Christ Church Cemetery Poplar Lake History
Christ Church Poplar Lake was an Anglican Church located in what is now Sturgeon County on a 2 acre square parcel of land at the junction of today's 82nd Street and 195th Avenue. It is now surrounded on all four sides by land belonging to the Canadian army's Edmonton Garrison (previously RCAF Base Lancaster Park). This area [Township 54, Range 24, W4] was known in the last decades of the 19th and in the early 20th centuries as Poplar Lake. (Poplar Lake is the prairie slough that forces the bend in 82nd Street just North of 167th Avenue.)
The
parish was the creation of the first Anglican missionary in the Edmonton area,
The Rev. Canon William Newton. He
was sent here in 1875 as missionary to settlers but on arrival here found only
Hudson Bay people, Indians, and Métis.
In 1876 he established the parish of All Saints at 119 Street and Jasper
Avenue. His own homestead at Clover
Bar, named the Hermitage, is now Hermitage Park.
He was also tasked as missionary in the area ranging as far afield as
Victoria (NE of Edmonton on the Saskatchewan River).
On retiring as Rector of All Saints Parish he focused on missionary work
and in 1893 established his second parish, Christ Church Poplar Lake.
He
built the log church on the NW corner of a quarter section homestead patented to
Kingston Powell. Title to the church
land was given in 1897. There is no
record of money being paid to Powell for the land but Newton had married Powell
in 1893. The first known burial,
Elisha Rowswell, age 71, occurred in 1898.
The cemetery was consecrated by Bishop Cyprian Pinkam on Sunday 30
October 1904 under the title “Christ
Church Cemetery Poplar Lake”. The
entire two acre parcel of land was cited as the churchyard (cemetery) but to
date there is no known record of the church itself having been consecrated.
The
parish registries give testimonial to an active spiritual life with attendance
averaging 40-50 every second Sunday afternoon with many baptisms and
confirmations. During
the Great War so many priests went overseas as chaplains that there was a dire
shortage of clergy at home. The
parish closed in the period
1915-1920, reopened in 1921 then closed finally in 1926.
Documentary evidence points to up to fifteen burials in the cemetery
although two of these have been disinterred and reburied elsewhere.
One priest that seems to have had the longest association with Christ Church Poplar Lake was The Rev. (later Canon) Richard Michael Swan. He emigrated from Canterbury in 1913 funded by the Archbishops' [Canterbury and York] Western Canada Fund. He has left us photographs of the Christ Church congregation and interior of the church taken on Easter Sunday 1914. For much of the period of closure from 1915 to 1921 he ministered in the Lac Ste.-Anne area. He wrote a fascinating account of his time in there which shows a great appreciation of the warmth of its people and he is buried in the region. He is listed in the Henderson Guide in 1920 as “Priest-in-Charge” of the Edmonton Mission House – from which priests travelled to service outlying areas – and his wife as “Lady-in-Charge”. She died in 1921 and is buried in the Christ Church cemetery. Canon Swan became rector of St. Mary's then St. Michael and All Angels. A son, Richard Carey, born to second wife Mary Victoria, was baptised by the bishop of Edmonton at St. James' on 31 Jan 1926. (Both of these parishes were in the North East close to 118th Avenue.) The Henderson Guide of 1926 lists him living at St. Mary's (presumably in the rectory), 6512 118 Avenue. He seems to have ministered to the Poplar Lake Church from St. Michael's. He carried out the last recorded burial in the cemetery – Sarah Sweetnam – in 1925. She was disinterred and reburied in the Edmonton Cemetery (107 Avenue) in 1927. There is a parish vestry register that shows his methodical, dedicated hand directing the parish from his arrival in 1913 until final closing in 1926. He retired in 1926, the same year that the parish was closed. After 1926 he no longer appears in the Henderson guides and one wonders if he and his new family moved to the Lac Ste.-Anne area.
Frere,
Al and Art at Poplar Lake Cemetery on July 18, 2004 looking at John
Fielder's granite marker.
The various records of burials are cursory and contradictory. We can document fourteen or fifteen burials, but a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) survey done in 2006 suggests as many as eighteen probable gravesites. This is not surprising given the passage of time and that for most of its history there has been no church presence on the cemetery site. Also, it seems that in these early pioneer days there was never a permanent priest residing at the site, priests would travel from Edmonton – All Saint's parish, The Edmonton Mission House or St. Michael's – and conduct services every two weeks.
Thanks to a 1959 RCAF blueprint of the cemetery which marks seven
gravestones we are reasonably sure of who occupied some of these
graves. As of August, 2009 all five
surviving grave stones have been placed in a memorial area beside the large
Fielders family granite marker. We
will be placing in a row behind the existing makers simple granite stones for
those who have none today. A chart
will be made available indicating known or probable burial locations.
It is a simple reality that we will never know where some of the burials
are located in the cemetery including the four members of the Fielders family.
The cemetery has been neglected over the years but is in the final stages
of restoration. The Alberta
Consumer Affair has now authorized the sale of new burial plots.
It is under the care of the Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd, a
parish in the North Edmonton neighbourhood of Castle Downs, and we are now
authorized by Alberta Consumer Affairs to sell grave plots.
The following table is a result of information gleaned from the records of the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton held at the Provincial Archives, files of the Alberta Genealogical Society, and census and homesteading land records. It reflects a research project that is a very much “a work in progress”. We present it in this somewhat crude form in the hope that readers can fill some gaps in our knowledge about this cemetery, the community, and the settlers that lived there. We would love to hear from anyone with information on the cemetery.
Here
are the five surviving grave markers that memorialize nine of those buried here.
From L to R:
1.
Stella Stoutenburg, first wife of Howard Latimer, and their infant son Howard
Carson Latimer, who died during the Spanish influenza epidemic in November
1918 while husband/father Howard was serving with the Canadian Expeditionary
Force in France;
2.
the “Latimer” tombstone – base only – that we have learned is
that of William Latimer, an infant born about 1907 who died of a severe
scalding in 1909;
3.
Eleanor Rose Swan, Canon Swan's first wife (the top, which was probably a
cross, is missing);
4.
the remnant that says only “1908”and “38 years” (this may be one
of two Latimer tombstones indicated on the 1958 RCAF blueprint); and
5.
the pink column for the John Fielders family of three, father John G.,
mother Elizabeth, and son John McDonald.
(Recently we discovered that a 2nd son, Norman Fielders,
who died in late October 1918 as a result of the rigours of service in France in
WW1, was buried in the cemetery: his name will be added to this memorial).
Simple granite markers for those lacking gravestones will be placed in a row behind these. Numbered triangular stones are now in place to mark the head and foot of burial locations as determined by the GPR survey. A chart will be placed on the back of the sign by the pedestrian gate indicating where each person is buried if known.
An example of the triangular stone markers.