Over 200 people are buried in this N.S. cemetery. These women won't let their names be forgotten
CBC
Other than a few upright gravestones, the Hillside Cemetery in Dayspring, N.S., would be easy to miss.
The cemetery is tucked away at the edge of a municipal trail system in the Lunenburg County community, surrounded by a fence to keep it safe and clean.
It's been there for more than a century, serving as the burial place for more than 200 people, but Yvonne Rafuse only learned of it during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wanting more exercise, she and her husband started walking the local municipal trails. But when they came upon the cemetery, she was surprised there were no names at the site — just 170 numbered granite stones placed in the ground.
It was disheartening to see, she said.
"These names were given to these people at birth. A lot of these people had families, they had children of their own, they had husbands, wives, parents," Rafuse said. "I felt that that needed to be recognized, that these were real people and not just numbers."
The people buried in the cemetery are residents of the Lunenburg Municipal Home or County Home. It has also been referred to as the Lunenburg Municipal Hospital, but that is disputed.
The so-called poor farm was established by the Nova Scotia government in the late 1880s to house people who were poor, physically sick or mentally ill.
The home closed in 1980, but its cemetery is still maintained by the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg.
In 2018, municipal council placed a small plaque and interpretive signage at the site to provide visitors with information about who is buried there and why.
But Rafuse said that's not enough.
She, along with local genealogy specialist Betty Rhodenizer, want the names of those buried there added to a memorial monument at the site.
The pair spent hours conducting research at the South Shore Genealogical Society and analyzing death records from the home to create a list of names of the people buried at the cemetery.
They found 207 people, and there could still be more.
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