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The time was right to make it right for Estevan pioneers

He doesn’t know what compelled him to make the move, other than the fact that he felt it was just a little bit disgusting that a few dozen of Estevan’s pioneers, some of them just babies, were buried in a site that had been long neglected and forgott

He doesn’t know what compelled him to make the move, other than the fact that he felt it was just a little bit disgusting that a few dozen of Estevan’s pioneers, some of them just babies, were buried in a site that had been long neglected and forgotten.

So, Don Cowan, a born and raised Estevanite, with some connections in the local oil and industrial community, got to work with a lot of help from his friends.

“It’s not me, I’m not looking for anything,” he said.

Well, actually he was. He was looking for some equipment, materials and maybe a few hours of personnel power to help him clean up the Grace Pioneer Cemetery that sits at the back of what is now an industrial subdivision in the southeast part of the city.

The work began in earnest in the early part of this summer, and the cemetery now looks like a cemetery and not a backwoods lot filled with debris.

Cowan then started doing a little research and learned there are 52 gravesites and the property belongs to CP Rail. He also learned the cemetery originated somewhere around 1884 and last used as a burial site in the latter part of 1918 or early 1919.

“There was just an old trail leading in here,” he said, referring to a new, slightly winding gravelled pathway that now exists, purposely built without a ditch so that the grasses surrounding the path can be cut regularly and easily.

The earlier owner of the plot was the Manitoba-South Western Colonization Railroad Company of 1879 which leased the property to CP Rail in 1884, and then they merged with CP in 1956-57, according to records Cowan unearthed.  

“If we could just get somebody to cut the grass around the path and in the cemetery twice or three times a year, that would keep it respectable,” said Cowan, who issued a thank you to the contributors in a recent letter to the editor. “I thought I had recalled them all, but I missed one, F&L Concrete who are doing a lot of rehabilitation work on the markers, plus trucks, gravel, men and so on … just like those other companies did. That’s just an example of what took place and what is taking place,” he said.

The oilpatch veteran said it was, no doubt, his connections with local industries over the years that served him well for this project so the credit was to be shared by them.

“This old cemetery and the way it looked had been bugging me for 10 years, and, finally, it was just the time to do something about it.”

An original sign was reconditioned by a volunteer company as was the old entry gate, for starters. Then the weeds came out, along with the overgrowth. Headstones were recovered.

“It was disgusting the way some of it looked,” he said.

Thankfully, a lot of the grass and area had been mowed down and Cowan said he learned that a local group, the Soldiers of Odin had taken on that task as a community service a few years ago. So the old cemetery hadn’t been entirely forgotten.

A list of the those buried there was available, but it contains only 35 names, so Cowan figures 17 caskets may have been transferred over the years since there are 52 sites.

“Some have large headstones, one even has polished granite. Others are just marked with a rock or two,” he said.

The Magnuson gravesite informs that he was born in Farila, Sweden in 1850, and died in March, 1904.

“My wife Lyla found out that she has a relative buried here, from the Beniston family. Mary was an aunt. She was buried in 1908, at the age of 27,” he said, adding that there are several graves marked with names of young adults, children and babies, perhaps suggesting there was a local epidemic in the fledgling town, those many decades ago.

There is one site marked with words in a different language, too, indicating Estevan was home to a diverse population, even then.

“I always knew about this cemetery as a kid, and it was always just ‘back there’ when my family talked about it. I had an uncle, who worked in the brick plant, who knew a lot about it and my cousins knew about it too, so that’s where I picked up on it.”

Since the cemetery is CP property, Cowan said he made one exploratory phone call to one of the arms of that large corporation, but figured he probably hit the wrong desk.

“The young girl I talked to sort of presented the ‘who cares’ attitude,’” he said. So I probably should have tried to talk with someone in their corporate public relations or human resources side. My thought is that a company like CP probably has about 100 of these kinds of properties and if they’d just pledge about $1,000 a year for upkeep for each of them, that’s all it would take.”

The rehabilitation work in the Estevan site included fencing, which had to be repositioned twice, since additional gravesites were discovered after the original markings and fencing were put in place. Then there were 11 old underground coal mine sinkholes to fill up and make secure, about seven within the cemetery and four more just outside the fenceline, which were also filled.

If CP isn’t interested in maintaining the site, Cowan hopes the City of Estevan and/or the RM of Estevan might be willing to spend a little time and talent in keeping the area looking respectable.

Cowan also uncovered an actual map of each gravesite, but it was so old and faded it is rendered useless.

“The RM of Estevan office staff were very helpful and I think when I talk with the city representatives, I might get some interest too,” he said. “If we plant a tree or two, get a few more details completed at a more leisurely pace we can keep it decent.”

Decent is a big word that can mean a lot when the Energy City’s volunteers power up to latch onto a project.