Garrison Graveyard Candlelight tours resume August 7th
Candlelight Tours begin at dusk. Photo Credit: Parks Canada
The Historical Association of Annapolis Royal and Alan Melanson began the candlelight tours in 1992, they begin again on August 7th. Hear some of the stories from the early years of the Cradle of Canada, presented by a tenth generation Acadian. This experience has been among the most memorable activities on visitors must-do-in-Nova-Scotia list, year after year.
10th generation Acadian, Alan Melanson. Photo credit: ValleyTourism.ca
Inspired by Alan’s Garrison Graveyard Tours, Mapannapolis was intrigued by a 2018 ground-penetrating survey of Halifax’s Old Burying Ground in the heart of the city. One thing led to another and by the Fall of the year, a similar survey at Parks Canada’s Fort Anne National Historic Site led to a discovery. Nineteen discoveries, in fact. Nineteen Acadian gravesites, thought lost and remembered in oral history, and through fragmentary Parish Church records from pre-Expulsion times.
Image credit: BOREAS HERITAGE CONSULTING
Nestled amid Garrison’s surviving 234 standing stones, an “empty” area yielded definitive archaeological proof of the last resting places of nineteen Acadians—-the original wooden crosses marking the graves long since decayed and lost.
Find our story map, WHAT LIES BENEATH here for more details about that extraordinary search.