© Features

the other presse

Barbara K. Adamski

e opfeatures@netscape.net

June 2003

A Tour of the Passed

Barbara K. Adamski Features Editor

\ x ] hat do actor Raymond Burr,

hotelier John “Gassy Jack” Deighton of Gastown fame, and former Vancouver Canucks’ trainer Larry Ashley have in common? They are all inactive participants in Archie and Dale Miller's tour of well-known New Westminster “residents”. The couple conduct walking tours of the Fraser Cemetery, where these three men are buried. Although not New Westminster's first cemetery, the Fraser is currently the oldest in Greater Vancouver, and dates back to the mid 19th century. Prior to that, New Westminster's dead were laid to rest in a graveyard where New Westminster Senior Secondary School now stands.

The Millers own and operate “A Sense of History Research Services, Inc.”, where they compile and present local historical information to schools, businesses and cit- izens in the Lower Mainland. Archie, a former archivist with the city of New Westminster and recipient of the Queen's Royal Jubilee Medal in 2002 for more than three decades of historical work within the community, has been deeply involved in the history of New West for most of his life. Dale, with a background in education and consulting, is responsi- ble for the business side of their partner- ship, but she, herself, still loves a good story.

Together they write a weekly historical column for the New Westminster Record and have just completed a book on the local dead. Due to be published later this year, its working title is “Cemeteries and Burial Places in New Westminster.” Little known to even to many New Westminster residents, in addition to the Fraser and St. Peter's Cemeteries (which lie on either side of Richmond Street), there is a Jewish cemetery on the west side of the city, near the 22nd Street Skytrain Station, and sev- eral smaller graveyards, such as the one on the Woodlands site, throughout the city.

The Millers are taphophiles—people

with a strong interest in cemeteries. New

This “stone” is actually made of zinc, which was used as a less expensive substitute for marble in the latter half of the 19th century. Granite tombstones came into use circa 1900.

has several dedicated taphophiles who participate regularly in the Millers’ cemetery tours, rain or shine. Once, in summer of all seasons, the weather was so bad that even Dale and Archie were going to give a rain check, in the true etymological sense of the word, to the few they anticipated would attend that day. Twelve die-hards, however, braved the weather — substantially less than the 40 to 80 who might normally turn up for a tour—and didn’t want to go home. So the show went on.

The weather often plays an important role in the planning of tours. One February, the theme of the tour was “peo- ple who died as a result of the weather” and the Millers’ intent was to conduct the tour on a cold, miserable, West Coast winter day. Unfortunately for the Millers, however, the weather was balmy and so the tour lost some of its dramatic impact. Rather than describing the mid-winter death of someone falling through the ice into a pond of frigid water, Dale and Archie were commenting on the need for sunscreen and hats.

Designing a cemetery tour is no easy task. Not just any body can make it into the tour. Dale laughs as she tells of the odd looks that she and Archie get from friends when they make such comments as “That's a wonderful death. How dare they bury them in Surrey! Of course,” she’s quick to add, “it’s not really a won- derful death. It’s a wonderful story, and it’s frustrating if we don’t get to tell it.”

There always has to be a story, a reason for the Millers to feature a particular per- son in one of their cemetery tours. For some, like New Westminster native, Raymond Burr, their fame in life is what gives them a spot on the tour. For some, like members of the Royal Engineers who founded New Westminster in 1859, it is their historical importance. And yet for others, it is a special story that links them to an era, a historical event, that puts them on the tour.

Westminster

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For example, at the turn of the last cen- tury, a little girl of six or seven was hit and killed by a streetcar while scurrying across the street with her sister at the corner of 6th and 6th in New Westminster. “That, in itself, is horrific,” says Archie. “But you take her story, you follow it in the paper. Her lifeless body was taken home and placed on the kitchen table, a common practice at that time. Then you find in the newspaper—and this is where this story is absolutely lovely,” he notes. “In the news- paper it says, ‘children today must under- stand a streetcar is not horses and wagons. A streetcar can't stop.’ We're learning something historical, now, about New Westminster,” he continues. Two weeks after the incident, another article in the newspaper claims that children of the time do not listen to their parents and tells of young boys playing chicken with a streetcar, despite the fact that a little girl had recently been killed. Archie uses death as a method of telling a story about cul- ture, society, the city.

Sometimes, the gravesite itself is what interests the Millers. “In many cases,” says Archie, “The grave markers tell more*of the family, of the survivors, than of the person buried.” Most funeral and burial decisions, after all, are made by the living. Dale describes a tombstone of a New Westminster woman. “Sewing pinafores for the angels,” the epitaph reads, accom- panied by an etching of a needle and thread, prompting Dale to imagine the daughters of this woman deliberately selecting these words to mark their moth- ers final resting place. Of course, Dale adds, this is her own interpretation of the inscription; she does not yet know the story behind the pinafores. The stone, however, reminds Dale of her own moth- er, and sometimes even brings a tear to her eye.

Another grave, a simple slab of grey gran- ite, has an image of a tugboat and the words, “Smooth Sailing” chiselled into the stone. But it’s not just any old tugboat,

Archie says. After searching for the right image to put on the tombstone, the man’s children realized that the stone mason, with the assistance of computer technolo- gy, could replicate the father’s own boat from a photo, creating a truly personal marker.

Nestled among flat-topped cedars, Gassy Jack’s tombstone has elaborate pic- tures of British Columbia scenery, a steamboat carved into the dark-grey gran- ite and a quote from this local icon, “I have done well since I came here.” To the left of the marker, a pot of heather and a sprig of holly show that, after all these years, Gassy Jack still has visitors.

Images and inscriptions that demon- strate a strong connection to family in some way, trigger Archie and Dale to search for more information that will ulti- mately place that person on a tour. They may find interesting and essential facts in newspaper archives, from the Department of Vital Statistics’ web page <www.bcarchives.bc.ca>—the only Vital Statistics Department in Canada that allows web access to the general public, according to Archie — and from the BC Genealogical Society. The internet has definitely made searching for historical and genealogical data easier, note the Millers, who still use archived newspapers for much of their research.

On occasion, the Millers’ tours feature citizens of other communities buried in New Westminster. Recently, the cities of Delta and Richmond requested the Millers design a tour of the gravesites of their pioneers. Neither of these cities has a cemetery in which interment is possible because their elevation is so close to that of sea level. As a result, many of their pio- neers are laid to rest in nearby New Westminster. A massive red granite mon- ument marks the grave of Emma Rand (née Debeck), daughter of a Richmond/Sea Island farming family also prominent in the province's early logging and lumbering industries. In 1871, she