin, Neree, Le viatique , p.
20, et Galleze, Englebert, Derniers sacrements ,
extrait de Les chemins de l'dme (1910), p . 22, qui
leguent A la posterite leur vision symbolique de
1'ultime ceremonie .
MASSICOTTE, Edmond-Joseph . Nos canadien.r d'autrefois: 12 grandes compositions avec commentaires par des
auteurs canadien.r . Montreal, Granger Freres, 1923 .
Le Saint Viatique a la campagne y est commente
par Albert Laberge.
MASSICOTTE, Edouard-Zotique . Anecdotes canadiennes
suivies de Mceurs, coutumes et indtrstries d'autrefois.
Montreal, Beauchemin, 1913 : 203-204 . Le SaintViatique de Charles Trudelle y est introduit.
ROY, Pierre-Georges . Comment on portait le bon Dieu
autrefois , Les Cahiers de.r Dix, 4 (1939) : 71-72 .

printanier pour 1'inhumation . La coutwne a-t-elle

existe, ou bien I'anglophone a-t-il confondu eglise et
charnier?

TRUDELLE, Charles . Nos traditions nationales,

Almanach du peuple (Montreal, Beauchemin, 1927):
363 . En sous-titre : 1e Viatique . Illustrateur de la
scene: E .J . Massicotte .

MASSICOTTE, Edouard-Zotique . Les ceremonies de la

mort au temps passe, Bulletin des recherches
historiques, 30, 5 (mai 1924): 153-155 .

. Paroisse de Charleshourg . Quebec, A. Cote,

1887 : 247-249 . L'auteur relate comment fut
achetee a Charlesbourg one caleche pour transporter
le pretre qiu devait porter le saint viatique aux
malades et aux mourants . Le voyage entier est
raconte.

c)

ROY, Pierre-Georges . Quant la mort passait , Les

Cahiers des Dix, 4 (1939) : 91-92 .
e)

La nzort

L'ancien cimetiere de Quebec , Bulletin des recherches

historiques, 18, 7 (juillet 1912): 217-219 . Sont
rapportes des extraits de la Gazette de Quebec, en date
d'octobre 1764 et d'avril 1767 .

HEMON, Louis. Maria Chapdelaine: recit du Canada

franfais . Montreal, J .A . Lefebvre, 1916 . 243 p.
L'eeuvre est un roman et le romancier, un Fran~ais .
Cependant les scenes sont vivantes et vraies autant
qu'elles peuvent l'etre dans on tableau a la plume .
Aux pages 190ss, la mort y est decrite telle que 1'ont
connue les pionniers du Lac Saint-Jean .

BECHARD, Auguste . Histoire de la pllrolJJeSaJnt-AllguJtln

(Portnelrf) . Quebec, lmpr . L . Brousseau, 1885 . 395
p . Le cimetiere y est presente (352-355) et son reglement en 12 articles bien distincts (259-265) est
donne . Remarquons 1'excellence de la source que
constituent souvent les monographies paroissiales
pour des etudes sur les traditions religieuses .

SAVARD, Felix-Antoine . Menaud Maitre-draveur .

Edition definitive . Montreal, Fides, 1937 . 153 p .
Ch . IV, pp . 55ss : recit de la mort de Joson disparu
sans meme laisser les consolations que laissent
presque tous les morts: les sacrements, les prieres, la
derniere parole qu'on se repete, le soir, en famille .
Est-ce fiction ou realite?
d)

Le.r clntetiere.r

CREMAZIE, Octave . Les morts , CEuvres conrpletes

d'Octave Crenzazie (Montreal, Beauchemin, 1882) :
117-123 . Ce poeme de novembre 1.856 permet de
decouvrir les sentiments nobles et chretiens
qu'inspirent aux croyants ceux qui, dans leurs
tombeaux, dorment solitaires,, .

Les funerailles et autre.c coutlnnes flrneraires

BECHARD, Auguste. Histoire de la paroi.rse de SaintAlrgurtin (Portneuf) . Quebec, Impr . L . Brousseau,

1885 . 395 p . : 324-325 . On assiste a une sepulture
d'autrefois sur la foi du temoignage oculaire de
Jacques Jobin . La source est tout pres du visuel et de
l'oral .

LAPALICE, Ovide . Les cimetieres de Notre-Dame de

Montreal, Bulletin des recherches hi.rtoriqlre.r, 36, 5
(mai 1930): 307-313 . Article recapitulatif et
surtout correctif des ecrits anterieurs sur le meme
sujet .
MASSICOTTE,
Edouard-Zotique.
Les
anciens
cimetieres de Montreal, 1648-1800, Bulletin de.c
recherche.r historiques, 27, 11 (novembre 1921): 341345 . L'auteur veut corriger, relativement aux informations anterieures a 1800, des erreurs qu'il a
decelees dans un article de septembre du Bulletin de
la meme annee.

BOUCHARD, Georges. Les funerailles du vieux

terrien, Vieilles chose.r, vieille.c gens (Montreal,
Librairie d'action canadienne-fran~aise, 1931) : 4144 .
Les chariots ou corbillards d'autrefois, Bulletin des
recherches hi.rtoriques, 43, 12 (decembre 1937) : 371372 . II s'agit de 1'histoire et de la pre-histoire des
corbillards .

MAURAULT, Olivier. Les cimeti~res , La parot.rJe.'

histoire de l'eglise Notre-Dame de Montreal (Montreal,
L. Carrier, 1929): 274-290 .

FAUTEUX, Aegidius . Le culte des morts, Bulletin des

recherche.r historiques, 37, 4 (avril 1931) : 217 .
L'auteur s'attaque a 1'ecrit d'un anglophone, John
MacTaggart, qui suggere aux anatomistes de faire
leurs dissections au Canada ou les morts reposent
dans les eglises tout I'hiver en attendant le degel

MONDOU, Simeon . Etude sur le culte des mort.r chez les

anciens et les peuples modernes et les Cimetieres catholiqrres
de Montreal depuis la fondation de la colonie. 3' ed .
Montreal, Imprimerie du Messager, 1911 . 125 p.

60

. Les premiers cimetieres catholiques de Montreal et

1'indicateur du cimetiere actuel . Montreal, E . Senecal &
Fils, 1887 . 196 p. Montreal est privilegiee . Mais on
retrouve quelques inexactitudes dans le texte.

cette association est de s'aider mutuellement a se

procurer une bonne mort ; les diverses prieres et les
pieuses pratiques que 1'on y fait sont pour l'obtenir a
tous les associes en general, et en particulier a la
premiere personne de la confrerie qui doit mourir .
(p~ 3) On y trouve, entre autres prieres: Litanies pour
obtenir une bonne et sainte mort (13-16), Le
chapelet des morts (17), Acte d'acceptation de la
mort (17-18). L'opuscule est parmi les livres rates de
la Collection Gagnon, Bibliotheque municipale,
Montreal .

Monuments du Mont-Royal : cimetiere Notre-Dame-des-Neiges .

Montreal, A . Pelletier, 1901 . 67 p.

ROY,

Pierre-Georges . Cimetieres d'aujourd'hui et

cimetieres d'autrefois, Les Cahiers des Dix, 4
(1939) : G8-G9.

C'est donc une douzaine d'auteurs anciens environ qui,

selon cette rapide exploration, ouvrent les premieres issues
et prennent maintenant valeur de sources pour 1'etude de

3 . Pastorale et enseignement religieux

themes encore a developper par les chercheurs munis des

savants moyens d'aujourdhui .

La pastorale relative a la mort au XVIIIe siecle ne se

traite pas sans reference a :

SAINT-VALLIER, Jean-Baptiste de la Croix de

Chevrieres de . Rituel du diocese de Quebec publie par
1'ordre de Monseigneur de Saint- Valier, eveque de Quebec .
Paris, Langlois, 1703 . 604 p . A partir de la page
180 jusqu'a la page 276, on trouve des rubriques
telles que: Ordre pour la communion des malades,
De la maniere dont un cure se dolt conduire pour
recevoir un testament, Maniere d'assister les
mourants, Ordre qu'on doit garder dans les funerailles, etc. Tout est prevu.

2 . Prieres et autres pratiques de piete

Pour penetrer dans 1'univers concret des devotions de
nos ancetres, enumerons, en laissant parler les titres :
BENOIT de J ., M. Joseph Samuel . Livre d'or des dmes du
purgatoire : prieres et pratiques de pieti les plus efficaces et
les plrrs richement indulgenciees en faveur des ames du
purgatoire : cent cinquante merveilleuses apparitions des
dines du prrrgatoire . Quebec, (s .n .], 1925 . 286 p.
L'edition de 1927 est consultable a la Bibliotheque
nationale du Quebec .

Quant a 1'education religieuse donnee et re~ue a la

meme epoque, elle se decouvre en consultant :

Bouquet spiritrrel aux Ames du parrgatoire et Delivrons du

purgatoire ceux que nous avons aimes. Deux opuscules
de 64 p. chacun en vente vets 1897 a Montreal, chez
M . de la Rousseliere, rue Sherbrooke, aujourd'hui
deposes a la Bibliotheque nationale du Quebec .

SAINT-VALLIER, Jean-Baptiste de la Croix de

Chevrieres de . Catechisme du diocese de Quebec par
Monseigneur 1'lllustrissime et reverendissime Jean de la
Croix de Saint- Valier, eveque de Quebec. En faveur des
Curez et des Fideles de son Diocese. Paris, Urbain
Coustelier, 1702 . 524 p. C'est le premier
catechisme imprime pour la Nouvelle-France . Trois
chapitres en particulier s'y rapportent au theme de la
mort : La resurrection de la chair (110-113), De
1'Extreme-Onction (287-290), Du jour des morts
(420-423) .

GIBBONS, James . Purgatoire - Priere pour les morts,

Quelques points de doctrine contestes par nos freres separes
(Montreal, Beauchemin, 1924): 25-38 . Le volume
est traduit de 1'anglais par Adolphe Saurel, cure a
New York, qui precise: Nous nous sommes proposes de faire du bien aux canadiens-fran~ais . . . en
propageant parmi eux de la bonne litterature . . . Ce
nous est une grande consolation . . de songer que. . .
dans un grand nombre de paroisses de la Province de
Quebec, . . . on lit, dans notre belle langue, un
ouvrage si universellement estime . 30 000
exemplaires sont repandus gratuitement avant cette
nouvelle edition .

LANGUET, JeanJoseph . Catechisme du diocese de Sens .

Quebec, Brown & Gilmore, 1765 . 177 p . Premier
livre imprime au Canada . Monseigneur Briand, par
mandement du 7 mars 1777, devait le rendre
catechisme officiel du diocese de Quebec . Des 2 000
exemplaires sortis des presses en 1765, 3 ont
echappe aux attaques du temps et se retrouvent Fun
a 1'Universite Laval, un autre a la Collection Baby
(Universite de Montreal) et le troisieme a la Collection Gagnon (Bibliotheque municipale, Montreal) .

Reglement de la confrerie de l'adoration perpituelle du S . Sacrement et de la bonne mort erigee dans 1'Eglise paroissiale de
Ville-Marie, en Pile de Montreal, en Canada . Nouvelle
edition revue, corrigee et augmentee . Montreal,
Mesplet & Berger, 1776 . 40 p. La fin principale de

Le Catechisme en images . Paris, Maison de la Bonne Presse,

1908 . Soixante-dix gravures en noir avec 1'explica-

G1

Une fois de plus, la bibliographie frole la mediagraphie

en touchant au pictural . Au moment de clore un chapitre
ou les anciens, si proches du visuel et de la tradition orale,
ont parle de la mort a leur faon, il faudrait peut-etre
penser a la complementarite des sources pour 1'6tude du
theme de la mort au Quebec .

tion de chaque tableau en regard . Ce livre

impressionnant oriente vets le visuel et les meditations graves . Rappelons, entre autres scenes, la
representation du Jugement dernier (Tableau 10)
et celle de La mort du juste et la mort du pecheur
(Tableau 56).

