Graveyard gets much-needed care after years of neglect
By Jon Tattrie – The Weekly News
11/06/09
A retired ophthalmologist is resurrecting a graveyard and he’s looking for help. Brian O’Brien drove past the derelict Holy Cross Cemetery at the foot of Fenwick Tower in south-end Halifax daily during his 43-year career as a doctor and never gave it a second thought.
That changed last summer when he noticed the toppled tombstones and abandoned plots, and decided to do something. He and a group of volunteers went out each Saturday morning and righted the fallen markers, rebuilding the ground under them so they wouldn’t fall again. They managed to fix 350, though vandals knocked down another 10 over the winter.
“They come in and have parties and push over the stones,” said O’Brien, who has great-grandparents and great-great grandparents buried in the cemetery. “We have a dire need of security. We need lighting and fencing in a bad way.”
The Catholic Cemeteries Commission is in charge of the burial ground, but doesn’t have the funds to restore it, leaving the task to concerned citizens. “I’m encouraged by the attitudes of the volunteers. These guys come and work Saturday morning from 8 until 1, and they work hard, because it’s tough work. They’re all guys like me who have never done this sort of work in our lives, and we’re raising tombstones and shovelling gravel,” he says.
