Christ Church Anglican Poplar Lake Cemetery
more about this cemetery
Photos, transcript & index courtesy of John Matthews, Church of the Good Shepherd
CHRIST CHURCH CEMETERY POPLAR LAKE
by John Matthews, Church of the Good Shepherd

The Anglican Church of the Good Shepherd has undertaken the restoration of this rural pioneer cemetery as one of our 2010 centennial projects.

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 in 1875 as missionary to settlers but on arrival here found only Hudson Bay people, Indians, and M�tis. In 1876 he established the parish of All Saints at 119 Street and Jasper Avenue. He had his own homestead at Clover Bar, named the Hermitage, that 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 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 Directory 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 baptized 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 Directory 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 directories and one wonders if he and his new family moved to the Lac Ste.-Anne area.

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 is 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 [on the parish website] 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 Dec 1906 who died of a severe scalding on 14 Jan 1911

3. Eleanor Rose Swan, Canon Swan's first wife (the top, probably a cross, is missing);

4. A remnant that says only �1908� and �38 years� is that of Claude Latimer, died 24 Nov 1908, (this is probably one of two Latimer tombstones indicated on a 1958 RCAF blueprint);

5. The pink column for the John Fielders family of three, father John G., mother Elizabeth, and son John McDonald. In 2010 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 has been 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 is in place on the back of the sign by the pedestrian gate indicating where each person is buried if known.