II

LA MORT AUJOURD'HUI
MONBOURQUETTE, Jean . ,Alder les personnes en
deuil a renaitre , L'Eglise canadienne, 19, I (5
septembre 1985) : 8-13 . Les etapes d'un deuil bien
vecu, et les habiletes necessaires aux agents de
pastorale pour Line aide efficace aupres des personnes
endeuillees . Bibliographie .

L'actualite de la mort demeure . 11 faut donc chercher

comment evolue actuellement la mentalite religieuse
quebecoise face a la mort . 11 faut se demander aussi par
quelles coutumes, quels rites et quelles croyances le
peuple prolonge les traditions ancestrales ou dans quelle
mesure et pour quelles raisons il risque de les abandonner .
Le present chapitre tente de rassembler des elements
documentaires de reponse a ces questions .

1.

2.

Mort et pastorale

Mort et respect de la vie

Des inquietudes et des considerations nouvelles se font

jour . Une certaine nostalgie des coutumes anciennes
apparait et Fort reve de mort naturelle dans le milieu
familial . On s'interroge aussi sur l'au-dela de la mort, la
vie apres la vie . La documentation courante refl&e routes
les tendances et reflexions . Quelques exemples parmi Line
multitude:

Les preoccupations pastorales autour de la mort demeurent et se veulent rattachees a la tradition .

Commrrnaute chretienne, 3, 17 (septembre-octobre 1964) :
342-428. Numero special consacre a la mort et aux
usages funeraires . Un accent particulier est mis sur
la pastorale .

COUTURE, Andre . Reincarnation ou resurrection?

Revue d'un debat et amorce d'une recherche , Science
et esprit, 36, 3 (octobre-decembre 1984) : 35I-374 ;
37, 1 (janvier-avril 1985): 75-96 . Vue d'ensemble
critique des discussions des dix dernieres annees au
Quebec . Notes bibliographiques .

DUBOIS, Marcel . Veillee.r de priere.r pour les defuntt .

Montreal, Fides, 1963 . 30 p . Plut6t que de
disparaitre, les traditionnelles veillees au corps
adoptent des formes renouvelees de priere .

DEMERS, Dominique. Qui vit? Qui meurt? Qui

decide? , L'Actualite, 10, 11 (novembre 1985) :
144-151 . La politique sur la reanimation, 1'arret ou
1'abstention du traitement dans les h6pitaux
quebecois . Temoignages et resultats d'un sondage.

GIGNAC, Andre . Creer des rythmes , Liturgie et vie

chretienne, 99 (janvier-mars 1977) : 59-73 . L'auteur
donne le deroulement d'une celebration dominicale
con~ue pour commemorer le souvenir des defunts .
Son but, clairement indique : la sauvegarde d'une
valeur importante de notre heritage chretien et
culturel .

DUNN, Cathleen . Mourir dignement , l_'Eglise

canadienne, 9, 7 (ao6t-septembre 1976): 196-197 .
L'auteur met en garde contre I'euthanasie et affirme
le principe du respect de la vie.

GUIMOND, Richard . Liturgie du depart de ce

monde , Conmunraute chretienne, 14, 80 (mars-avril
1975): 151-156. L'article refere a d'autres excel lents
articles du Bulletin national de liturgie, 35 (mai-juin
1972) .

Euthanasie: aide au suicide et interruption de traitement , Nursing Quebec, 4, 2 (janvier-fevrier 1984):

23-27 . Synthese des conclusions et recomnmandations de la Commission de reforme du droit du
Canada en cette matiere: opinion de I'Ordre des
infirmieres et infirmiers du Quebec .

. La priere pour les morts hier et aujourd'hui ,

Pretre et pastetr, 80 (1977) : 541-549 .

62

Mort et euthanasie, Le Devoir (7 avril 1977): p. 9, col .

2, art . 1 . La voix de la presse quotidienne se fait
souvent entendre sur les sujets qui touchent a la vie
et a la mort .

ROBERT, Gilles . Les frais funeraires, Protegez-vous, 7

(1979) : 63-66. II en coute plus cher de mount au
Quebec que partout ailleurs au Canada et ceci en
raison des mceurs funeraires des Quebecois .

PELLETIER-BAILLARGEON, Helene . Un debat

confus, douloureux mais capital: 1'euthanasie,
Chatelaine (novembre 1977): 54, 110, 112, 114117 . Le titre a lui seul decrit le trouble des consciences face au probleme traite .

Survivre . . . la religion et la mort, Raymond Lemieux et

Reginald Richard, dir. Coll . Les Cahiers de recherches en sciences de la religion n 6 . Montreal,
Bellarmin, 1985 . 285 p . Les pratiques entourant la
mort ont beaucoup evolue depuis vingt-cinq ans. Ce
volume, resultat d'un colloque tenu a 1'Universite
Laval en 1983, tente de repondre a la question
suivante : qu'en est-il aujourd'hui de la quete de sens
qui partout, a travers les religions et leurs rituels,
determine 1'art de mourir?

ROSS, Val . Euthanasie : la mort en douce , L'Actualite,

9, 5 (mai 1984): 113-118 . Le debat qui se poursuit
au Canada sur cette question delicate .
3.

Mort et usages funeraires

Ajoutons a cet inventaire provisoire quelques questions

et propositions plus generales qui - on ne salt jamais pourraient peut-etre permettre d'orienter ou de completer
les titres deja acquis .

L'heritage culturel et chretien des Quebecois est-11

menace en ce qui concerne les rites de la mort? Comment
s'est opere le passage a de nouvelles coutumes, tributaires
d'une societe commercialisee, industrialisee et anonyme?
Nous repondrons partiellement et provisoirement :

1 . La typologie detaillee et comparee des sources pour

1'etude des croyances religieuses populaires au Quebec
a deja ete 1'objet d'une publication que nous nous permettons de citer, puisqu'elle pourrait guider nos
lecteurs : Religion poprrlaire au Quebec : typologie des sources,
selective
bibliographie
(1900-1980) de Beno i t Lacroix et
Madeleine Grammond,
publiee par 1'Institut
quebecois de recherche sur la culture a Quebec en
1985 . Cette typologie porte tour a tour, par ordre
d'importance qualitative, sur les sources visuelles, sur
les sources sonores, sur les sources manuscrites et sur
les imprimes .

BAROLET, Jacques . Le co6t des funerailles, Protegezvous (octobre 1985): 57-63 . Les types d'entreprises
funeraires et les choix possibles de funerailles et de
ceremonies ; les pre-arrangements ; les tactiques
frauduleuses ; comparaison de prix et facture-type ;
conseils pratiques.
Celebrer la mort en Eglise , L'Eglise canadienne, 17, 16
(19 avril 1984) : 489-490 . Message des eveques de
l'Inter-Montreal sur le sens chretien de la mort et sur
les attitudes a adopter pour bien celebrer en Eglise
cette derniere etape de la vie.

a) Parlons des sources visuelles. Le folklore materiel de la

mort, deja aborde par les ethnologues Madeleine
Doyon, Jean-Claude Dupont, Robert-Lionel Seguin,
Bernard Genest et d'autres, n'a cependant pas fait
1'objet d'etudes speciales du point de vue strictement
theologique . Par ailleurs, les recherches en cours sur les
inscriptions funeraires, les cartes mortuaires, la topographie des cimetieres, s'averent pleines de promesses.

DESBIENS, Jean-Paul . ,La mort d'un seigneur, Les

Cahiers de Cap-Rouge, 1, 4 (1973) : 283-286 .
L'auteur ecrit en 1971 pour proclamer la memoire
de son pere . Apres le recit des funerailles, il
declare : Presque plus personne ne comprend ni
cette langue ni cette musique. . . Je suis vraiment
dans les derniers de quelque chose .
HARMEGNIES, Rene . -Incineration ou inhumation,
Le Soleil (31 decembre 1976): p. A4, col. 4, art. 1 .
Lettre oia se trahit I'hesitation, l'interrogation face
aux deux alternatives .

De plus en plus, d'autres sources s'imposeront a

notre etude: le cinema, la television, les archives
photograph iques, etc.
Au sujet des sources visuelles encore, n'oublions pas
les services que 1'archeologie et d'autres sciences dites
jadis auxiliaires sont en mesure de rendre a nos
recherches sur la mort au Quebec . Deja par exemple, en
1974, les coutumes funeraires de l'Ungava sont partiellement retracees et livrees au public dans Archeologiedu
Nouveau-Quebec: sepultureset .rquelette.rdel'Ungava, Raoul
Hartweg et Patrick Plumet, publie par le Laboratoire
d'archeologie de 1'Universite du Quebec a Montreal .

LAMARCHE, Jacques . Le .rcandale des frais funeraires .

Montreal, Fides, 1965 . 127 p . Temoignage deja
d'une societe de consommation .
Legislation et directives concernant I'incineration ,
L'Eglise canadienne, 9, 7 (ao6t-septembre 1976):
196-197 . L'Eglise approuve le document, compte
tenu des changements de mentalites .

63

b) Les sources sonores sont pour le moment davantage

favorisees . Notons en passant la tendance qu'ont les
ethnologues a mener eux-memes leurs propres
enquetes jusqu'a risquer de devenir a la fois juges et
temoins de leur materiau . D'autre part, [Is sont
souvent les premiers a signaler les croyances, les rites et
les usages locaux . Leur apport est donc considerable et
reste fondamental pour 1'etude de la mort traditionnelle .

3 . D'autres conclusions s'imposent face a une bibliographie qui demontre que les etudes sur la mort au
Quebec commencent a peine. D'abord la necessite des
monographies qui permettent le defrichement des
nouveaux territoires de recherches . En plus, et sachant
que de tous les evenements que vit ou subit un etre
humain, la mort reste le plus choquant, le plus riche
aussi, on ne saurait ici se limiter a une ou deux
categories privilegiees de sources, meme comparees
entre elles. Nous parlerons aussi d'eclairage interdisciplinaire . Decrire la mort ne suffit pas, pas plus
que la laisser a des propos seulement dogmatiques ou
religieux. Bien sur, on peut etudier le folklore de la
mort a la maniere de Madeleine Doyon, ou rappeler
comment la mort permet de parler du pecM, des fins
dernieres, de la resurrection et du ciel, mais notre
epoque davantage eclectique et plus inquiete souhaite
en outre connaitre mieux l'histoire des mentalites et
1'anthropologie culturelle . Surtout depuis que nos
moeurs urbaines nous acheminent vets la mortaccident, la mort fatale, 1'incineration, 1'abandon du
cimetiere ou le cimetiere lointain, les Funeral Homes,
sans oublier le retour aux dialogues avec les morts, aux
croyances, a la reincarnation, a la parapsychologie, aux
visions, aux reves premonitoires, etc .

c) Au niveau des sources manascrite.r, qui sont de plus en

plus repertoriees par les archivistes quebecois,
signalons l'effort en cours pour recueillir tout ce qui est
document ecrit a la main, v.g . journal, recit, lettre
familiale, registre, pr6ne, testament, contrat. C'est le
temps de citer: Lamonde, Yvan, Je me souviens : la litterature pertonnelle au Quebec (1860-1980), Coll . -Instruments de travail,, n 9, Quebec, Institut quebecois de
recherche sur la culture, 1983, 275 p . et Van RoeyRoux, Fran~oise, La litterature intine du Quebec,
Montreal, Boreal Express, 1983, 254 p . Cet inventaire
qui en est a ses debuts promet des surprises positives .
II y a en plus les registres paroissiaux . Le demographe trouve deja tout ce qu'il veut savoir au prealable
sur les dates, metiers, chiffres ; il peut proceder a des
evaluations quantitatives importantes comme telles et
pretes en meme temps a servir 1'histoire des mentalites
ainsi que les significations socio-culturelles de la mort
au Quebec .

