Current ads
Jobs
Tenders
Notices
General

Click below

Monument remembers Inuit who died anonymously in the South

Makivik builds Inuksuk in Quebec City cemetery

ODILE NELSON

Sixteen thousand graves pepper Mount Hebron, the 155-year-old cemetery that lies on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, just outside Quebec City. Headstones mark the majority, carved with the name of the deceased, the year they were born, and the year they died.

But in the Inuit section of the cemetery, a grassy plot no more than 40 feet long and 20 feet wide, the graves are marked with plain, cedar pickets. No dates or names are engraved on these wooden crosses. Numbers alone distinguish one cross from the next.

But a new memorial, commissioned by Makivik Corp., will finally name and honour those Inuit buried at the venerable cemetery — and give Nunavimmiut who travel to Quebec City a proper place to mourn.

"When family relations come, some don't even know where their uncle or mother or father had been buried and it's difficult to find out exactly where," Lisa Koperqualuk, a spokesperson for Makivik, said this week. "This should help."

There are about 20 unmarked Nunavimmiut graves in Mount Hebron cemetery alone, Koperqualuk said. The earliest is from the 1940s and the most recent from the 1980s.

But the situation there is not unique.

"There are Inuit graves not just in Quebec City but all across Canada in large cities like Montreal and Hamilton — Inuit people who had been sent to hospital centres or sanitariums for tuberculosis. Often, many died and were buried in the city, in chosen cemeteries, because in those days it was very difficult to bring bodies back to the North," she said.

Brian Treggett, superintendent for Mount Hebron, said Inuit have been contacting him for several years, hoping to create a memorial to honour their relatives.

Though Nunavimmiut only travel to the cemetery once or twice a year, he said, he was pleased that there is now a memorial for those who are able to visit.

"It's important for Inuit who come down to have something that marks this place. Before, there was really nothing," he said.

The same company that designed the Inuksuk built in on the National Assembly grounds late last year designed the Mount Hebron Cemetery memorial.

The sculpture resembles an Inuksuk in that it is made up of many different stones but it also has the shape of a cross, Treggett said.

Stones left over from the National Assembly Inuksuk, gathered from communities across Nunavik, were used in its construction. Koperqualuk said she expects the completed memorial to have a commemorative plaque engraved with the names of the deceased.

The Quebec City memorial should be unveiled this fall. There are also tentative plans to build a similar structure in Montreal for the 28 unmarked graves there, Koperqualuk said.

Advertising
Specs, rates,
& maps
Multi-paper
buying services
About the market
E-mail ad dept

More Information