Walking in the Fields of the Dead

Walking in the Fields of the Dead
Northern Cemetaries

by Charlie Angus

November/December 1995 issue of HighGrader Magazine

November is the month of the dead. The main cultural and religious events of the month are concerned with rememberance. November is also the last chance to visit the graveyard before the tombstones get buried under the weight of snow. I have always loved visiting the dead. The final yearly visit is made more poignant by the decaying leaves, the bitter wind and the sense of loneliness that November seems to bring.

Across the road from us, hidden behind scraggy trees and spilling over an unkempt hillside, lies an old Catholic grave-yard. Faded headstones reach out from overgrown bush like stubborn sentinels. Concrete ground covers have collapsed with the shifting of earth, giving the impression that the dead have burst their bonds. Some markers exist as mere crosses made out of iron pipe fittings. Two graves are marked by old cigar boxes welded onto iron railings. The plaques have fallen out or rusted away. The only memorial for the dearly departed is an old 5 cent cigar advertisement.

You learn a lot about a place by spending time in a grave-yard. And the old cemetery in Cobalt speaks volumes about the often harsh and tragic struggle that has taken place in this community-epidemics, fires, industrial and road accidents. The mass movement of people into this community during a turn of the century mining boom is made clear by the fact that when the boom ended, often the only thing left behind were the dead. Those who mourned were forced to move on to new mining communities (some of these communities have over time have disappeared altogether).

There are many who have been scandalized by the disrepair and chaotic nature of the old Cobalt grave-yard. The sight of so many graves being left forgotten is unsettling. And yet, I have always felt a great deal of affection and comfort towards this wild, unkempt place. It says something about the people who have remained in Cobalt. Death is not hidden by the sterile aesthetics common in modern cemeteries. There are no carefully manicured weeping willows or bland white fences with a welcoming sign proclaiming "Peaceful Acres." One isn't lulled into thinking that death is some long, dull sleep or is a passage to some retirement community over yonder. The rawness of the cemetery reflects some of the rawness of the community. People here accept the tragic as part and parcel of the local landscape.

In a small town, death is part of the fabric of life. When someone dies the loss is noted by everyone. It is common to attend funerals, even if you barely knew the person, and (in our case as newcomers) if we didn't know them at all. Paying our respects to the dead has made us part of the community. It is one of those unspoken but crucial acts that moves a newcomer from the position of being an acquaintance to having a place in the fabric of an extended family.

Judith Ennew, writing about the Western Isles of Scotland, makes an observation that could easily fit Cobalt: "When death occurs it mobilises a broad set of relationships which implicates a large proportion of the population. There are many people who can, indeed must, claim knowledge of the deceased, who have an obligation to take part in mourning and funeral activities. But it might be claimed that this, in some generalized cultural tendency, leads to that feeling of involvement in the tragic elements of the human condition which is referred to as 'morbid' by strangers."

Hanging around grave-yards might be considered morbid. But visiting the dead is a past-time I came by honestly enough. When I was young it was deemed my job to take my grandmother on her pilgrimages to see her dead husband. He died on the floor at the Hollinger Mine machine shop in April of 1962. I was born in November of that year and was given his name. In my grandmother's eyes, his death and my birth were twinned events.

We spent long afternoons wandering among the headstones making "friends" with faces that peared out from old faded photos. I don't ever recall feeling fear in the grave-yard. When I looked upon long rows of crosses and headstones my mind didn't conjure up images of zombies, psychos or Nosferatu. Instead there was a strange sense of comfort probably imparted by the individual nature of each tombstone. The dead were not faceless. The graves showed some of the texture of love and the strange and sometimes tragic movement of life-"Never was a father more loved," "Our only beloved child", "Injured in the Pamour mine Feb 27, died March 1, 1937."

The grave-yard was a door that opened into a world before my time, a world made up of the same streets, with similar references, only a different people. The long rows of tombstones written in strange languages-Romanian, Croatian, Finnish and Arabic made me wonder what brought people from so far to die here in this cold, strange land.

It was in these stone gardens that I learnt my first lessons of history- that children in the 1930s often died in their first five years, that women who died young often were accompanied by a beloved new-born, that the graveyard had a staggering number of men who died long before their time-a telling sign of the cost of extracting gold from silica-laden rock.

When I was young, I had an interest in finding odd looking graves, or ones scripted in foreign languages. I was always partial to the East European graves and the ones where the name of the mine that the man was killed in was mentioned. I still retain this interest when I take the time to visit grave-yards in the north. But as I grow older, I find that visiting the grave-yard makes me reflective of many things that never come up in the business of everyday life. Who can walk among the stones and not be struck by the fact that life stripped to it's most basic remains a powerful and inexplicable mystery? It draws to mind the words of Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French writer, "When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space in which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished being here rather than there, why now rather than then?"

