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

The following article was in the Oct. 6, 2010 Edition of the Edmonton Examiner

Haley Peacock, 19, receives a Trinity Guildhall award from instructor Jacquelyn Bland-Lawrence  (my underlines) last week.

Edmontonian wins international drama award Haley Peacock named tops in Americas by Trinity Guildhall

Al Lake got his picture in both Edmonton newspapers during the week of May 2, 2010 

as he took part in the 100th Anniversary of the Canadian Navy celebrations.

(He is second from the right in the top picture and second from the left in the bottom picture)

November 11, 2009 - Edmonton Journal

86-and-a-half-year-old" Navy veteran Al Lake greets students

Tuesday during a Remembrance Day ceremony at Delton Elementary school.

October 29, 2009 - Edmonton Journal

George Custance, right, and other members of the Colour Party wait to march during the launch of the Greater Edmonton Poppy Fund campaign at Kingsway Legion in Edmonton, AB, on Oct. 29, 2009.

August 13, 2009 - St. Albert Gazette (By Ryan Tumilty Staff Writer)

RESTORING THE PAST

Volunteer John Matthews is heading up the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd's efforts to restore the Poplar Lake Cemetery. Matthews, who is holding some of his research, has been working to try and identify whose remains occupy 18 graves identified by ground penetrating radar.

Secrets in the ground
After 80 years a rural prairie cemetery is being re-opened and long neglected graves are being restored and remembered

In an isolated field on the southern edge of the Edmonton Garrison, among prairie grasses and poplar trees stands a lone monument to a family long since passed. Standing about seven feet tall, the granite monument has stood through harsh Alberta winters and short summers for nearly a century.  The smooth rose-coloured pillar flares outwards at the top, with a ring of permanently etched ivy and memorials to three members of the Fielders family.

After decades of neglect and ill-fated maintenance efforts, the Fielders' memorial is the only constant in the small Poplar Lake cemetery. Situated on the corner of 82 Street and 195 Avenue, the site is nearing the end of a three-year restoration project that will see it open to new burials for the first time in 80 years.

The pillar on the Fielders' memorial is divided into four panels - three panels mark the lives of a mother, father and son who lived just two quarter-sections south of the old cemetery, while the fourth was left blank.  John Fielders, the father died at 52 in June 1911 six months after his son John McDonald Fielders who died at 22 in January 1911.  Elizabeth Fielders survived until 1918, but having lost her son and husband and with another son fighting in France the last years of her life were likely very difficult and her memorial reads that way; "Safely anchored in the harbour of eternal rest."  The fourth spot was likely reserved though never taken by the other son, who survived the war, but died within months of returning home.

The Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd has been working on the cemetery since 2006, slowly trying to restore it and trace the history of the people who were buried there.  John Matthews, a member of the church, said when he was asked to help out he saw only one workable solution.  "It has been a maintenance problem for the diocese for a very long time," he said. "I concluded the only way we could do a proper job on it, on a long term basis, was to put it back into operation as a cemetery."

The first burial at the cemetery took place in 1898 and at the time there was also a log cabin church, the Christ Church of Poplar Lake.  The church hobbled along for 20 years before closing, re-opening and then closing permanently in 1926. Around 1941 it burned to the ground.

Small community
As part of the restoration project, volunteers brought in a ground penetrating radar system that discovered 18 probable graves.  Poplar Lake was once a stop on a rail line between Edmonton and St. Albert. It had a school a short distance from the church and a handful of families had homesteads nearby.  In researching the lives, deaths and burials, Matthews said he has formed an idea of what Poplar Lake looked like.  "Gradually a picture starts to form. I can really start to form a picture of the community around here."  He said turn of the century Canada saw many communities spring up on the vast open land, but not all survived.  "Every railway stop there was a potential to set up a mission and sometimes they remained and the community grew and others didn't."

The radar survey found 16 graves in an east-west alignment in line with Christian tradition and two oriented north-south.  It also discovered that under the Fielders' memorial, the cemetery's one immovable object, there are no graves at all.  Matthews said he believes it may have been put up well after the father and son died and was meant to serve as a memorial for the entire family.  He believes in addition to the large memorial there would have been more simple headstones for each member of the family, but nothing can be said for certain.  "I would think they are buried here, somewhere."

Mysteries abound
After identifying the probable graves, each one was marked with a pair of black triangles marking the head and foot.
The markers are numbered from one to 18 and Matthews doubts he will ever be able to say precisely who is buried where.  He has a rough sketch the Royal Canadian Air Force drew during some previous attempt to restore the cemetery, but it has no scale and doesn't come close to filling the gaps.  

In addition to the Fielders' memorial only two other headstones have been left intact, though out of place.  One is for Stella May Stoutenburg and her infant son Howard Carson Latimer, who died just two days before his mother.  The other is for Rose Eleanor Swan, remembered as the beloved wife of Rev. Richard Michael Swan who was in charge of Christ Church and several others when his wife died.  Matthew's research indicates Stoutenburg, whose married name was Latimer, may not even be buried at Poplar Lake, but in Ontario.  He is also desperate for more information about Swan because the reverend was a key figure in keeping the church going.  The headstones are out of place because at some point during a previous restoration effort, they were removed so the overgrowth could be cut back, but were not returned to their rightful place.  "I don't know if they failed to mark where they took them from or if it just got left," said Matthews.  He said the cemetery has been besieged by good intentions over the years.  "One of the reasons that we had this mess was that people were trying to fix the mess, but it never quite got followed through."  Either during the move or at some other point in the 80 years they have been in the ground several other headstones were damaged.  One reads simply "Latimer" with no first name or any dates. The RCAF map Matthews found indicates there were several Latimers, but is scant on details.  "As it stands now I have three people with just Latimer and no name or date and I would like to clear that up."  

One headstone is even more cryptic with just an age below a jagged crack where more details once where.  "Aged 38 or 39 years. This has been an anomaly for a very long time to me. In all the surveys they have done with the dioceses and the genealogical society, we have never given a name to that one."

Having exhausted all the resources he can think of, Matthews is now turning to the public, hoping descendants, amateur historians or genealogy buffs might be able to give names to the remaining graves.

Starting anew
He expects to hear soon that the cemetery has been given provincial approval to reopen and can start new burials.
The two-acre plot has a lot of open space. Matthews said Poplar Lake is going to maintain its character even as it accepts new burials.  "It will come with what you would expect from a rural cemetery. It is not your beautifully manicured lot that you see in the city like a golf course or something."

The original 18 burials will be separated from the new plots and those that have been identified will have new headstones marking their place.  Matthews believes over the long term more graves might be identified and more of the answers revealed, but most importantly the cemetery will be maintained.

"I think we are on to something that is going to keep going."

More information on the restoration can be found at http://www.goodshepanglican.org/

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