4. Peut-etre faudrait-11 mentionner quelques travaux

actuellement en cours sur les testaments et les contrats
de mariage pour y percevoir le r61e des croyances
religieuses . D'autres qui etudient les fins dernieres
d'apres la litterature populaire de ces dernieres annees .
Le depouillement des archives d'un presbyt~re de
Bellechasse pour trouver comment la mort est vecue au
village depuis cinquante ans, une enquete sur les
manieres de mourir d'apres les biographies pieuses du
Quebec depuis 1900, sont en cours .

d) Quant aux sources itnprintees, dont nous offrons la

bibliographie, elles ont ete elles aussi plus utilisees
qu'etudiees en tant que telles . Notre historiographie
de la mort reste a ecrire .
2. t1 propos de la typologie des sources encore, le besoin
se fait periodiquement sentir d'une sorte de
mediagraphie visant la complementarite des sources .
Des lots, on pourrait envisager des monographies plus
completes, des etudes d'ensemble sur la mort des
Quebecois, 1'oral, le visuel et le texte, les chansons, les
cantiques, des photos, des illustrations, des disques,
etc., venant affirmer ou contredire a leur maniere
1'hypothese de travail . 11 deviendrait possible, par
exemple, a partir d'une analyse des pierres tombales,
de sermons, d'enquetes orales, de reglements de
cimetieres, d'archives familiales, de testaments
notaries ou olographes, de prieres pour les defunts retrouvees dans des livres de piete, de cantiques comme
Beau ciel, eternelle patrie, de se faire une idee passablement juste et nuancee de la mort traditionnelle des
Quebecois.

5 . Notons aussi, et a propos de cette bibliographie

encore, que si le XIXe siecle a ete, comme on 1'a d it, le
siecle des Ame.r du purgatoire, les titres depuis une
trentaine d'annees orientent plutot vets le patrimoine,
vers une pastorale des vivants, vers la pri~re communautaire et la mise en place de rites funeraires plus
conformes a 1'esperance chretienne et surtout
contraires au fatalisme ambiant .
Enfin, nous croyons malgre tout avoir fourni ici,
provisoirement du moins, un secteur bibliographique
representatif de 1'interet des Quebecois pour ce qu'on
appelait autrefois dans les milieux ruraux :
MOURIR DE SON VIVANT,
MOURIR DE SA BELLE MORT,
ALLER DE L'AUTRE BORD .

64

Provincial Museum of Alberta, Edmonton, "Spiritual Life

- Sacred Ritual ." Curator: David Goa . Designer : Julian
West . Permanent exhibition . Opened : 6 August
1979 .
It is the measure of the impact of this gallery that
officials from one group should weep uncontrollably for
ten minutes before finally gaining sufficient composure to
express gratitude . Its potential is such that peoples whose
friends and relatives kill each other half way around the
world, should grasp each others hands in recognition of a
common humanity . It should at the outset be plainly
stated : this exhibition carries a symbolic meaning unusual
for most galleries .
Perhaps some of this power derives from the way
religion is characterized in official culture . Most people
acknowledge the importance of the spiritual roots of their
identity in some form, but officially Canada is secular .
The ambiguous relationship of our cultural heritages to
the identity of the country is reflected sometimes in a
hesitancy to affirm just what these heritages are . Add to
that the discord religion has fomented historically, and we
have ample reason to downplay its role in the makeup of
the nation .

But ignoring reality deprives us all of truth, and invites

confusion in our children . It is the conviction of "Spiritual
Life - Sacred Ritual" that in the real life of the people, such
ambiguities do not exist . Men and women are religioussometimes in very complex, irregular ways . They participate in a tradition that brings depth and meaning at
several levels of their existence, regardless of whether they
live in Alberta or Romania, Edmonton or Moscow . This
first permanent exhibition of the Provincial Museum of
Alberta's Folk Life Program is a worthy expression of the
purpose of that segment of human history : to collect, research and exhibit materials on the peoples of Alberta .
The pertinent question is whether it adequately expresses
either the complexity of religion or the diversity of the
people .
On entering one notes a collection of sacred writings,
examples from the vast number of scriptures from the
religious world whose devotees are represented in the
peoples of Alberta. Here is one indication of an attitude
that prevails throughout - the holy words of each religion
stand equally accepted and honoured, with brief segments

NNOW
Fig . 1 . The "Spiritual Life - &
Provincial Museum of A
1979 . (All photos : Fol6
Museum of Alberta)

translated as vignettes of the tradition. Wherever sacred

words appear they are printed in red, with interpretive
text in black . The planners have deliberately leveled
distinctions of numbers and significance of groups in the
province in the presentation of this material . This may Ix
more than some believers from beyond our shores might
have thought possible : it is certainly less than the muchvaunted "bible-belt" devotees would believe (or perhaps
accept) . This emphasis on the written text dominates the
entire exhibit ; it makes visits to the gallery much longer
and more intensive than others . Thus considerable investment of time is needed to survev the collection .
If sacred writings are used to introduce spiritual life,
the main focus of that life is ritual . The curator has chosen
two themes . The first is to detail the "life-cycle" rituals,
utilizing rites from different religions to express a
different moment in the birth-to-death rites de passage.
Photos taken of a contemporary rite is juxtaposed to an
iconic painting which represents the traditional image in
the history of the group. This works sometimes, as in the

lhe other worship displays belong to the Hindu,

Lutheran, Doukhobor, Muslim, Eastern Orthodox,
Judaic, and Roman Catholic traditions . Several are superb

collections, especially the Judaic material from the old

Vegreville synagogue before it disbanded, and the
Douhkobor objects, which must represent the best in
Canada . It is remarkable that this tasteful and rich exhibit
is housed in an area not much larger than seven metres by
twenty-five metres . Little wonder that the gallery has
been somewhat of a pilgrimage site for many of the groups
represented here .

Unfortunately that brings sharply into view one glarin

problem of the exhibition : it is extremely limited, both i
terms of the religions covered, and its interpretation (
relieion . The sinele metaohor is tradition. It dominacn
Fig . 2 . "Worship through Thanksgiving" vignette discusses
the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist service, in the Raymond
Buddhist Church, Raymond, Alberta . The vestments
of Alberta's first Buddhist priest are exhibited along
with a small altar, incense and incense burner . This
material is part of the Japanese collection of the Folk
Life Program .

traditional painting of the baptism of Jesus, used in conjunction with Mennonite baptism, but is lost in the Sikh
marriage with a picture of Krishna (a Hindu deity) and his
wife . In general, however, the iconic image is overpowered amid the photos of the contemporary rite and the
interpretive text, so that one would have to have fairly
sophisticated knowledge of the traditions to understand
the relationship of the icon to the rite .
The other focal point is worship . The items are
arranged in eight standing displays set at angles to a backdrop of huge grey photographs of buildings representing
the European or Oriental homeland of the tradition . Each

display features the key ritual gestures of the prime act of

worship for a tradition . This is not a festive ritual . It
represents the ordinary, everyday ritual of worship that
anyone from that tradition knows and participates in . By
selecting this ritual, the curator is underlining the regular
and commonplace interaction with the divine which constitutes the believer's religious world . Ritual vestments
and artifacts flesh out the display . For example, the vestments of the first Jodo Shinshu priest to serve in Western
Canada, Rev . 1 . Kawamura, include an ink-black kurnnta,
over which fits a thin stole called a rcagesa . Finally, a large
festive garment called a Gojo Gera completes the
ensemble . Along with the mannequin dressed with these
garments, the display features a small "lesser" altar on
which rests two types of incense, nrakka and Kirtko, which
the devotee traditionally offers, as well as copies of the
service books and juzn, prayer beads with lOK seeds of the
bodhi tree . These beads represent the 108 passions which
must be overcome .

Fig . 3 . The lesser altar, incense burner and the two types of
incense used by the tradition in the vignette on Jodo
Shinshu worship .

as it may be, fails to encompass either the multifaceted

nature of religion or Alberta's own spiritual legacy . What
we have is a very suggestive expression of a work that has
only just begun .

Fig . 4 . "Worship through Teaching" vignette discusses the

Sabbath service in the Beth Shalom synagogue,
Edmonton, and exhibits ritual accoutrements, a Torah
scroll and ritual garments acquired from a disbanded
rural synagogue at Vegreville, Alberta . This material
is part of the Judcuca collection of the Folk Life
Program .

Fig . 5 . The Torah scroll, wimpel (binding) and pointer in the

vignette on Jewish worship .

of those spiritual enterprises that have little "tradition"? If

Alberta is known for its conservative Christian perspective, perhaps even its fundamentalism, where has that
appeared in this gallery~ That may be a stereotype, but it
would seem necessary to address it in some manner .
Moreover, what of the rich and variegated traditions of the
native people' While a photograph of a sacred circle is
added, almost as an afterthought on the wall as one leaves
the gallery, it seems a diminuation of religion in Alberta
not to have included something of those rich cultures .
Hence the exhibit, as eround-breakine and extraordinarv

For all that, the most powerful message it may give is to

those groups who found it difficult becoming part of
Canada . The Doukhobors, so used to being maligned and
misunderstood, are justified in weeping before a sensitive
and appreciative treatment of their faith . And Jews and
Muslims, so bombarded with antagonisms against each
other from abroad, can join in accepting the sacredness of
each other in a setting that accepts the genius of their
individual traditions without favour . As a symbol of
legitimation, "Spiritual Life - Sacred Ritual" may then be
one of the most significant that has been mounted in our
country . And it may indicate the importance of spiritual
life in our culture in a way that has hitherto received little
public appreciation .
I:arl Waugh
Curatorial Statement
The Folk Life Program of the Provincial Museum of
Alberta came into being several years prior to the opening
of the Spiritual Life - Sacred Ritual Gallery . Its mandate
was to research, document, and collect material on the
cultural life of Alberta's many communities with
European, Oriental and Latin American roots . Tight on
the heels of the establishment of the new program, the
opportunity to develop <i permanent gallery was a great
challenge . So many exhibitions that have attempted to
deal with the cultural diversity of Canada have selected
sample artifact material from each tradition, labelled it,
then bracketed the entire exhibition between a comment
on immigration and settlement patterns, and a few visuals
of contemporary song and dance routines in ethnic
costume . This is an appalling diminution of the structure
and meaning of the very fabric of human life . Milan
Kundera's discussion of the colonization of cultural
memory in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (New York :
Penguin Books, 1981) seems an appropriate comment on
the implicit way Canadian museums have treated the
cultural patrimony and the living tradition of every
Canadian, with the exception, perhaps, of the two
dominant cultures (French and English) and that of the
native people . The reasons for this are beyond our current
discussion . It was, however, the desire to speak about a
significant aspect of the cultural patrimony and living
tradition of Alberta's numerous peoples that led me to
consider themes in human culture which could be
addressed in this gallery .

