For our monument assignment we explored the War Graves in Ross Bay Cemetery. Please check out this link for some information on the Ross Bay Cemetery.
The map above is an image from the that previous website and is a map of the Ross Bay Cemetery including the marked sections of the cemetery (note the War Grave locations at the lower corners). The numbers on the map indicate key places of interest that can be found by clicking this link.
Below, I will post a link to our google map location which includes (unedited - only for now) write-ups of each grave and location we examined.
Monument Assignment link to Map
Current Thoughts:
Initially I thought that it would be interesting to examine the Jewish Cemetery http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/cem_je.htm. Very recently it has undergone vandalism and I felt that doing our monument project here would be beneficial as we could document this site before any further possible destruction occurred. However, I also worried that the current vandalism might make scheduling a time with the cemetery (it isn't open to the public) potentially more difficult (cleaning up after the vandalism, extra protection of the site, etc.). As well, working with a group could have restricted the time we would be able to effectively schedule a time for both my group and the Rabbi to allow us access to the cemetery.
So we explored our options and examined what we found interested us. We researched other cemeteries and talked about finding monuments outside of cemeteries (ie. park benches). We concluded on looking at the Ross Bay Cemetery. We discussed examining family plots or war graves. None of us had examined the Ross Bay Cemetery before so we did not want to have an exact idea of what we were going to document until we meet there. In the end we examined the War Graves located on both lower corners of the cemetery, noting any differences and similarities we found amongst the two locations and the graves themselves. We noted that in the eastern corner there were two large monuments recognizing World War 1 soldiers and the graves in this area were largely in new, quaint rows. The lower western corner, however, was different. The graves here were placed somewhat more sporadically. The graves were not as uniformed, there were multiple individuals in a single plot and we found other interesting characteristics such as colour used on the grave stones. One other thing that was interesting about the cemetery itself was that we also found additional soldier graves throughout the cemetery. These graves were indicated like the graves in the War Grave sections (including the ID and rank of the soldier) but was placed amongst other sections such as in the Roman Catholic and Anglican sections.
Currently we are examining what potential research questions we would like to ask. Some ideas we have come up with are:
- why are there two locations for the War Graves and why are some soldier graves found outside of these two locations
- what does it mean to have graves located at the lower corners of the cemetery
- why are there differences such as colour or multiple individuals in the western graves but none in the eastern location
- why was there only monuments for WW1 soldiers at the eastern corner and none at the western corner
- why were some graves marked with a cement boarder and others not
- what does it mean to have a Canadian flag and cross on most soldier grave stones and other emblems on a selective few
Those are just a few of the questions that come to mind. I'm going to re-examine this again in a few days to see how I feel about our examination and re-evaluate the information we found at the cemetery today.
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