For Al Gray, a desire to improve the aesthetics of Riverside Cemetery in Dauphin all comes down to simple respect.
Recently, the founder of Friends of Riverside, a volunteer group with a mission to help improve the environment at the local cemetery, has been concentrating his efforts on headstones which are leaning, or fallen and broken.
“The thing of it is, is that like most cemeteries, the cemetery holds no legal responsibility for the stones. It’s a family thing and most people don’t understand that,” Gray said, adding he has taken on the task of contacting family members where possible to let them know the loved one’s marker needs attention.
“What I’ve maintained all along is that you can’t expect people to know what they don’t know if nobody’s telling them what they don’t know.”
In most cases the response is positive, Gray said, and many stones have been repaired as a result.
The problem is that in many cases there are no family members to be found, Gray said, pointing to the large spire of a former Dauphin resident.
“Dr. Law was buried in 1901, his wife was buried in 1902 and they had no children. The stone there, to lift it up is probably about $1,500, to put a new foundation underneath it. There’s no family, so who’s going to do it?” Gray asked. “So that’s where I’m at with this stuff, is to try and get people to understand that.”
Compounding the problem is the sheer number of stones which need attention.
In block one, the oldest block in the cemetery, there is more than 400 stones which need attention, Gray said.
“This is block one, this is 100 tears of neglect. There is over 400 compromised stones in this one block alone, 400, over 400,” Gray said. “Which, at an average of $250 dollars a stone, is $100,000 of repair work in one block. And there’s 14 blocks in this cemetery.”
There are two companies in the area which perform headstone restorations, Gray said, adding repairs can range from around $150 for a simple resetting to several thousand dollars for large stones which have toppled and broken.
To help facilitate some of the work, Gray has reached out to the councils of the City and RM of Dauphin to consider providing some funds over the next few years.
“I went to a (City and RM) liaison committee meeting and I said, ‘while we have two councils that look like they’re going to work together I would like to consider you guys putting in between $4,000 and $5,000 a year per municipality for four years,’ for mandate,” Gray said, adding he has yet to hear back from the councils on the proposal.
“That would give us about $40,000 to put into the cemetery.”
Riverside Cemetery operates under provincial legislation, which was passed in 1964, one of only two cemeteries in the province in that situation. As such, while representatives of the two municipal councils make up the majority of the cemetery board, they have no financial responsibility for its operation, Gray said. Operating funds, he added, come from the sale of burial plots and interest earned on the Perpetual Care Fund.
Gray has received some support from the public on the issue, citing a group of five ladies who, following one of his History Night presentations, provided funds to fix up one neglected stone.
“They not only picked the stone, but they did the research on the person, too. That’s been some of the good stuff,” Gray said, adding while such gestures are greatly appreciated he is banking on elected officials making a financial commitment to the cemetery. “There’s nothing we can do if we don’t have a nest egg to do it with. I need the financial support. We can do the family contact and we’ll keep plugging away at the families. But to get really active out here you need the City and the RM.”