Notions of horror

I like to tell people that I am only interested in photographing three subject matters--my children, mines and tombstones. When I tell people that I have begun taking my camera with me to the grave-yards, some look at me like I am a ghoul. Such responses are not surprising. The public imagination has been filled with Hollywood images of death as a ghoulish and horrific event. But there is more to people's discomfort than images of Bela Lugosi, the spectre of death raises the deep, unspoken fears resonating in a materialistic culture.

While our entertainment industry shows an obsession with death as a spectacle, on a social level we have become very frightened of the personal nature of death. You can see the masking of these fears in the changing rituals around the death process. Many people I know state how much they hate wakes and funerals. Some have referred to it as "sick," or "morbid." They tell me that death is a private thing, as if when other people die they should be tidier and more discreet about it all.

It is very rare now that you even go out to a grave-side at a funeral. More and more it is being left in the care of the "professionals." The last time I stood at a grave-side to bid adieu to the dearly departed there was astro-turf laid on top of the dirt. Perhaps we weren't supposed to be reminded of the dirt to which all of us return.

The traditional funeral rituals from laying out the body to the lowering of the casket, were developed in a culture that was intergenerational. Judith Ennew points out that "funeral behavior can be seen anthropologically as a series of ritual separations in which the deceased is gradually detached from the social relationships in which he was involved in life." These rituals weren't constructed to merely dispose of the body discreetly, but to reconfirm for the living the meaning of community and family.

The traditional funeral elements gave the mourners a chance to confront the very harsh and tragic face of death, but there was comfort in the support of family, community and religion. Faith in organized religion was much more prevalent in such cultures. Nowhere was that faith more present than at the grave-side when the mourners heard from the Good Book that the dead will rise. From this they took for granted that loved ones reunited. People stood to watch the body lowered into the ground because it signalled that the deed was done and the rebuilding could begin.

Intermingled with faith was often the oral superstitions and old wives' tales that blurred the distinction between past and present, living and dead. I remember my great aunts holding seances to bring back their dead brothers Dooley and Buck. I don't think the old gals were particularly perturbed with the notion of being haunted. They seemed to believe that even death couldn't hold back their live-wire brothers, and used the seances to conjure memories and to tease and argue with a world that had passed beyond their reach.

Today it would be hard to look at a similar scene without thinking of Linda Blair in "the Exorcist", or calling out a psychiatrist. We are a more rational people, but we are also people who live with a greater sense of fear about the unknown that lies waiting. Materialistic culture offers little hope when contemplating our own morality. The sense of responsibilty to large extended families has, by and large, been lost in the ever narrowing pursuit of the individual. But in the process, some of the important comforts of being part of a larger web of relations have also been lost. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the changing rituals of death.

In "The Shipping News" by E. Annie Proulx, the main protaganist Quoyle attempts to hide the nature of death from his children by telling them that their dead mother is "sleeping" and "gone away." The explanation only serves to widen the gap in his children's life. The novel centres on his move to rural Newfoundland where he learns to be in touch with life. At the end of the book, he is able to give his children the words to face the finality of death, and through this the chance to let their fears go.

Quoyle, like modern urban culture, bought the line that if the real nature of death is hidden, it will be somehow easier to bear. And yet, the more tidy and discreet the death process becomes, the more it seems to underscore the fear of the anonymous abyss. How to face mortality in an individualistic culture that worships success? Best to write off the confrontation with the Grim Reaper as some sort of eternal afternoon snooze.

The modern architecture of grave-yards seems to underscore this impression. Today's urban places of repose are made up of mere plaques in the ground. Only a name is given and a date. One wonders if the tombstones have been lopped off to give the casual viewer a sense that he is looking at something pastoral like a golf-course rather than something creepy like a bone-yard?

I have dear relatives lying in some of these new cemeteries. Truth be told I have yet to visit them. There is nothing welcoming about a golf course or an endless suburb of the dead. What is missing in modern, urban grave-yards are the comforting nuances that you see in old, rural grave-yards; the hodge-podge of crosses, markers and home-made cement blocks. They showed all the ethnic, religious and class definitions of towns like Kirkland Lake and Cobalt. But they also showed that those lying below were individuals and that they were loved.

Perhaps this transformation of the grave-yard into a park full of plaques is due to the rising cost of death. Like everything else in our culture, the rituals of death have seen a major invasion of materialistic expectations. Why put the money into a tombstone when you can make a great final impression by being buried in a box that looks more like a Buick Park Avenue without wheels. If you can't afford the $10,000 casket price, you can rent (I kid you not) one for the day for a mere $750. It gives new meaning to Oscar Wilde's quip about dying beyond your means.

I have very warm feelings towards the strangers lying across the road from me in the old Cobalt cemetary. I have developed the same affection for some of the other grave-yards in the north. It remains a place where one can walk and reflect on the grand parade of life that we are part of. It has given me a chance to make friends with those who wait for us on the other side of the great divide.

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