Goddard Cemetery

Inscribed on the marker:

"In my father’s house are many mansions

Otto Meer

Died May 18, 1915

Aged 75 years

May

His wife died

Mar 29, 1911

Aged 71 years”

Information from the Medicine Hat and District Genealogical Society. There are six burials here, three are known: Otto, May, and their daughter Helena who died November 17, 1926. The Meer family emigrated to Canada in 1909, applied for homesteads, and purchased a half section in 1910. After May passed Otto applied for funding to build a cemetery in the area. This small spot is supposed to be two miles west of where their farm was. The names of the other three burials are lost to history. May they rest in peace.

I had been trying to find this one for some time. It is not listed in the county website. There are mentions of it online but there is no location listed. I consulted a friend of mine who is great at tracking down locations but all he could give me was a general area. This July I was in the area and managed to find it in the general area that my friend indicated. It is in a prairie farm field close to a township road south of Foremost, Alberta with not much around for miles in any direction.

The photos could be better. I am still having issues with walking and carefully picked my way across uneven ground with a cane to get to the cemetery. It is a work in progress.

51.8241180, -111.2342170

The last time I was at Prairie Circle Cemetery was in 2017. A few days ago I got a friend, Glen Bowe, to join me on a return trip. My prior visit was a short visit without a close look as there was a lot of tall grass and I did not want to step on and damage anything hidden in the grass. I thought a return visit at this time of year would be a great time as I would now be able to see everything. My plan partially worked. I did not expect snow on the ground. Since I am still on crutches I did not chance going down the ditch and attempting to check out the grounds. Asking my guest to pick me up if I fell might be too much of an imposition.

There is a hinged cover over a plaque showing there are at least twenty-eight burials here. There does not seem to be any past 1940. I could see a few more markers compared to my last visit but there are not many. The most common surname is Kary. There are references to Ensleigh, Fenner, and Zetland. The most I could find is that both areas might have had a post office or general store as those sometimes existed without anything else for miles around or was just an area name. Present day there is no evidence of either location. Glen was kind enough to allow me to use some of his photos.

Courtesy Glen Bowe 

Courtesy Glen Bowe 

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My friend Glen Bowe came with me on this trip and I was glad to have him. From the range road you have to go through two separate gates on a path bordering a farmers field.  According to a marker at the cemetery the Presbyterian Church applied for, and was granted, forty acres by Queen Victoria in 1895. The four acre cemetery was established in 1916. No mention of an church. About half the area is covered in trees and dense brush. There is not much here in the surrounding area. Someone likely had big plans for this area.

The burials are split in two distinct groups. The first group is all graves with the last name McCallum. Past this group closer to the far east boundary is everyone else. Everyone here has a Scottish or English last name.

Angus McCallum

March 18, 1846 - November 26, 1903

Jane Seeley McCallum

May 6, 1850 - February 11, 1914

The family must have had a bit of money to erect this. They are the only two in this enclosure.

Robert John Stewart

June 20, 1904 - August 27, 1905

There are more. I just visited a few. I am still hobbling about on crutches and it is not easy trying to traverse soft cemetery ground.

Abandoned Lutheran Church

This is near Torrington, Alberta.

I am trying to get back in the swing of things by going to some places kind of close to where I live. I have been here twice before. The roof is relatively new so someone is trying to preserve it. I believe the church was built in 1906 and abandoned sometime in the 1950's.

I am dying to get out on a road trip for a few days. I cannot make it happen, I have not progressed enough that I feel comfortable trying it. I have managed to take a couple of unassisted steps, it is painful and almost torturous. On the plus side I know I can take a step without using anything for help. I aim to be doing some hiking next spring.

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I managed to get out last Friday and do a bit of actual exploring thanks to Dale Redekopp. It felt good. I did not take enough photos for this post as I am out of practice. I was on crutches walking through this cemetery and was paying too much attention to my walking and not enough on material.

About one thousand Black American settlers from Oklahoma, from about 1908 to about 1912, came to Alberta. Amber Valley is the most well known settlement in Alberta. Some settled in Keystone, now Breton, Alberta. It did not last long. After WWI many moved to other places and other opportunities. This area would have been very isolated back then.