The terms of reference for the exhibition called for it t()

include reference to a number of the Cultures that exist in

Alberta. Because the Folk Life Program had come into

existence two years earlier, we had virtually no collection
from which to draw . As a result, it was necessary to choose
a theme in human culture that had a material culture component, examples of which exist in the province ; could
reflect the cultural diversity in Alberta; showed an aspect
of culture shared by a number of national cultures, so that
more than one ethnic group would be reflected in each
vignette ; had an institutional network to smooth the
field-work and collections tasks, which had to be done
quickly; and, finally, was an aspect of culture of importance to the patrimony of the community, and a part of the
living tradition .
The ritual life of human culture was a natural choice,
given the cultural and institutional landscape of Alberta.
Numerous peoples have come to the province because of
religious persecution . Church, Synagogue, Mosque, and
Temple remain the primary cultural institutions for many
in the community . That the religious aspect of human
culture had been studied a good deal was also important .
Ritual studies, however, are rare . In North America,
virtually nothing has been done on ritual life and popular
religious practice . Hence, this choice provided an area for
substantial research and a potential contribution to
scholarship . The study of religion is my primary area of
scholarship, so this was of importance, as well .
The research phase of the gallery was singularly fruitful
for the development of the Folk Life Program . We had
remarkable success in field-work in the communities . The
religious leaders across the province gave us complete
access to the ritual cycles, and families cooperated
graciously . We established a significant collection of
documents, ethnographic and historical photographs on
ritual life, and a marvellous artifact collection . The
museum's reputation as the domain of the peoples of
Alberta was established in communities, many of which
are not its natural constituency . This had a salutary effect
on the overall Museum Program and has led to the
development of a well-balanced artifact collection, representative of the cultural life of the communities in
general .

The structure of the exhibition allowed us to use

material from several ethnic communities in each

vignette . For example, Russian, Ukrainian, Greek, and

Arab items are in the setting for the Divine Liturgy of
Eastern Orthodox Christianity . The themes of worship
and rites of initiation run like a thread through human
culture. Consequently, the exhibition has a coherence that
makes it possible to address the profound ideas and images
at the heart of human culture.
The gallery has functioned in a variety of ways . When
visitors enter the gallery, they commonly seek out something familiar . They stop in front of Lutheran Worship,
for example, to look, read, and think, then they turn to
several other traditions considered in the gallery . They
spend a considerable amount of time in this process of
examination, of seek and find . The Moslems, Jews,
Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Christians represented in
the gallery use the exhibits somewhat more specifically .
They commonly bring Sunday School groups to the
gallery, and use it in their educational programming .
Many of them have requested lectures in the gallery for
adult education groups, as well . For some of the newer
immigrant communities, such as the Hindus, Sikhs, and
some of the Moslems, the gallery has become a kind of
pilgrimage site . They bring dignitaries to the exhibition
and show them that in Alberta, the province with the redneck reputation, they, too, are a legitimate part of the
cultural world . Their view of the meaning of life, their
practice of what is central to the human imagination, to
human culture, it valued . And indeed it is .
A final critical note . The gallery does not meet my
expectations at the interpretive level . There is grave
danger that ethnographic exhibitions portray an aspect of
culture as if it were fundamentally foreign, strange, or
esoteric . Pedagogically, I would like to see the Spiritual
Life - Sacred Ritual Gallery designed to balance the
reverence it now exudes, with images drawn from secular
society that show how men, women, and children continue to address the sacred, whether in wonder, adoration,
regard, or through simple quest. The use of these images
to initiate the public to the gallery would help to bridge
the concern for the sacred in all human culture, including
the secular, with the specific way that concern is expressed
in the classical religious tradition discussed in the gallery .

David J . Goa

The Ox in Nova Scotia

DesBrisay Museum National Exhibition Centre, "The Ox
in Nova Scotia ." Curator: Gary Selig . Designer :
George Halverson, Nova Scotia Museum . Travelling
exhibition : July 1984-February 1987 . Tour : DesBrisay

Museum NEC, Bridgewater; Old Kings Courthouse

Heritage Museum, Kentville; Nova Scotia Museum,
Halifax; Shelburne County Museum, Shelburne;
Hector NEC, Pictou ; Yarmouth County Museum,

tion Centre in t3ridgewater, N .S . (NSM N-I?,~)~

Yarmouth ; Annapolis Valley Macdonald Museum,

Middlcton; Colchester Historical Museum, Truro .
Reviewed at the Yarmouth County Museum .
The intent of "The Ox in Nova Scotia" is to show the
importance of the ox in the development of the economy,
transportation and folklore of Nova Scotia . A travelling
exhibition, it is scheduled for viewing at eight sites
throughout Nova Scotia . Produced by the DesBrisay
Museum National Exhibition Centre in Bridgewater,
with design, construction and circulation by the Nova
Scotia Museum, the exhibition received financial
assistance from the Museums Assistance Programme of
the National Museums of Canada . Contributions in the
form of photographs and artifacts were made by various
museums and archives and by present and former
teamsters from around the province . Research and photography were carried out by Peter Barss, whose previous
exhibitions "Images of Lunenburg" and "Older Ways :
Traditional Nova Scotian Craftsmen" lend their down-toearth style and fine portrait photography work to this
exhibit .
The ox does not seem a likely subject for an exhibition,
but after viewing the exhibit one can see that the ox should
be entitled to its own chapter in Nova Scotian history . The
exhibit is divided into sixteen sections, each dealing with
one aspect of the subject. The first unit - "What is an ox?"
- prominently displays a castration tool, convincing proof

pictures ot various breeds ot domestic cattle serve

illustrate which breeds can be cross-bred to produ
certain desired traits in an ox . The remainder of tl
exhibit takes the viewer through sections on the impo
tance of oxen in Nova Scotian work, economy, transport
tion, and communication ; buying and selling steer
breaking steers ; the teamsters ; yokes and fastening
naming oxen ; children and oxen ; oxen at work on tl

Fig . 2 . Photographs, both historical and current, were a

important source of information in the exhibition an
were taken bv Peter Bcirss . researcher for the exhib

farm, in logging, along the coast and in transportation ;

long hauls by oxen ; ox bells ; yoke making ; the
blacksmiths; ox lore ; exhibitions and parades ; and the ox
whip . What more could be said about the ox? Logically it
would seem that the sections on oxen gear should be
grouped together, but by spacing these subject areas, the
viewer is better able to focus on each item .

OX

Each segment uses photographs, artifacts and text, the

latter sometimes in the form of a quotation from a
teamster . The artifacts are limited mainly to the gear
worn . A good selection of yokes makes up one section .
Single and double types of both neck and head yokes, as
well as the accompanying head pads, leather straps, chains
and backing pins, can be seen . Another section, a step-bystep photographic sequence of yoke making, shows the
associated tools and the completed yoke . In the black-

N1

I I`~ ` t~z

Fig . 4 . The shoeing process is illustrated with artifacts and

photographs of the blacksmith and the ox .

(NSM N-12,991)

The Yoke M
~

smiching section, shoes at every stage, from the plain iron

bar co the completed shoe, are displayed .

. .~~

Of particular interest in the exhibit are the quotations

from the teamsters, some of whom still maintain teams .
Among these people plain speech prevails : "He went to
work and put 'em on the pole and never put no draw bolt
into 'em, into the pole to hold 'em . He done this to fool
'em ." Authenticity is added by the superb photographs of
the teamsters with cigarette in hand or hat worn tilted to
the side .

`'

Two videotapes come with the exhibit, each about

fifteen minutes long . One shows oxen hauling timber

'

from the woods, while the other allows the viewer to see a

blacksmith shoeing an ox - both feature the oxen and staff

at the Ross Farm Museum where the videotaping was done
by Media Services, Nova Scotia Department of Education .

Almost all of the text can be found in the booklet

accompanying the exhibit . A few of the quotations are
missing and, in the French version, they are paraphrased .
The booklet makes a nice take-away souvenir although a
few more photographs would have made the guide more
interesting .

One apparent afterthought to the exhibit is the

addition of a French-language booklet . Although likely a
funding requirement, it somewhat spoils the look of the
original title panel . The necessity of a French version is
questionable if the exhibit does not travel beyond Nova
Scotia since while the exhibit was displayed in Yarmouth,

Fig . 3 . The processes and skills of various tradesmen were

a town sandwiched between two large French-speaking

areas, no French version copies were taken - even by

recorded in detail in photographs in the exhibition .

Here we see a yoke maker ac work . (NSM N-12,)93)

70

still-active teamster is Glen Sutherland of Clyde River, who

celebrated his eightieth birthday on 4 May 1985 .

people known to speak French at home .

One complaint heard about this exhibit was that the
title is somewhat misleading since the text and photographs cover only the South Shore of Nova Scotia - from
Halifax to Yarmouth . The use of oxen in Cape Breton or
other parts of the province was not mentioned. Perhaps
research revealed little new in these areas and so artifacts
and photographs were procured from the nearest sources.
Children, other than 4-H members, did not appear to
spend a great deal of time looking at this exhibit, but then
children, as many adults, can "do" a museum or an exhibit
in an incredibly short time . Perhaps they would be more
impressed with a stuffed ox!
The exhibit lends itself to the use of local artifacts -at the
Yarmouth County Museum it was supplemented by
photographs and gear from a local teamster as well as by a
model timber-laden sledge, recently made, complete with
ax, whip, tea billy and even a bale of hay. On Heritage
Day a real team came to the museum - "Bright" and
"Lion" were successful crowd pleasers . The openings of the
exhibit at Bridgewatec and Halifax featured other
"Brights" and "Lions" (the almost universal names for
oxen). *
Of particular importance in all exhibits is the ability to
attract new museum visitors-those who make an effort to
visit the museum perhaps for the first time to view a
special exhibition . This one was no exception - many
visitors who may have previously thought that museums
were too "cultural" for them came to the Yarmouth
County Museum to see "The Ox" and will hopefully
return .
This exhibit has elicited many favourable remarks and a
number of return visits - both of which support this
reviewer's idea that the exhibit is a winner . All who
worked on "The Ox in Nova Scotia" can be proud of their
involvement. Gary Selig, Curator of the DesBrisay
Museum, and producer of this exhibit is to be congratulated and thanked .
" Editor's Note :

Eric J . Ruff

The exhibition also sparked research efforts in Shelburne

County . The Shelburne County Museum organized an Open
House during the exhibition to which they invited two yokes
of oxen and their teamsters, a yoke maker and a whip maker .
In addition, the staff at the museum compiled a list of all the
Shelburne County teamsters now living in the county . They
located -fifty-six teamsters and all received an invitation to the
Open House .
Ernest Swansburg of Sable River has the distinction, at
ninety-three, of being the oldest in this group . The oldest,

For a list of Shelburne County Oxen Teamsters, April

1985, see The Occational, vol . 9, no . 2, 1985, published by
the Nova Scotia Museum .

