Alleged ‘Desecration’ Being Investigated

This article originally appeared on page 1 of the May 9, 1958 edition of The Citizen:

City solicitors are attempting to uncover today authority permitting the city’s parks commission to desecrate the Indian cemetery in Fort George Park.

Charles Freeman, parks superintendent, supervised the ploughing of the historical plot sometime last fall.

Freeman also superintended the removal of the headstones, some of which date back to the late 1880s and of the removal of a fence that protected the cemetery.

Freeman told The Citizen today that he was granted permission to excavate the cemetery by both the Indian Agent at Vanderhoof and by Chief Edward Quaw at Shelley.

A letter supporting this authority and said to be in Freeman’s possession has not been produced, however. The superintendent planted the plot in grass sometime last fall and has laid out plans to restore the headstones and to plant a flower garden in the centre of the ground this summer.

However his plans were not disclosed to the present parks commission which took office at the end of February of this year.

The plans were brought before the old parks board last year and are recorded in the minutes of a parks board meeting. But without a letter to substantiate the ploughing of the graveyard, city authorities are concerned that a serious breach of trust may have been broken.

“A graveyard is a sacred thing that people do not remove,” said a city official.

“It could put the city in a terrible position.”

A spokesman for the parks commission said that the commission knew nothing about Freeman’s plan until about two weeks ago.

The superintendent however told The Citizen that he had talked the plan over with Chief Quaw and that Quaw had agreed to subscribe some of the tribe’s funds towards the development of the cemetery.

He also proposed the plan to Indian Agent W. Underwood, who authorized a total of $600 to be spent on the project.

The Indian cemetery was one of the oldest landmarks in Prince George and was the resting place principally for the Quaws, an Indian family that was highly regarded throughout the north and which provided a long line of chiefs to the tribe here and at Fort St. James.