BANFF – A walk through the Old Banff Cemetery is like taking a step into the past and connecting to the history of the community and surrounding area.
From Tom Wilson to A.O. Wheeler, Jim Brewster to Mary Schäffer Warren, Bill Peyto to Norman Luxton – the area’s well-known residents and community builders dating back to the 1890s have their final resting place in this cemetery.
For Banff resident Paulette Zarkos, it is exhilarating to be able to connect with the past and hear the stories of families that have come out to take part in a project she has spearheaded to clean the aging gravestones during the month of June.
“This just blew up on me,” Zarkos said on Sunday (June 13). “It has turned into something really marvellous; it has turned into a whole community project.”
It began last year while she was working on her family's genealogy at a time when people’s movement and activities were restricted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Zarkos decided she would make an effort this summer to get into the cemetery and work to preserve gravestones, an issue she learned about researching genealogy. It quickly turned into a much larger volunteer-driven project.
Zarkos’ parents, grandfather and brother are buried in the cemetery. She said there is a spot for her as well when “I gets my wings.”
When it comes to the historic cemetery, while the municipality manages it and does general landscaping work each year, the care and maintenance of each grave and headstone belongs with the family of the deceased. It is challenging, however, as over time, the record keeping has not been as precise as it could have been.
“There are people buried in places they are not supposed to be,” Zarkos said. “There are monuments up where they are not supposed to be, and there are no monuments where there are supposed to be one.”
Years of air pollution, bacteria, moss and lichen have built up on the markers, making some almost impossible to read. Because the cemetery is located inside a national park, the effort to preserve the headstones had to meet the approval of Parks Canada. The cleaning agent, D2 Biologic Solution, is all-natural and non-toxic, meeting the requirements of the federal agency to be used for the project.
Banff residents Christie Wilson and her husband Jack Potman spent the weekend cleaning Wilson’s family’s gravestones – including her great-grandfather, outfitter and guide Tom Wilson – who is credited as the first European to be taken by an Indigenous guide to Lake Louise, which he initially named Emerald Lake. He was also part of the surveying done in the 1880s to find a route for the Canadian Pacific Railway through the Rocky Mountains.
Standing in front of the graves of her grandmother’s parents, Wilson said she really enjoyed the experience of taking part in the preservation project.
“I am thrilled to be here and to be a part of this,” she said. “My grandmother was a really cool little lady and as I [was cleaning her headstone] I had quite a few tears just remembering.
“I kept saying, ‘she is probably just giggling,’ because she loved her grandkids and she was one of those grandmas who was 80 years old and played baseball with us out in the field.”
Tom Wilson’s son John married her grandmother, but passed away when her mother was 11 years old. Her grandmother moved back to Banff, where she had support from her family, the McCowans. She later remarried George Barnes, who Wilson knew as her grandfather growing up.
She said he always had a quarter in his pocket to play games with his grandchildren, who always ended up 25 cents richer. Wilson carried a quarter in her pocket over the weekend to honour that special memory of him as they worked on her family’s headstones.
The couple plans to return over the next two weekends to help out by volunteering to clean other markers. It has turned into a deeply personal connection to history for those who have taken part so far.
“That is what goes through your mind, all that history,” Potman said. “You want all of them to be cleaned up so that history comes back.”
Sandy and Stan Magee were at the cemetery to clean the gravestone of Theodore D. Magee, Stan’s brother who died at the age of six in 1963 from a form of childhood leukemia that is curable today.
While the Magees have lived in Canmore for almost 40 years, Stan grew up in Banff in the 1950s and ’60s, along with his brother Dean, who is inducted into the Banff Sports Hall of Fame.
“Most of my family history is here; I was raised here,” he said, recalling going to Welch’s for candy as a child with his friends.
He said taking the time to clean the grave marker was an emotional experience. It was also something he did not realize was the responsibility of the family to upkeep. Later this summer when his brother visits, they plan on attending to their parents graves in the other Banff cemetery.
“I thought we would see a few more people ... but I am glad we could do our part.” he said. “There is a lot of history here.”
Ethel Baptie received a call from Zarkos earlier this year looking for relatives of the Baptie’s buried in a family plot at the Old Banff Cemetery.
Baptie, along with her daughter Susan Acres and grandson Marshall, was able to make the trip to Banff as three generations of the same family to clean the gravestones.
“We decided to make a trip of it,” Baptie, 89, said with a laugh.
Acres had already been working diligently on the family’s genealogy with her mother, delving into the past and the lives of Adam and Susan Baptie and their eight children. They are all buried in Banff, except Baptie’s father Robert, whose final resting place is in Cochrane.
The Bapties were Scottish immigrants and Susan's mother – Susan McGravey – also moved to Banff with them. She married John Curren and was buried in the Old Banff Cemetery. Two of Baptie’s aunts married Macdonalds and are also buried in the cemetery.
“I think it is tangible evidence of their lives,” Acres said. “Of them having been here and lived here, and having made a contribution. I think that is kind of cool.”
Robert Baptie was part of the first expedition through the Columbia Icefields in 1924. He was captured in an iconic image taken by Byron Harmon on the shore of Bow Lake standing in front of a teepee.
As a result of privacy protection legislation, the Town of Banff could not provide Zarkos with contact information for the families of the headstones that need some love and attention.
Undeterred, Zarkos has taken on the role of a history detective, trying to track down the families using online research and genealogy. One resource that has been helpful is the online “find a grave” website.
“We have a number of people here that live in Banff that are supporters of find a grave and have come up and done tremendous work on this information,” she said.
The cemetery still has a few mysteries to be solved. For example, several years ago, the Last Post Fund installed headstones for a number of unmarked graves of veterans in the field of honour. However, one of those tombstones turned into a puzzle thanks to the attention to detail from a member of a find a grave website.
Zarkos said John Standly, who was known as Jack and fought in the Boer War, was buried in the cemetery. The name on his new headstone now reads John Henry Stanley. The marker includes the wrong infantry and regiment number, but the right years of Standly's life from 1868-1943.
Standly set himself up on the shores of Lake Minnewanka with a cabin and a boat, giving rides to tourists. He worked with John Watters, also known as Jack and buried at the cemetery, and that was how Two Jack Lake got its name.
Now efforts are underway to replace the headstone with the right name and war record.
“There are stories coming out of this graveyard,” Zarkos said.
Those stories include the community of Bankhead, a former coal-mining town at the base of Cascade Mountain. A memorial honours the 15 miners killed during the ghost town’s 22-year history.
Zarkos said Banff has always been a destination that attracted people to not only visit, but to settle down and raise a family. While there are some that have six generations in the graveyard, there are many that no longer have family in the community, or even aware of their obligations to maintain these grave sites.
For those who are unable to make it to Banff to take part in the work to preserve the cemetery’s history, Zarkos has obtained permission from them to have volunteers do that work. She said there are 150 headstones she has permission to do this work on, but still needs the volunteers to help.
The work will continue over the next two weekends (June 19-20 and 26-27). Those who were unable to attend this past weekend, either to care for a family member's headstone or to volunteer, still have a chance to get involved.
The cemetery, located on Grizzly Street, was declared a municipal historic resource in 2016. It contains the remains of 2,000 people and was referred to by Jon Whyte, poet and historian, as “the nicest cemetery in Canada.”
Email [email protected] for more information, or to volunteer.