Curatorial Statement
The DesBrisay Museum National Exhibition Centre
does not have a fully equipped workroom . The person on
staff who does research, exhibit planning, collecting,
minor conservation, exhibit design and production and
label writing is also the director . This resource base made
it imperative for DesBrisay to enter into a cooperative
venture with the Nova Scotia Museum in the production
of "The Ox in Nova Scotia ."
A grant was secured from the Museum Assistance
Programme, National Museums of Canada, to hire a
project researcher . This was necessary so that the exhibit
project could be undertaken over a period of two to three
years as opposed to the ten years it would take if institutional staff had to accumulate research information on an
ad-hoc basis .
The project was expected to depend mainly upon information gathered through oral history research . Local
photographer and journalist, Peter Barss, was hired in
recognition of his special affinity for people of rural Nova
Scotia, the expected audience for the research effort . His
photographic skills were an asset in collecting photographic images from private collections .
An Advisory Committee was established to facilitate
advisory assistance from the Nova Scotia Museum ; as well
as the director of the provincial museum, board members
of the DesBrisay interested in the planning and preparation of the exhibit, the first major travelling exhibit to be
produced by the museum, served on the committee.
Management of the project was somewhat difficult .
The new research being undertaken could lead into a
much bigger project than desired. It was decided to focus
research on the South Shore and go further afield as time
and resources permitted . Museums across the province
were contacted in an effort to obtain the broadest representation for a Nova Scotia focus in the exhibit's theme.
The collection of the DesBrisay Museum was very weak
in respect to oxen-related technology . It was thought that
this type of material would not likely have survived and so
the exhibition was expected to be predominately graphic
in content. As the research activity increased, a number of
artifacts were uncovered. Two collections were donated by
private individuals to the exhibit project . This provided a

more than adequate artifact base for the exhibit and the
museum .

museum of the Nova Scotia Museum Complex, was the

scene for the video productions . This museum is located in
Lunenburg County about 60 km from DesBrisay . The
museum makes use of oxen in its normal activities and was
an ideal setting to document the oxen at work in logging
operations and the blacksmith making and fitting shoes to
a team of oxen .

The design and physical production of the exhibit was

carried on at the Nova Scotia Museum, adding to the
difficulties of coordinating the exhibit. Because close
collaboration and communication was imperative, a
liaison person with the Nova Scotia Museum was
appointed to channel information materials and help
arrange meetings with various staff involved in the
project.

The Ross Farm Museum was exceptionally cooperative

in the video programming and other aspects of the
project. And, in turn, participating in these productions
created an awareness among the Ross Farm staff that
certain routine activities which were not part of public
programming to date could be of potential interest to the
public .

The Media Services Section of the Provincial Department of Education, located away from the Nova Scotia
Museum, produced two videos on the exhibit's theme .
This group became the fourth party outside of the
DesBrisay Museum to be involved in the joint exhibit
project.

The three-year project ended about two weeks past the

scheduled opening date for the exhibit. This was only
possible through the cooperation of the groups directly
involved in the project and the number of museums contributing artifacts and photographs from their collections .

The project researcher pursued topics developed

through a proposed storyline for the exhibit . Monthly
reports on progress ensured that research requirements
were being met.

The DesBrisay Museum prides itself in being able to

contribute to the province's travelling exhibitions
programme. The resulting collection is a welcomed
addition to the museum's holdings . During the oral
history research, information arose which led to the
acquisition of a home-made child's toy known as the
"wooden ox ." This artifact is of a type that would not
under normal circumstances have survived the years. It
was through oral history research that we were able to
know of the existence of such an artifact .

Meetings and conversations were held frequently with

the Chief Curator of Exhibits and the designer at the Nova
Scotia Museum . The influx of artifacts during the research
effort changed the design approach part way into the
project. Ih addition, as a result of the large amount of
photographic and text content, it was decided that French
translation would be provided in a publication form
carried by the visitor. Translated text from the exhibit was
organized to correspond with numbered panels in the
exhibit .

Another positive result of the oral history research was

the human perspective on a life associated with oxen
which is evoked through the exhibit .

The Ross Farm Museum, the living agricultural

Gary Selig

U.S . 40: A Roadscape of the American Experience

Thomas J . Schlereth, U.S . 40 : A Roacl.rcape of the American
Experience (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society,
1985),
150 pp ., ill . Paper $13 .95, ISBN

What follows is a stimulating and provocative study of

one of the most significant, if not ignored, artifacts of the
twentieth century - the North American highway .
Schlereth, a "cultural" historian, teams with Seldon
Bradley, a documentary photographer, in focusing on the
156-mile Indiana portion of this 160-year-old transportation route . U .S . 40 originally served as one of the United
States' National Roads - opening up settlement of the
West . It was subsequently incorporated into the U .S .
Interstate Highway System and, like all great roads, was
eventually superceded by a new controlled- access freeway
known as Interstate 70 .

0871950014.

At the outset of his "above-ground" archaeological

treatise on U .S . Route 40, Thomas Schlereth quotes an
extraordinary claim made by Rev . Horace Bushnell in a
sermon he delivered in 1846, as follows:
The road is the physical sign or symbol by which
you best understand any age or people . . . for the
road is a creation of man and a type of civilized
society .

Schlereth presents his material in three parts . The first

72

part focuses on the history of the highway in general and

the second on U .S . 40 in particular . The third section is
really an elaborated bibliography for those interested in
pursuing the topic further . In the Bushnell tradition, he
covers not only the detailed technical aspects of highway
design over the past hundred years, but also its symbolic
content and influence on day-to-day life in Indiana. All of
this is intended to provide the reader with what Schlereth
describes as a combined "history" of American road
transportation, a "primer" for investigating past and
contemporary landscape, a "portfolio" of documentary
photography, and a personal "assessment" of the cultural
role that the road has played in the American experience .

Of more serious consequence, though, is the book's

failure to present a convincing perspective of the cultural
significance of the road within the, albeit ambitious,
context of "the American Experience ." Instead we are
treated to something akin to a popular or local history of
what at best can be described as "the Indiana Experiencefrom Richmond to Terre Haute." One suspects that the
most significant symbol of contemporary experience is
Interstate 70 and yet its role in the current life of the
region, including its intersection with U.S . 40, are virtually ignored .
Schlereth's self-consciousness, and his pre-occupation
with documenting his methodology (hence the inflated
bibliography) and selling the idea of "above-ground"
archaeology, rather than setting himself clearly within a
tradition of transportation and landscape history, undermine the seriousness of his efforts and ultimately belittle
this tradition . In fact, archaeology - especially that
dealing with the "road" - has never been limited to the
underground - as can be no more clearly demonstrated
than by Giovanni Piranesi's renderings of the Appian Way
which were completed in the late eighteenth century .

The book is highly successful as both a history and a

primer . It is well researched and full of detailed analyses of
historical forms of road and roadside development . However, it has serious shortcomings as a photographic
portfolio and cultural assessment .
The placement of the photographs is not synchronized
with the text and thus makes them difficult to reference .
More importantly, Bradley's documentation of the contemporary highway is uninspiring and makes little effort
to capture some of its phenomenological characteristics its speed, its vistas, its dangers . For example, there is not a
single view from the driver's seat . Instead, we are always
looking at U .S . 40 from places we are least likely to ever
actually view it - the shoulder or the centre of an overpass .
The strip maps, oblique aerials and vistas kept by most
highways departments are noticeably absent-as are representations of the road by contemporary artists .

In summary, U.S . 40 : A Roadscape of the American

Experience presents us with an exciting and provocative
opportunity that is never fully realized . The road is
reduced rather than enobled - and that is surely something Reverend Bushnell would have regretted as much as
we do .
John van Nostrand

73

Books Received/Ouvrages reigus

The following publications of interest to researchers
in Canadian material history have been received . Some
of these will be reviewed in future issues .

Nous avons rqu les publications suivantes, qui

interesseront certes les chercheurs etudiant I'histoire de la
culture materielle du Canada . On trouvera, dans les
prochains numeros, un compte rendu de certains de ces
ouvrages .

Grasping Things : Folk Material Culture and Mass Society in

America. Simon J. Bronner. Lexington, Kentucky : The
University Press of Kentucky, 1986 . 247pp., ill . $24 .00
hardbound . ISBN 0-8131-1572-8.

Lighting Devices in the National Reference Collection, Parks

Canada . E . I . Woodhead . Ottawa : Parks Canada, 1.984 .
(Studies in Archaeology, Architecture and History.)
86pp ., 85 ill. ISBN 0-660-11709-6 . $5 .50 paper, $6 .60
outside Canada . (Cat . no . R61-2/9-21E.*)

Weaponry from the "Machault", an 18th-Century French

Frigate. Douglas Bryce. Ottawa : Parks Canada, 1984 .
(Studies in Archaeology, Architecture and History .)
69pp ., 94 ill . ISBN 0-660-11708-8. $5 .10 paper, $6 .10
outside Canada . (Cat . no . R61-2/9-20E . *)
L'armement du Machault : une frigate franfaise du XVIII`
.riecle. Douglas Bryce. Ottawa, Parcs Canada, 1984 .
(Etudes en archeologie, architecture et histoire .) 69 p ., 94
ill . ISBN 0-660-91356-9 . $5,10 broche, $6,10 a
1'etranger . (Node catalogue R61-2/9-20F .**)

Glos.raire du verre de Parcr Canada . Olive Jones et Catherine

Sullivan et al . Ottawa, Parcs Canada, 1985 . (Etudes en
archeologie, architecture et histoire .) 185 p ., 152 ill .
ISBN 0-660-91430-1 . $12,25 broche, $14,70 1
1'etranger . (N de catalogue R64-162-1985F . **)
The Parks Canada Glass Glossary . Olive Jones and
Catherine Sullivan et al . Ottawa : Parks Canada, 1985 .
(Studies in Archaeology, Architecture and History .)
185pp., 152 ill. ISBN 0-660-11775-4 . $1 .2 .25 paper,
$14 .70 outside Canada . (Cat . no . R64-162-1985E .*)

The Wheat Pattern: An Illustrated Survey . Lynne Sussman .

Ottawa : Parks Canada, 1985 . (Studies in Archaeology,
Architecture and History .) 91pp ., 60 ill . ISBN 0-66011773-8. $5 .50 paper, $6 .60 outside Canada . (Cat . no .
R61-2/9-25E .*)
Le motif du ble: une etude illu.rtree . Lynne Sussman. Ottawa,
Parcs Canada, 1985 . (Etudes en archeologie, architecture
et histoire .) 91 p ., 60 ill . ISBN 0-660-91428-X . $5,50
broche, $6,60 a I'etranger . (N de catalogue R61-2/925F.**)

Glass of the British Military, ca . 1755-1820. Olive R.

Jones and E . Ann Smith. Ottawa : Parks Canada, 1985 .
(Studies in Archaeology, Architecture and History.)
143pp ., 137 ill . ISBN 0-660-11921-8 . $7 .95 paper,
$9 .55 outside Canada . (Cat . no . R61-2/9-28E.*)
La verrerie utili.ree par l'armee britannique de 1755 d 1820 .
Olive R . Jones et E . Ann Smith. Ottawa, Parcs Canada,
1985 . (Etudes en archeologie, architecture et histo re .)
143 p., 137 ill . ISBN 0-660-91591-X . $7,95 broche,
$9,55 a 1'etranger . (N de catalogue R61-2/9-28F. **)
*` Available from the Canadian Government Publishing
Centre, Supply and Services Canada, Hull, Quebec, K 1 A
OS9 .
*`*` En vente au Centre d'edition du gouvernement du Canada,
Approvisionnements et Services Canada, Hull (Qu6bec)
K1A OS9 .

