Uncovering the Past

ANNAPOLIS ROYAL – A half dozen people with scrub brushes gently, almost tentatively, wipe the old moss and lichen from the ancient gravestones at Garrison Graveyard that fronts St. George Street.

Denise Rice, Wendy Rickards, Marcia Sanford and Joan Lefurgy, Mapannapolis volunteers, spray aging stones with a special detergent that is both delicate and effective. They let the detergent soak in before they go to work uncovering history. Parks Canada’s site manager Ted Dolan checks on progress. It’s the third day of a four-day gravestone conservation workshop and everything in previous sessions has lead to the hands-on scrubbing that has passersby stopping to take a look.

It’s a sunny day. A cold and windy one at Fort Anne. The crew from Mapannapolis and Parks Canada staff are bundled up and determined to put to use what they’ve learned over the past few days.

Garrison Graveyard – Grave Markers and Inscriptions

While Rice helps with the cleaning, she also has a copy of her book. As the moss and lichen comes off, she makes notations in the book on the page for that particular stone, filling in blanks long covered by biological growth. Lost letters and even whole words can now be seen.

Dolan couldn’t be happier.

“We’ve managed to get some conservators to come in from Ottawa and from Historic Properties in Halifax to bring some much needed love to the gravestones in the Garrison Graveyard,” he said. “There’s some maintenance that’s been long overdue on the gravestones, as anybody knows who’s walked through there in the last few years, there’s quite a bit of biological growth on some of those stones – some more than others – and some of the stones are listing and as is quite obvious, some of the stones have cracked as well.”

“We have volunteers here from Mapannapolis that are helping out with it, a few Parks Canada employees as well,” Dolan said. “So there’s some gravestone cleaning that is happening. Tomorrow hopefully we’ll be doing some resetting of some of the gravestones as well, and some mortar repairs, but this is going to be an on-going process.”

Interview and Garrison Graveyard photography from a longer article by Lawrence Powell.

For a storymap about Annapolis County cemeteries and churches, go here.

For a storymap about Fort Anne National Historic Site’s Garrison Graveyard, go here