Friends of Elmwood Cemetery - Mother's Day 2004

We invite you to visit the cemetery on Mother's Day, May 14.
We will have potted mums for sale and look forward to greeting you
between the hours of 10:00 am and 3:00 pm

The following article is reprinted with permission from the author
and from The Winnipeg Free Press, Wednesday, May 5, 2004

We Will Remember Forgotten Babies

By Lindor Reynolds

They are the forgotten children of Winnipeg.

More than 5,000 babies are buried in unmarked graves at Elmwood Cemetery, lying in three sprawling acres that secretly hold the remains of infants lost in their first months or years. What seems like a bucolic expanse of grass dotted with the occasional worn headstone is actually the final resting place of thousands of children whose parents could barely afford to bury them.

Until now, hardly anyone knew that under those sporadic markers decorated with stone lambs or delicate flowers lay a village of babies, their graves one metre apart and virtually unnoticed.

“Behold. Children are a blessing from the Lord,” reads the psalm chosen for the headstone.
“Each child is a flower from the garden of the Heavenly Father; each tiny soul embraced in
His perfect love.”

Thanks to a Winnipeg man who wanted to pay tribute to his own mother, a headstone will be unveiled Sunday to commemorate these tiny souls. Ron Willcock has spent $1,000 on a marker to honour children buried without recognition in the cemetery since its opening in 1902. His own mother, May, died at 93 last summer and is buried in Elmwood. Willcock has no children of his own.

“I just wanted to do something to get my mother’s name up there prominently,” says Willcock. “We have a family plot and when I was talking to some of the cemetery workers they told me about these children. No one knows they’re there.”

Charlie Birt, executive director of Friends of Elmwood Cemetery, says the majority of the children died between 1902 and 1930. It was a brutal time for infants as cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis, typhoid fever and scarlet fever claimed many. The total of infant burials at Elmwood during those three decades was 5,685. Only 10 percent of the graves have markers.

“Our primary customers in the early years were children,” says Birt. “You’ll see families who lost two or three children. I think it was just economics that there weren’t any markers. People just couldn’t afford them. They sometimes paid for the burials over time.”

He stares across one of the sections. “All of these are babies,” he says, waving his arm across what looks like a nearly empty field.

The cemetery’s old ledger books tell the stories of sorrow. Baby Graves died as an infant and without being named. Infant Stinson died of bronchitis. In 1914, Margaret Ritches died at 10 months. A year later her brother, Duncan, died at three months. Harvey William died at three in 1919.

The cemetery has kept thorough records and knows exactly where each child is buried. There are three baby sections and each contains more than a thousand unmarked graves.

“We get people coming in and looking for specific graves,” says Birt. “They’re often in their 70s or 80s and know they had a brother or sister who died in infancy. We’re also seeing very young people who have an interest in genealogy or perhaps have heard a grandparent talk about a sibling who died.”

The graves that are marked ache with stolen promise. A large angel sits over an empty crib on one. On another, the headstone simply reads “Baby” and the date. Resting lambs symbolize lost innocence on scores of headstones.

But the forgotten children have no individual markers. In many cases, their families have died off or moved away. Other than their names recorded in a dusty book, there is no way to know they were buried and mourned in this large urban cemetery.

Thanks to Ron Willcock’s generous gift, they will be memorialized as a group at 2 p.m. on Mother’s Day.

“Behold. Children are a blessing from the Lord,” reads the psalm chosen for the headstone. “Each child is a flower from the garden of the Heavenly Father; each tiny soul embraced in His perfect love.”

All of these are babies, and now none will be completely forgotten.