Appareils d'eclairage : collection de reference nationale, Parcr

Canada . E. 1 . Woodhead . Ottawa, Parcs Canada, 1984 .
(Etudes en archeologie, architecture et histoire . ) 86 p., 85
ill . ISBN 0-660-91357 . $5,50 broche, $6,60 a
t'etranger . (N de catalogue R61-2/9-21F.**)

74

Contributors/Collaborateurs
Bruce Bowden is Assistant Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Western Ontario, and Coordinator of the university's M.A . option in Public History .
Valerie Evans is Curator of Decorative Arts at the New Brunswick Museum .
David J. Goa is Curator of Folk Life at the Provincial Museum of Alberta.
Madeleine Grammond detient une Maitrise en Bibliotheconomie ; elle est chargee du traitement et de 1'analyse documentaire de diverses collections a la Bibliotheque de 1'Universite de Montreal .
Roger Hall is an assistant professor of history at the University of Western Ontario . He and Gordon Dodds of the Provincial
Archives of Manitoba are currently writing a book on photographer William Norman .
Benoit Lacroix, theologien, historien, est chercheur associe a l'Institut quebecois de la recherche sur la culture .
Debra McNabb is currently completing a master's thesis in geography at the University of British Columbia .
John van Nostrand is a practising architect and planner, author of several studies on planning and architecture, and lecturer
in the Department of Architecture, University of Toronto.
Nancy-Lou Patterson, Professor of Fine Art at the University of Waterloo, has published numerous books and articles on
Canadian native and ethnic arts .
Gerald L. Pocius is an associate professor in the Department of Folklore at the Memorial University of Newfoundland .
Eric J . Ruff is the Curator of the Yarmouth County Museum, Yarmouth, Nova Scotia .
Gary Selig is the Curator of the DesBrisay Museum National Exhibition Centre, Bridgewater, Nova Scotia .
Deborah Trask is Assistant Curator in the History Section of the Nova Scotia Museum and editor of the Association for
Gravestone Studies Newsletter .
Earl Waugh teaches in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Alberta.

75

Notice/Avis
Conference : Museum Studies in Material Culture
24-27 March 1987
Leicester, England
In recent years the study of material culture has become a major academic preoccupation . This conference will review the field
of material culture interpretation and the study of material culture in general, and relate this to the fact that museum
collections represent the stored material culture of the past, while museum exhibitions are the principal medium through
which it is publicly presented.
A range of critical issues will be addressed by material culture scholars representing the main museum artifact disciplines archaeology, social history, applied art, and ethnography. Major themes to be addressed :
I.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Interpretative theories of material culture

History of material culture in museums
Social history and artifact interpretation
Artifact field-work and research
Human identity, aesthetics, and objects
Public perception and museum artifacts
The unique contribution of the artifact to our understanding of past societies

For further information, contact:

Department of Museum Studies
University of Leicester
105 Princess Road East
Leicester LEI 7LG
England

Errata
Material History Bulletin 22
Bulletin d'histoire de la culture matirielle 22
p. 51, first para ., last line :
. . .and the interior of the Wadds Bros . studio (fig . 2) .
p . 52, note 11, first line :
W.T . Milross (Vancouver). . .
p . 76, 144 Years Proud, first line :

"Treasures ." Curators : Regina Mantin and Alan McNairn .

p. 76, 144 Years Proud, third line :

"The Great 19th Century Show ."
p. 88, fig. 9, caption:
Foundations : The River Province : This view through a portion of Section IV, "The Military and New Brunswick," reveals
a small part of Section VI in the background . The visible portion of Section VI deals with railroad construction . (Photo : New
Brunswick Museum, Rod Stears .)
p . 103, Contributors/Collaborateurs :
David Mattison, an archivist with the Sound and Moving Image Division, Provincial Archives of British Columbia, has
published Camera Workers, a biographical dictionary of 19th-century photographers in B.C ., and Eyes of A City : Early
Vancouver Photographers, 1868-1900.

77

Material History Bulletin

Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle
ISSUES PUBLISHED/NUMEROS PUBLIES
No.

(Mercury Series/Collection Mercure, History/

Histoire, No . 15, 1976) . Out of print/epuise .

No.

(Mercury Series/Collection Mercure, History/

Histoire, No . 21, 1977). Out of print/epuise .

No.

(Spring/Printemps 1977).
Articles : Ruth Holmes Whitehead, Christina
Morris : Micmac Artist and Artist's Model; David
Newlands, A Catalogue of Sprig Moulds from Two
Huron County, Ontario, Earthenware Potteries;
Charles Foss, John Warren Moore: Cabinetmaker,
1812-1893 ; Marie Elwood, The State Dinner Service of Canada, 1898 .

Notes and Comments/Nouvelles brc'ves: Jeanne

Arseneault, A la recherche du costume acadien ;
Robert D . Watt, The Documentation of a Rare
Piece of British Columbiana : The Helntcken Presentation Silver ; Gerald L. Pocius, Material Culture
Research in the Folklore Programme, Memorial University of Newfoundland ; R.G . Patterson, Recent
Research on a Victoria, B.C ., Silversmith : William
Maurice Carmichael (1892-1954) .

No.

Reviews/Comptes rendus : Lise Boily et JeanFranqois Blanchette, Les fours a pain au Quebec
par Pierre Rastoul ; Vancouver Centennial
Museumn, "Milltown Gallery" by Nicholas
Dykes; Musee du Quebec, La fabrication
artisanale des tissus ; apparells et techniques by
Adrienne Hood ; A . Gregg Finley, ed ., Heritage
Furniture/Le mobilier tranditionnel by Elizabeth
Ingolfsrud ; Virginia Careless, Bibliography for
the Study of British Columbia's Domestic Material
History by Jim Ward top .

Reviews/Comptes rendus : Woodward's Catalogue

1898-1953 and The Autumn and Winter
Catalogue 1910-1911 of the Hudson's Bay Company by David Richeson ; Valerie Simpson, ed .,
Women's AttirelLes vetements fetninins by Ivan
Sayers ; Jacques Bernier, Quelques boutiques de
menuisiers et charpentiers au torrrnant du XI,\` siecle
par Serge Saint-Pierre ; Charles H . Foss, Cabinetmakers of the Eastern Seaboard: A Study of Early
Canadian Furniture by John McIntyre ; National
Museum of Man "A Few Acres of Snow/
Quelques arpents de neige" by Jean Friesen.

Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Norman R. Ball, Comments on the Burrard Inlet Sawmill Inventory : 1869 ; Bernard Genest, Recherches
ethnographiques au Ministere des Affaires culturelles
du Quebec
;Adrienne Hood, Research into the Technical Aspect of Reproducing 19th Century Canadian
Handwoven Fabrics; History Section, Nova Scotia
Museum .

No.

(Spring/Printemps 1978) .
Articles : Stephen Archibald, Civic Ornaments:
Ironwork in Halifax Parks; David L. Newlands,
A Toronto Pottery Company Catalogue .

Notes and Comments/Nouvelles br~ves : Jim

Wardrop, Modern History Division, British
ColumGia Provincial Museum ; Joyce Taylor
Dawson, The Needlework of the Urstrlines of Early
Quebec.

No .

(Fall/Automne 1977) .
Article: George N . Horvath, The Newfoundland
Cooper Trade.
Reviews/Comptes rendus : D. Pennington and
M. Taylor, A Pictorial Guide to American Spinning
Wheels by Judy Keenlyside ; Carol Priamo, Mills
of Canada and William Fox et al ., The Mill by
Felicity Leung; Lise Boily et Jean-Fran~ois
Blanchette, Les fours a pain au Quebec (Replique
des auteurs) .

(Fall/Automne 1978) .
Articles : C. Peter Kaellgren, Glass Used in
Canada : A Survey from the Early Nineteenth Century to 1940 (Ontario) ; John Sheeler, Factors
Affecting Attribution : The Burlington Glass Works;
Paul Hanrahan, Bottles in the Place Royal Collection ; Robert D . Watt, Art Glass Windown Design
in Vancouver .
Review/Compte rendu : Janet Holmes and Olive
Jones, Glass in Canada : An Annotated Blhllography .

78

Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Carol

Sheedy, Le.r vitraux de.r maisonr de la Cote-de-Sable
d'Ottawa ; Deborah Trask, The Nova Scotia Glass
Company; Peggy Booker, Ontario's Victorian
Stained Glass Windows; Peter Rider, Dominion
Glass Company Records.

Alexander Fenton, Material History in Great

Britain; Joseph Goy, L'histoire de la culture
materielle en France ; Thomas J. Schlereth,
Material Culture Studies in America; Marie
Elwood, A Museum Approach to Material History
Studies ; Paul-Louis Martin, Un passi en quite
d'avenir .

(Spring/Printemps 1979) .
Articles : R . Bruce Shepard, The Mechanized
Agricultural Frontier of the Canadian Plains ; John
Adams, A Review of Clayburn Manufacturing and
Products, 1905 to 1918 .

No .

Reviews/Comptes rendus : Marylu Antonelli

and Jack Forbes, Pottery in Alberta: The Long
Tradition by David Richeson ; Eileen Collard,
publications
on clothing in
Canada by
Katharine B . Brett ; Mary Conroy, 300 Years of
Canada's Quilts by Leslie Maitland ; Alexander
Fenton, Scottish Country Life by J . Lynton
Martin ; Ellen J . Gehret, Rural Pennsylvania
Clothing by Adrienne Hood ; Jean-Pierre Hardy,
Le forgeron et le ferblantier par Jean-Claude
Dupont ; Howard Pain, The Heritage of Upper
Canadian Furniture by Donald Blake Webster ;
Mary Shakespeare and Rodney H . Pain, West
Coast Logging: 1840-1910 by Warren F .
Sommer ; Deborah Trask, Life How Short, Eternity How Long : Gravestone Carving and Carvers in
Nova Scotia by Gerald L . Pocius .

(Fall/Automne 1979) .
Articles : Anita Campbell, An Evaluation of
Iconographic and Written Sources in the Study of a
Traditional Technology : Maple Sugar Making .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Patricia Baines, Spinning Wheels, Spinners and Spinning by Judy
Keenlyside ; Bus Griffiths, Now You're Logging
by Robert Griffin ; David L. Newlands and
Claus Breede, An Introduction to Canadian
Archaeology by Dianne Newell ; D .R . Richeson,
ed ., Western Canadian History: Museum Interpretations by Alan F .J . Artibise ; Vancouver Centennial Museum, "The World of Children : Toys
and Memories of Childhood" by Zane Lewis ;
Musee du Quebec, "Cordonnerie traditionnelle"
par Yvan Chouinard .
Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Robert
Shiplay, War Memorials in Canadian Communities ; Peter Priess and Richard Stuart, Parks
Canada, Prairie Region .

No. 10

Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Glass

Collections in CanadalLes collections de verre au
Canada ; F .J . Thorpe, Eighteenth-Century LandSurveying Equipment and Supplies .

(Spring/Printemps 1980).
Articles : Martha Eckmann Brent, A Stich in
Time : Sewing Machine Industry of Ontario, 18601897 .

(Special Issue/Numero special, 1979). Canada's

Material History: A Forum/Colloque sur 1'histoire de~la culture materielle au Canada .

: Victoria
Special
Report/Rapport special
Dickenson and Valerie Kolonel, Computer-Based
Archival Research Project: A Preliminary Report .

Papers/Communications : F .J . Thorpe, Remarks

at theOpening Se.rrion ; Jean-Pierre Wallot, Culture
materielle et hittoire ; John J . Mannion, Multidisciplinary Dimensions in Material History ;
Robert D. Watt, Toward a Three-Dimensional
View of the Canadian Past ; Elizabeth Ingolfsrud,
Tangible Social History: The Ontario Furniture
Collection of the National Museum of Man; JeanPierre Hardy et Thiery Ruddel, Un projet .rur
1'histoire de la culture et de la societe quebecoises ;
David J . Goa, The Incarnation of Meaning:
Approaching the Material Culture of Religious
Traditions ; Luce Vermette, Sources archivistiques
concernant la culture materielle ; Lilly Koltun,
Seeing is Believing? - A Critique ofArchival Visual
Sources; Gerald L. Pocius, Oral History and the
Study of Material Culture; W. John McIntyre,
Artifacts as Sources for Material History Research ;

Reviews/Comptes
rendus :
Clement
W.
Crowell, The Novascotiaman by Rosemary E.
Ommer; Jean-Claude Dupont, Hirtoire populaire
de l'Acadie par Clarence LeBreton ; Michel
Gaumond et Paul-Louis Martin, Les maFtre.rpotierr du bourg Saint-Denit, 1785-1888 par
Corneliu Kirjan ; Bernard Genest et al ., Let artisans traditionnels de Pest du Quebec par Jean-Pierre
Hardy; Paul B . Kebabian and Dudley Whitney,
American Woodworking Tools by Martin E.
Weaver ; Ray MacKean and Robert Percival, The
Little Boats: Inshore Fishing Craft of Atlantic
Canada by David A. Taylor ; Ruth McKendry,
Quilts and Other Bed Coverings in the Canadian
Tradition by Leslie Maitland ; Marcel Moussette,
La peche .rur le Saint-Laurent; Repertoire des
methodes et des engins de capture par Corneliu
Kirjan ; David L. Newlands, Early Ontario

79

travaillerrrs forestiersdela Mauricie ; Claire-Andree

Fortin, Profil de la main-d'wuvre forestiere en
Mattricie d'apres le recensement de 1861 ; ClaireAndree Fortin, 1_e.r conditions de vie et de travail des
bucherons en Mauricie au 19' siecle .