This cemetery is a short distance off the highway beside a township road. I have literally driven by this on the highway dozens of times without ever seeing it before. There are only three marked graves, two of them from the 1980's. The plaque lists the original settlers.

"In memory of Molly

Beloved wife of

W. M. Hayes

Born 1865

Died May 24, 1928"

She is listed on the plaque. This is the only settler marked grave with a headstone.

The grave below has no headstone. The small rectangular stone on top has the initials M H on one side. I suspect the stone might belong to the Mollie Hayes grave. There are no other names on the plaque that would have these initials. You can see the outline of several graves in this small cemetery. Their markers are lost to time.

Abandoned Manitoba

St. George's Anglican Church 1892 - 1913. Also known as Copley Church.

When I was last here in March of 2022 there were big snowdrifts and I could only see it from the road. This time I got to see everything. For November 12, 2023 the weather could not have been much better.

The church in the extreme southwestern corner of Manitoba. You are very close to the Saskatchewan and North Dakota borders.

Old International truck.

I believe there are eleven burials here. There are only three that are marked in the small cemetery.

St. Onufry Cemetery

Located here: 54.15282, -112.53725.

Smokey day in rural Alberta last Saturday. This is a little out of the way place that I wanted to visit. The church has been gone for many years. The bell tower and a fair sized cemetery remains.

Abandoned Alberta

Not much of a Labour Day Weekend for getting out. Took a trip for half the day on Saturday. For Saturday, Sunday, and today we have been socked in with smoke that drifted in from wildfires, possibly from the Northwest Territories. I had to put a bit of a halt to the day due to the air quality. That and the bugs. I have hardly been bothered by any bugs this year. Whenever I made a stop Saturday and got of of the car I was attached by insects and breathing in very smoky air. I started to get a headache from it later in the day and my eyes were getting irritated as the day went on. Conditions have not changed yesterday and today and add to that chilly temperatures and some rain and I have not ventured out.

I have been to the church twice before and wanted to see how it has fared. Someone has ripped the doors off. Someone has also been trying to preserve it. There is a new steel fence line replacing the old barbed wire fence and a new sign.

Remains of the old bell tower.

Wild Horse Cemetery about here 49.659139, -115.590328

Managed to get here June 24, 2023.

The cemetery is at the end of the Dewdney Trail and the ghost town Fisherville, British Columbia of which there hardly a trace remaining. None of the graves have names and there are only two known burials, everything else is lost to time. Gold was discovered on Wild Horse Creek in 1864 and there was a short lived gold rush. There were town names of Wild Horse, Kootenai, Kootenay, and Fisherville associated with this area.

To get here take the Fort Steele-Wild Horse Forest Service Road just outside of Fort Steele. When I traveled it the road was very rough in a few places and there are a few spots where the road is narrow with some steep drops on the side. You can street view this road on Google Maps.

This is quite the spot. The town was on the side of a hill. The area is rugged. The prospectors who first explored this area had to be determined to look for gold in this terrain.

Abandoned British Columbia

Red Pass, British Columbia is a largely forgotten place. At one time there was a hotel, railway station, school, and a general store. 

I thought there must have been a cemetery there since most places have one. I never found any mention of one online. I contacted the museum in Valemount, British Columbia and they replied. There is a cemetery there. There are a few unknown graves and one known one. They provided me with some information on it that I included in this post.

Red Pass is a rail junction at the west end of Moose Lake west of Jasper, Alberta. You can turn off Highway 16 onto Red Pass Townsite Road.

Drive down to the rail line and cross the tracks and walk east.

Keep looking to your right and you will see a collapsed fence marking a grave. This spot is the burial site of Felix Sivecki. A cross has his name and the dates May 10, 1898 - Nov 4, 1947. He drowned trying to cross the Fraser River on a log, slipped and drowned. His son made the fence. There is a headstone that reads:

IN LOVING MEMORY

DAD

FELIX SIVECKI

1898 - 1947

GOD’S PEACE WITH LAST HUNT