A worker with a charitable group called the Last Post Fund marks the name of Pte. Norman Fielders on the Fielders' family memorial at the Poplar Lake cemetery near the Edmonton Garrison. Fielders died more than 90 years ago from an ailment acquired during the First World War but his final resting place was only identified last year and his name added to his family's memorial marker earlier this month.

The engraving is just a little deeper than the others on the rose-coloured memorial. The carving is a little more precise and the newly-exposed rock has 90 years less weathering than the other markings.  Despite the differences, the new memorial is for a man who died around the same time as the rest of his family and it closes the history on his life. Earlier this month, with the help of a national charity, a local historian and with the consent of his descendants, the name of Pte. Norman Fielders was engraved into the Fielders’ family memorial at the Poplar Lake cemetery near the Edmonton Garrison. The engraving comes more than 90 years after Fielders’ death.

Fielders served in the First World War, fighting in French trenches in 1916. He survived the battlefield, but still died from the war. The conditions in the trenches caused his kidneys to fail and Fielders died in 1918 at home in Canada, before the last shots were fired, before peace was declared.

The Poplar Lake cemetery was his final resting place, but that fact was lost to history until last year when it was discovered by John Matthews, a local historian and volunteer with the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd, who has been working on restoring the cemetery. The small plot of land, just south of 195 Avenue near the Edmonton Garrison is home to 18 graves. Over many years the cemetery fell into disrepair. Matthews has been leading a volunteer effort over the last several years to clean up the site.

The Fielders’ memorial is a roughly seven-foot tall cylindrical monument with four panels, three of which carried the names of Fielders’ father, mother and brother. His brother and father both died in 1911 and his mother died in 1918 not long after Fielders’ return to Canada. Last year, when Matthews found clear evidence that Norman Fielders had been buried there he realized immediately that his name should be added to the memorial. “It seems obvious, because there was a spare panel to the monument,” he said. “That is why I look on it as being final closure.” Given Fielders’ military service, Matthews got in touch with the Last Post Fund, a national charity that helps veterans’ families with funeral expenses and also works to deal with unmarked graves. 

Mary Jane Belec, a counsellor with the fund, said Matthews contacted her about Fielders and she immediately felt they could help. “If we know that a veteran is buried and his grave is unmarked for more than five years we don’t ask any questions we just mark them,” she said. A huge number of soldiers’ graves were left unmarked for a wide variety of reasons, Belec said. “Often war veterans died indigent and drunk and alone and estranged from their families,” she said. In other cases the family might have been financially strapped. “It could be any number of reasons why they were not marked,” she said.

In this case, when Fielders died, only a few of his siblings would have been around and they might not have had resources, Matthews said.Belec said her organization has run into cemeteries with dozens of unmarked graves and are working on them as they have funds and resources. “As we go on there are bigger and bigger projects for us to do,” she said.

Cemetery restored

Dot Keichinger is one of the family members Matthews has been in contact with about the project. She said she has no idea why her great uncle’s grave was never marked. She said his death has been harder for her to track, when working on family genealogy, and the information on him has been limited. “I presume there was an obituary, but I have never seen it,” she said. Keichinger and several other family members visited the memorial last Friday. She said it is a relief to see the cemetery has been restored and cleaned up. She began writing letters to the Anglican Church in the late 1980s to try and have the site restored. She said at that time it was an absolute disaster. “The whole thing was basically covered with trees and there was a broken down barbed wire fence around it and there was old furniture and garbage thrown everywhere in there.”  She said even though they are distant ancestors they are still important.  “It is my ancestors, my great grandparents are buried there and my great uncles and I wouldn’t like to see any cemetery like that,” she said. “Those people, they are Alberta.” 

Matthews, who has been researching the cemetery for several years now, said he will continue trying to figure out who was buried there and do his best to mark their final resting spots. “I would not say that the research phase is over by any means,” he said.

More information about the site can be found at www.goodshepanglican.org/PoplarLake.htm and more information about the Last Post Fund can be found at www.lastpostfund.ca

He served Canada in the First World War, but until very recently his final resting place remained unknown.  Pte. Norman Fielders enlisted in July 1915 and served in France from September to December 1916.  In the trenches, he developed what today would be called kidney failure. After months trying to recuperate he was discharged and sent home to Canada before dying in October 1918.  More than 90 years later his final resting place is waiting to be engraved.  As part of an ongoing research and restoration project at a Sturgeon County cemetery, his name should soon be added to a granite monument alongside his mother, father and brother.  The monument stands in the middle of the Poplar Lake Cemetery, which had been a neglected graveyard that has now been restored as part of a volunteer effort from the Anglican Church of Good Shepherd.

Church member and local historian John Matthews has headed up this effort, combing through censuses, military records and other documents trying to discover who inhabited the 18 graves the church originally identified through ground-penetrating radar.