Potters Their Craft and Trade by Elizabeth

:
Collard ; Loris S.Russell, Handy Things to Have
Around the House by Hilary Abrahamson ; Jeffrey
J . Spalding, Silverrmithing in Canadian History
by Tara Nanavati ; Sheila Stevenson, Colchester
Furniture Makers by David L. Myles ; Donald
Blake Webster, English-Canadian Furniture of
the Georgian Period by Benno Forman .

Research Note/Note de recherche: Rod Pain and

Mary Shakespeare, Georgetown Mill, British
Columbia : A Historical Salvage Project.

Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Marie

Elwood, The Weldon and Trtnnball-Prime China
Collections ; David Skene-Melvin, Historical Planning and Research Branch, Ontario Ministry of
Culture and Recreation ; Corneliu Kirjan, Les
publications de la Direction generale du patrimoine,
Ministere des Affaires culturelle.r, Quebec.
No . 1 l

No. 12

(Fall/Automne 1980) Furniture in Canada -Le

mobilier au Canada . Out of print/epuise .
(Spring/Printemps 1981) .
Articles : Gerald L. Pocius, Eighteenth and
Nineteenth-Century Newfoundland Gravestones .
Research Note/Note de recherche: Ronald
Getty and Ester Klaiman, Identifying Medalta,
1916-1954 : A Guide to Markings .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : British Columbia
Provincial Museum, Modern History Galleries
by Ian MacPherson ; British Columbia Provincial Museum, "William Maurice Carmichael,
Silversmith" by Martin Segger ; Judith BuxtonKeenlyside, Selected Canadian Spinning Wheels in
Perspective: An Analytical Approach by Peter W.
Cook ; Musee du Quebec, "Regard sur le
mobilier victorien" par Denise Leclerc ; Point
Ellice House, Victoria, B.C . by John Adams;
Lynne Sussman, SpodelCopeland Transfer-Printed
Patterns Found at 20 Hudson's Bay Conipany Sites
by Elizabeth Collard.

No. 13

Review/Compte rendu : McCord Museum, "The

River and the Bush/La riviere et la foret . Timber
trade in the Ottawa Valley, 1800-1900" by
Judith Tomlin .
Note : Collections Related to the Forest Industry .

No. 14

(Spring/Printemps 1982).

Articles : George Bervin, E.rpace physique et culture

materielle du marchand-negociant a Quebec au debut
du XIXe .riecle; Georges P . Leonidoff, L'habitat de
bois en Nouvelle- France: son importance et ses techniques de construction ; Anita Rush, Changing
Women's Fashion and its Social Context, 18701905 .
Research Notes/Notes de recherche : Martin
Segger, Some Comments on the Use of Historical
Photographs as Primary Sources in Architectural
History ; Robert W. Frame, Woodworking Patterns at the Sutherland Steam Mill, Nova Scotia
Museum ; E.M . Razzolini, Costume Research and
Reproduction at Lottisbourg ; Richard MacKinnon,
Company Housing in Wabana, Bell Island,
Newfoundland.

Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Duncan Stacey, The Iron Chink ; Richard Stuart, An
Approach to Material Culture Research .

Research Reports/Rapports de recherche:

Barbara Riley, Domestic Food Preparation in
Elizabeth
British
Coltnnhia,
1895-1935 ;
Quance, Ontario Historical Society Material Culture Project; CELAT, Ethnologie de 1'Amirique
franfaise; Sheila Stevenson, An Inventory of Research and Researchers Concerned with Atlantic
Canadian Material Culture.

(Fall/Automne 1981) . Exploiting the Forest/

Exploitation forestiere .
Articles : Robert D. Turner, Logging Railroads
and Locomotives in British Columbia ; Robert B.
Griffin, The Shingle Sawing Machine in British
Coltemhia, 1901-1915 ; Chris Curtis, Shanty Life
in the Kawartha.r, Ontario, 1850-1855; Normand
Seguin et Rene Hardy, Foret et tociete en Mauricie,
1850-1930; Benoit Gauthier, La .cou.r-traitanceet
1'exploitation forestiere en Mauricie (1850-1875);
Michel Larose, Le.r contrats d'engagement des

Reviews/Comptes rendus : National Museum of

Man, "The Covenant Chain: Indian Ceremonial
and Trade Silver" by Robert S. Kidd ; Vancouver
Museum, "Waisted Efforts" by Marion Brown;
National Gallery of Canada, "The Comfortable
Arts" by Anita Rush ; Newfoundland Museum,
"Newfoundland Outport Furniture" by Christine Cartwright ; New Brunswick Museum, "On
the Turn of the Tide : Ship and Shipbuilders,
1769 to 1900" by Eric Ruff; Musee national de
1'Homme, "L'art du marteau: coup d'oeil sur la

ferronnerie et la ferblanterie" par Johanne

LaRochelle ; Collectif, Jean-Claude Dupont et
Jacques Mathieu, comps., Les metiers du cuir par
David T. Ruddel ; Peter E. Rider, ed ., The History of Atlantic Canada : Museum Interpretation by
William B. Hamilton ; Thomas J . Shlereth, Artifacts and the American Past by Del Muise; David
and Suzanne Peacock, Old Oakville : A Character
Study of the Town's Early Buildings and of the Men
Who Built Then by Harold Kalman ; Jack L.
Summers, Rene Chartrand, and R.J . Marion,
Military Uniforms in Canada, 1665-1970 by
Charles Bourque; Robert S. Elliott, Matchlock to
Machine Gun: The Firearms Collection of the New
Brunswick Museum by John D. Chown.

No . 15

No. 16

Donald B . Webster, The Prince Edward Island

Pottery, 1880-98; Sophie Drakich, EighteenthCentury Coarse Earthenavares Imported into
Lorrisbourg ; John Carter, Spanish Olive Jars from
Fermeuse Harbour, Newfoundland.
Research Note/Note de recherche: Colette
Dufresne, La poterie au Quebec, une histoire de
famille.
Ceramics Collections/Collections de poteries .

No. 17

(Special Issue/Numero special, 1982). Colloquium on Cultural Patterns in the Atlantic

Canadian Home .
Papers/Communications: Gerald L. Pocius, Interior Motives: Rooms, Objects, and Meaning; Shane
O'Dea, The Development of Cooking and Heating
Technology ; Linda Dale, A Woman's Touch:
Domestic Arrangements ; Wilfred W. Wareham,
Aspects ofSocializing and Partying in Orrtport Newfoundland; Gary R. Butler, Sacred and Profane
Space; Kenneth Donovan, Family Life and Living
Conditions in Eighteenth-Century Louisbourg ; Carol
M . Whitfield, Barracks Life in the Nineteenth
Century; Donald Blake Webster, Furniture and
the Atlantic Canada Condition; Thomas Lackey,
Folk Influence in Nova Scotia Interiors ; Marie
Elwood, Halifax Cabinet-Makers, 1837-1875:
Apprenticeships; Irene Rogers, Cabinet-making in
Prince Edtvard Island; T.G . Dilworth, Thorrras
Nisbet ; Cora Greenaway, Decorated Walls and
Ceilings in Nova Scotia ; Charles H . Foss, Room
Decorating and Furnishing in the First Half of the
Nineteenth Century; David Orr, Traditional
Furniture of Atlantic Canada; A Roundtable Discussion : Collectors, Dealers, and Museums: Private
Initiative and Public Responsibility ; Victoria
Dickenson and George Kapelos, Closing
Remarks.

(Spring/Printemps 1983) . Material Conditions

and Society in Lower Canada : Post mortem
inventories/Civilisation materielle au BasCanada : les inventaires apres deces.
Introduction : Jean-Pierre
Hardy,
Gilles
Paquet, David-Thiery Ruddel et Jean-Pierre
Wallot, Material Conditions and Society in Lower
Canada, 1792-1835/Culture naaterielle et societe
au Quebec, 1792-1835 .
Articles : Gilles Paquet et Jean-Pierre Wallot,
Structures sociales et niveaux de richesse danr les campagnes du Quebec, 1792-1812 ; George Bervin,
Environnement materiel et activites economiques des
conseillers executifr et legislatifs d Quibec, 18101830 ; Jean-Pierre Hardy, Niveaux de richesse et
interieurs domestiqrres dans le guartier Saint-Roch a
Quibec, 1820-1850; D . T. Ruddel, The Domestic
Textile Industry in the Region and City of Quebec,
1792-1835 ; Christian Dessureault, L'inventaire
apres dece.r et 1'agriculture bas-canadienne; Lorraine
Gadoury, Le.r stocks des habitants dans les inventaires apre.r dices .

No. 18

(Fall/Automne 1983) .
Articles : Anita Rush, The Bicycle Boom of the Gay
Nineties : A Reassessment ; Catherine Sullivan, The
Bottles of Northrup fi Lyman, A Canadian Drug
Firrn.
Research Reports/Rapports de recherche : Julia
Cornish, The Legal Records of Atlantic Canada as a
Resource for Material Historians ; Tina Rolande
Roy, New Brunswick Newspaper Study of Imports,
1800-1860 ; Nancy-Lou Patterson, GermanAlsatian Iron Gravemarkert in Southern Ontario
Roman Catholic Cemeteries ; Lynn Russell and
Patricia Stone, Gravestone Carvers of Early
Ontario; Luigi G. Pennacchio and Larry B.
Pogue, Inventory of Ontario Cabinetmakers, 1840ca . 1900 .

(Winter/Hiver 1982) . Ceramics in Canada/La

ceramique au Canada .
Articles : Lester Ross, The Archaeology of Canadian Potteries; Elizabeth Collard, NineteenthCentury Canadian Importers' Marks; Ronald
Getty, The Medicine Hat and the Alberta Potteries;
Lynne Sussman, Comparing Ceramic Assemblages
in Terms of Expenditure ; Jennifer Hamilton,
Ceramics Destined for York Factory; William
Coedy and J.D . MacArthur, Characterization of
Selected Nineteenth-Century Southern Ontario
Domestic Earthenwares by Chemical Analysis ;

Notes and Comments/Nouvelles breves : Robert

Griffin and James Wardrop, Preliminary investigations into Ocean Falls Pulp and Paper Plant;

81

Claudia Haagan, Material History Sources in

Eighteenth-Century Nova Scotia Newspapers ;
Sandra Morton, History of Alberta Quilts ; T.B .
King, A Research Tool for Studying the Canadian
Glass Industry ; Andree Crepeau, An Inventory of
Persons Working on the Material Culture of
Eighteenth-Century Louisborrrg ; Elizabeth J .
Quance and Micheal Sam Cronk, Selected Museum
Studies Dissertations at the University of Toronto.
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Glenbow Museum,
"The Great CRP Exposition" by David R.
Richeson ; National Museum of Man, "The
Ever-Whirling Wheel" by Catherine Cooper
Cole ; Robert W. Passfield, Building the Rideau
Canal by Norman R. Ball ; Walter W. Peddle,
The Traditional Furniture of Outport Newfoundland
by Shane O'Dea; Barbara Lang Rottenberg with
Judith Tomlin, Glass Manufacturing in Canada :
A Survey of Pressed Glass Patterns by Deborah
Trask ; David T. Ruddel, Canadians and Their
Environment by Robert Griffin; Thomas J .
Schlereth, Material Culture Studies in America by
A. Fenton .

