Marking the grave sites

A project aimed at sorting out who is buried where at the Iqaluit cemetery has found that there are more unmarked graves at the site than originally thought.

Through the project, funded by the municipality, organizers have amassed a database of people buried at the cemetery and have mapped their burial plots.

The maps show there are at least 645 grave sites in the cemetery. Of those, only 488 are marked. There’s no indication who is buried in the remaining 157 sites.

Hospital records and death certificates show that there are another 626 people from the Baffin region who died in the town and are buried somewhere in the Iqaluit cemetery.

Councillor Glenn Williams, who sits on the Niksiit committee working on the cemetery project, said what first began as an Iqaluit project has now turned into a Baffin-wide search.

Because of the project’s new scope, the Niksiit committee is turning to Justice Minister Paul Okalik for funding to help identify the 626 unmarked graves.