GRAVE issues
Former PMS’ burial sites are deteriorating: report
A commentary on Canada as a society
The stone base of Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s grave is rusting badly and may have to be replaced if the staining cannot be washed away. The marble markers inside Sir John A. Macdonald’s family plot are so badly deteriorated — a result of improper cleaning in the past — that there’s no means of reversing the continued damage.
And it’s almost impossible to read the inscription on Sir Mackenzie Bowell’s grave because the wording has become illegible.
On the eve of Canada Day weekend, inspection reports released to Postmedia News suggest Canadians are not looking after the gravesites of our former leaders as we should.
“That’s a commentary on Canada as a society,” said Roger Gallaway, a former Liberal MP who got the prime ministerial grave program up and running in 1999 to maintain the final resting places of each deceased leader. “In Canada, we’ve always had a reluctance to deal with our past.”
The decaying gravesites of Canada’s 15 deceased prime ministers is a result of age, Mother Nature and jurisdictional issues that have prevented maintenance from taking place.
Missing memorials, cracked stones, rusting bolts on flagpoles, slumping soil, maintenance years overdue and grave markers losing their inscription are among the issues federal workers identified during the most recent inspections of the gravesites.
“There is a basic, certain level of commitment the nation must make to these people,” said Duncan McDowall, a historian in Kingston, Ont., which is home to Sir John A. Macdonald’s grave.
Parks Canada, through the Monuments and Historic Sites Board of Canada, says it will be dealing with the past in the near future. The monuments board has created a to-do list so the graves are in good shape by 2017, when Canada celebrates the 150th anniversary of Confederation.
In late 2011, reviewers visited each grave to detail problems and see what had changed since a similar review in 2005. The site review reports, finalized in March, lay out a four-year restoration plan for each site complete with work to be done by year.
“For the most part, they are in good condition,” said Julie Dompierre, director of the monuments board. “Our sense is that they are being well-maintained.
“For the most part, they’re fairly low maintenance and any major structural work that has been identified in the past has been dealt with.”
Ms. Dompierre said the board doesn’t yet have an estimate for how much it will cost to fix every problem.
But the reviews found a secondary problem for some gravesites. In at least five cases, a murky understanding of jurisdictional responsibilities, or disputes over the maintenance of the gravesites, has put issues that need to be dealt with into limbo.
“It has come to our attention as well that there may be some confusion about roles and responsibilities,” she said.
At the grave of John Diefenbaker, the roadway leading to the grave is cracking and crumbling because Parks Canada and the University of Saskatchewan aren’t sure who should maintain the area.
The same administrative problem appears at William Lyon Mackenzie King’s gravesite in Toronto, where the administrative vacuum has meant that issues identified in 2005 have gone unheeded, including removing dead maple tree branches that could crash down on the grave of Canada’s longestserving prime minister.
Parks Canada created a conservation plan for Arthur Meighen’s gravesite in 2000, which needs more earth to level out slumping soil, but never handed over the plan to the small cemetery in St. Mary’s, Ont., where Mr. Meighen lies.
The wording on John Sparrow Thompson’s grave marker is also needing repair — but while Holy Cross Cemetery in Halifax believes more white paint should be used to highlight the inscription, Parks Canada argues the paint will only speed up the erosion of the stone.
“There are always hiccups in any program,” Mr. Gallaway said.
“It was a clear responsibility that Parks Canada would take the bull by the horns,” Mr. Gallaway said. “It’s unfortunate that Parks Canada and others aren’t communicating.”
Since the program’s inception in 1999, Parks Canada has spent about $600,000 on repairing and maintaining each site, Ms. Dompierre said. The program doesn’t have its own budget, Ms. Dompierre said, but draws on existing funds to pay for work as needed.
When the program launched, it marked a concerted national effort to restore prime ministerial gravesites, said Mr. McDowall, the official historian at Queen’s University. Mr. McDowall said there was also a debate about repatriating the lone prime minister buried outside of Canada, R.B. Bennett, but the decision was ultimately made to leave the Depression-era leader in his churchyard grave in a Surrey hamlet, an hour’s train ride from London.
The final resting places of Canada’s deceased prime ministers are, for the most part, not grandiose.
Sir Robert Borden’s grave is marked by a small grey stone in Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa. Lester B. Pearson’s grave in a tiny rural cemetery in the Gatineau hills, north of Ottawa, has a black and grey headstone surrounded by flowers.
Laurier, who is in a grand, raised sarcophagus, is the exception.
When a former prime minister dies, the Department of Canadian Heritage takes the lead on planning a state funeral. At the same time, the monuments board contacts the family about the gravesite program to see if they’re interested in taking part.
The monuments board creates a conservation plan for the site in consultation with the cemetery and family, and adds the site to its promotional material for history buffs who want to visit.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s grave south of Montreal in Saint-Remi, Que., doesn’t have a Parks Canada marker or flagpole at the family’s request, Ms. Dompierre said.
The first prime minister to receive a grave overhaul was Alexander Mackenzie, who is buried in Sarnia, blocks from Mr. Gallaway’s home. In 1999, Mackenzie’s grave was in such bad condition that no one knew who was buried in the plot, Mr. Gallaway said.
The grave is in much better shape now, but the relationship between Parks Canada and the cemetery where Mackenzie lies is not as rosy as it could be.
The monument board noted in its report that Parks Canada had to outsource maintenance around the plot because the local cemetery’s own practices were damaging some of the gravestones in the plot.
“Lakeview Cemetery is not happy with this arrangement as it undermines its roles and responsibilities,” the report says.