Eureka moment

The Fielders’ family memorial is a rose-coloured pillar with a string of ivy etched around the top. It’s by far the largest and well maintained of the monuments at the site.  It is divided into four segments with the names of John Fielders, the patriarch of the family, his son John McDonald (both father and son died in 1911) and Elizabeth Fielders who died in 1918.  There remains one blank segment and, provided there is no objection from the Fielders’ surviving relatives, Matthews intends to add Norman Fielders.  Researching exactly who was put to rest at Poplar Lake has not been easy. There were no official records and only five gravestones.  Matthews has identified 14 of the interred through piecing small pieces of information together until he had the whole puzzle.

In Fielders’ case, however, it was listed clear as day.  The service was Oct. 30, 1918, performed by Edmonton’s bishop the day after Fielders passed away. It was written alongside all the other burials, weddings and baptisms in the register of All Saints Parish.  Matthews says he didn’t know the answer would be there when he started looking through the register, but he turned the page and it was staring him in the face.  “I was just going through there on principle,” he says. “That was maybe the high point in all of the research we have done.”

Battlefield casualty

Veterans’ Affairs Canada officially lists 619,636 men and women who served in the First World War; 66,655 of them died.  Fielders did return to Canada, but with an ailment he developed on the battlefield that took his life before the war was over.  “He was a war casualty as much as anyone who died from a bullet to the head,” says Matthews.  The kidney failure he developed was then called trench nephritis, a consequence of the damp, cold and unsanitary conditions of the trenches.  Fielders’ medical reports, which Matthews obtained as part of his military file, show he spent months in an English hospital, where he lost weight, was exhausted walking short distances and couldn’t sleep through the night.

Continuing story

After media coverage of the project last year, Matthews got a few other leads from the public and has managed to piece together more of the information about those buried at Poplar Lake.  He has identified another of the graves as that of William Latimer, a young boy killed in a horrible accident.  The church has also received permission to re-open the cemetery and has pre-sold four burial plots among hundreds that will eventually be available.

More information on the cemetery and the project can be found at www.goodshepanglican.org/PoplarLake.htm.

The sale of the first new grave plot at Christ Church Cemetery Poplar Lake (commonly known as Poplar Lake Cemetery) in August, was a major milestone in the restoration project started in the summer of 2006.   This historic pioneer cemetery, located at 195th Avenue and 82nd Street, is under the care and operation of the Anglican Parish of the Good Shepherd in Castle Downs.

Provincial authorities gave their sanction to the sale of new grave plots last autumn. After developing operating procedures and regulations, and surveying the new plots, we started selling cremation plots in August.   Plans are in place to sell regular burial plots in the near future. Cremation plots, half the size of a normal plot, sell for $400. Full-size coffin plots will sell for $800.  The cremation plots can accommodate several buried urns, and are highly suitable for a "family" multi-generation, burial and memorial area.

Two years ago, The Messenger published an article describing efforts to restore this historic pioneer cemetery.  Messenger readers responded generously, and we received much information from descendents of those buried there, and the Poplar Lake pioneer community.   Even more information was forthcoming following news coverage on the restoration project by the St. Albert Gazette, Global TV, and The Edmonton Journal in August 2009. 

Tips from the public have led us to identify two addition burials in the cemetery.   One was an infant, William Latimer, who died of a severe scalding in the kitchen in 1909.   His nephew, 'Willy' Latimer, phoned us after the St. Albert Gazette article.   He also identified his gravestone, a base only with "Latimer" on it (the top part has not survived). That branch of the Latimer family eventually farmed on north 127th Street until their property was sold as the site for the Youth Detention Centre.

The other find, Norman Fielders, was discovered in the All Saints' Cathedral parish register of deaths. The online database of World War One soldiers, found on the National Archives of Canada website, is an invaluable research tool.  From the database we learned that he had served in World War One. We applied for complete files for each soldier associated with the parish. Norman's file told us that he was sent home to Canada and discharged from the army in Calgary, May 19, 1918. His mother died on the 15th of May, 1918, and he may have not have had the chance to see her before she died. He was unfit for further military service because of kidney failure, but the file gave no indication of where he was buried.   Research in the All Saints' parish register produced an "eureka" moment.   He died on October 29th and was buried by the Bishop of Edmonton on the 30th at the Christ Church Cemetery!  His name will be added to the Fielders family memorial stone.

As a logical follow up to our research in late summer 2009, all surviving headstones have been placed beside the large pink granite Fielders family memorial.   Eventually, replacement markers for those graves which have none will be placed in the same area.    Recently, due to the Anthony Henday ring road project, 195th Avenue has been widened and 82nd Street has been rerouted to east, rather than west of the cemetery. Sturgeon County has also purchased a portion of the north end of the cemetery for the Henday project.   Part of the revenue from that sale was reinvested into the cemetery by the diocese, arid used to purchase of a heavy duty tractor mower to assist with grounds improvements and maintenance.   We intend to retain some of the "country" look of the grounds, while upgrading the appearance of the turf groundcover.

Extensive information on the cemetery, including the purchase of plots, is posted on the Good Shepherd website, www.goodshepangli-can.org/PoplarLake.htm.

Glen Gogol cutting the grass with the new tractor.