No. 19

(Spring/Printemps 1984).
Articles : Hilary Russell, "Canadian Ways": An
Introduction to Comparative Studies of Housework,
Stoves, and Diet in Great Britain and Canada ; Ian
Radforth, In the Bush : The Changing World of
Work in Ontario's Pulpwood Logging Industry
during the Twentieth Century; W. John McIntyre,
From Workshop to Factory: The Furnituremaker;
Marilyn J . Barber, Below Stairs : TheDomestic Servant .
Research Reports/Rap ports de recherche :
Sandra Morton, Inventory of Secondary Manufacturing Companies in Alberta . 1880-1914; NancyLou Patterson, Waterloo Region Gardens in the
Germanic Tradition ; H .T . Holman, Some Comments on the Use of Chattel Mortgages in Material
History Research .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Costume in Canada :
An Annotated Bibliography by Jacqueline Beaudoin-Ross and Pamela Blackstock ; Canadian
War Museum, "The Loyal Americans" by John
Brooke ; Newfoundland Museum, "Business in
Great Waters" by James Hiller ; McCord
Museum, "The Potters' View of Canada" by
Lynne Sussman ; Elizabeth Collard, The Potters'
View of Canada : Canadian Scenes on NineteenthCentury Earthenware by Robert Copeland ; Eileen
Marcil, Le.r Tonneliers du Quebec by Peter N .
Moogk .

No . 20

(Fall/Automne 1984).
Articles : Jocelyne Mathieu, Le mobilier contenant:
Traitement comparatif Perche-Quebec, d'apre.r des
inventaires de bien.r apre.r dices des XVII et XVIII`
.vieclet ; Alison Prentice, From Household to School
House: The Emergence of the Teacher as Servant of the
State.
Research Reports/Rapports de recherche :
Frances Roback, Advertising Canadian Pianos
and Organs, 1850-1914 ; Luce Vermette,
L'habillement traditionnel au debut du X/X` siecle ;
Eileen Marcil, La role de la tonnellerie dan.c la reglementation de la peche au debut du XIXr siecle ;
Anita Rush, Directory of Canadian Manufacturers, Bicycle Industry, 1880-1984 ; David Neufeld,
Dealing with an Industrial Monument : The Borden
Bridge ; Claudia Haagen and Debra McNabb,
The Use of Primary Documents as Computerized
Collection Records for the Study of Material Culture.
Notes and Comments/Notes et commentaires :
Gregg Finley, Material History and Museums: A
Curatorial Perspective; Hilary Russell, Reflections
of an Image Finder : Some Problems and Suggestions
for Picture Researchers ; Papers completed in
North American Decorative Arts Graduate
Course, University of Toronto, 1968-82 .
Forum/Colloque : Robert D. Turner, The Limitations of Material History: A Museological Perspective ; Peter E . Rider, The Concrete Clio : Definition
of a Field of History .
Reviews/Comptes rendus : Manitoba Museum of
Man and Nature, "Concerning Work" by David
Flemming ; National Museum of Man, "Of Men
and Wood" by Robert H. Babcock ; Parcs
Canada, region du Quebec, "Quebec: port d'entree en Amerique" by David-Thiery Ruddel .

No . 21 (Spring/printemps 1985) .
Greg Baeker, Introduction .
Articles : Thomas J . Schlereth, The Material Culture ofChildhood: Problems and Potential in Historical Explanation ; Felicity Nowell-Smith, Feeding
the Nineteenth-Century Baby : Implications for
Museum Collections ; Christina Bates, "Beauty Unadorned" : Dressing Children in Late NineteenthCentury Ontario ; Hilary Russell, Training,
Restraining, and Sustaining : Infant and Child Care
in the Late Nineteenth Century; Janet Holmes,
Economic Choices and Popular Toys ; Mary Tivy,
Nineteenth-Century Canadian Children's Games.

No. 22

(Fall/Automne 1985) .

Musee regional Laure-Conan, "Deux cent ans de

villegiature dans Charlevoix" by Francine
Brousseau .

Articles : Ernst W. Stieb, A Professional Keeping

Shop : The Nineteenth-Century Apothecary ; W.
John McIntyre, Diffusion and Vision : A Case
Study of the Ebenezer Doan House in Sharon,
Ontario; Bruce Curtis, The Playground in
Nineteenth-Century Ontario: Theory and Practice .

No . 23

(Spring/Printemps 1986) .
Gerald L. Pocius, Introduction .
Articles : David J . Goa, Dying and Rising in the
Kingdom of God: The Ritual Incarnation of the
"Ultimate" in Eastern Christian Culture; Roger
Hall and Bruce Bowden, Beautifying the
Boneyard: The Changing Image of the Cemetery in
Nineteenth-Century Ontario; Gerald L. Pocius,
The Transformation of the Traditional Newfoundland Cemetery : Institutionalizing the Secular Dead .

Research Reports/Rapports de recherche:

Towards a Material History Methodology ; Richard
Henning Field, Proxemic Patterns : EighteenthCentury Lunenburg-German Domestic Furnishings
and Interiors; David Mattison, All the Latest
Improvements : Vancouver Photographic Studios of the
Nineteenth Century.
Research Note/Note de recherche: Serge
Rouleau, 1986 : Cent ans d'exploitation de la cale
teche Lorne, a Larrzon.

Research Reports/Rapports de recherche :

Deborah Trask and Debra McNabb, Carved in
Stone: Material Evidence in the Graveyards of Kings
County, Nova Scotia ; Nancy-Lou Patterson, Open
Secrets: Fifteen Masonic and Orange Lodge
Gravemarkers in Waterloo and Wellington Counties,
Ontario (1862-1983) .

Forum/Colloque : D.R . Richeson, An Approach

to Historical Research in Museums ; Barbara Riley,
Research and the Development of a Domestic History
Collection .

Research Note/Note de
Evans, In Mourning .

Reviews/Comptes
rendus :
Canadian
War
Museum, "Women and War" by Ruth Roach
Pierson ; Royal Ontario Museum, "Georgian
Canada : Conflict and Culture, 1745-1820" by
Gregg Finley ; New Brunswick Museum,
"Treasures ;" "The Great 19th Century Show ;"
"Colonial Grace : New Brunswick Fine Furniture ;" "Foundations : The River Province ;" by
Stuart Smith, Judith Tomlin, Rosemarie
Langhout, Tim Dilworth,
Elizabeth W .
McGahan ; Elizabeth Collard, Nineteenth-Century
Pottery and Porcelain in Canada by Alan Smith ;
Edwinna von Baeyer, Rhetoric and Roses : A
History of Canadian Gardening 1900-1930 by
Alex Wilson ; Canadian War Museum, "The
Rebellion of 1885" by Brereton Greenhous ;
Louisiana State Museum, "L'Amour de Maman :
Acadian Textile Heritage" by Robert S . Elliot ;

recherche:

Valerie

Bibliographies : Gerald L . Pocius, An Introductory Bibliograpy on Cultural Studies Relating to

Death and Dying in Canada ; Madeleine Grammond et Benoit Lacroix, Mort et religion
traditionnelle au Quebec : Bibliographie .

Reviews/Comptes rendus : Provincial Museum

of Alberta, "Spiritual Life - Sacred Ritual" by
Earl Waugh ; DesBrisay Museum National
Exhibition Centre, "The Ox in Nova Scotia" by
Earl J . Ruff; Thomas J . Schlereth, U .S . 40 : A
Roadscape of the American Experience by John van
Nostrand .
Books received/Ouvrages rqus .

83

MATERIAL HISTORY BULLETIN/BULLETIN D'HISTOIRE DE LA CULTURE MATERIELLE

The Material History Bulletin provides a venue for
articles and research reports encompassing a range of
approaches in interpreting the past through an analysis of
Canadians' relationship to their material world . Critical
reviews of books, exhibitions, and historic sites, artifact
studies and reports on collections encourage the use of
material evidence in understanding historical change and
continuity .
The Bulletin is received by 100 universities, research
institutes, museums, and libraries in 30 countries . It is
indexed in Anteriea : History and Life, Journal of Anrericart
History, Technology and Culture's Current Bibliography in
the History of Technology, and Annual Bibliography of
Ontario History .

Correspondence concerning contributions and editorial

matters should be addressed to : Editor, Material History
Bulletin, History Division, National Museum of Man,
Ottawa, Ontario, K IA OM8. Manuscripts and endnotes
should be double-spaced . Captions for illustrations should
be double-spaced and include credits, source, and negative number (if held in a public collection) ; measurements
of objects should be in metric . Authors are responsible for
obtaining permission to reproduce material from copyrighted works.
The Bulletin is published twice a year . Subscriptions for
1986 are $10 .00 (individuals) and $14 .00 (institutions) ;
single issues are $5 .00. Cheques or money orders should
be payable to the Receiver General of Canada . Subscriptions and related correspondence should be addressed to :
Publishing Services, National Museums of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario, K 1 A OM8 .

Le Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle presente

des articles et des travaux de recherche qui proposent
differentes fa~ons d'aborder 1'etude et l'interpretation
du passe a travers 1'analyse des rapports qui existent entre
les Canadiens et leur monde materiel . Des critiques de
livres, d'expositions et de lieux historiques, des etudes
d'objets et des articles sur les grandes collections canadiennes favorisent 1'utilisation de temoins materiels en
vue de 1'interpretation du changement et de la continuiti
historiques .
Le Bulletin est envoye a une centaine d'universites,
d'instituts de recherche, de musees et de bibliothques
repartis dans une trentaine de pays . 11 est repertorie dans
: History and Life, Journal of Ameril-an History,
America
Current Bibliography in the History ofTechnology publie
dans Technology and Culture et Annual Bibliography of
Ontario History .
Toute correspondance concernant les articles et les questions redactionnelles dolt parvenir a 1'adresse suivante :
Redacteur, Bulletin d'histoire de la culture materielle,
Division de I'Histoire, Musee national de 1'Homme,
Ottawa (Ontario), K lA OM8 . Les manuscrits, les notes et
les legendes d'illustrations doivent etre dactylographies
a double interligne . Les legendes doivent etre accompagnees des mentions de source et du numero du negatif
(si la photo fait partie d'une collection publique) ; les
dimensions des objets doivent etre fournies dans le
systeme metrique . II incombe aux auteurs d'obtenir
1'autorisation voulue pour reproduire des textes tires
d'ouvrages proteges par le droit d'auteur .

Le Bulletin parait deux fois Fan. L'abonnement pour

1986 coute $10 pour les particuliers er $14 pour les
etablissements ; les numeros achetes separement coutent
$5 chacun . Veuillez envoyer la somme necessaire sous
forme de cheque ou de mandat-poste a 1'ordre du Receveur
general du Canada . Les abonnements et la correspondance
ayant rapport aux commandes doivent s'adresser au
Services d'edition, Musees nationaux du Canada, Ottawa
(Ontario) K 1 A OM8 .