There’s a dentist named Quirk a maritime disaster a murder-suicide or two and an awful lot of stories involving lightning. No not the plot elements for a Harlequin novel but stories quite literally buried in our city’s land.

The City of Calgary has been running free cemetery tours at Union Burnsland and St. Mary’s cemeteries since 2003 in order to bring our past to life. “We have a very rich cultural history here in Calgary and [cemetery] tours play an important part in bringing that history to its citizens” says Amy Happonen program advisor for the city’s parks environmental and education initiatives. “A lot of people aren’t born and raised in Calgary so we like to get that history into our citizens.”

And boy is there plenty to choose from: the Union Cemetery alone which opened in 1891 holds about 50000 graves. In fact a few of the graves pre-date the cemetery itself; they were moved from what is now the Shaganappi Golf Course — the site of an earlier attempt to create a city cemetery in glacial till. Quirky dentists aside you’ll also find the graves of the Calgary Stampede’s Big Four the Lougheeds black rancher John Ware Esther Honens as well many markers for military and police forces.

The city has assembled and researched about 500 stories for the volunteer guides to choose from which naturally can’t all fit in the usual 90-minute time frame of the tours. “It really depends on who you go on the tour with what kind of tour you’re going to end up getting” says Happonen. “[Volunteers] like to go on each other’s tours and they’re constantly learning from each other and from history books and researching new people that they come across when they’re just walking in the cemetery.”

In fact Happonen says that people often attend more than one tour because there are simply so many interesting stories to hear. “We’ve really had a great response from Calgarians and we encourage you to go again; if you’ve been once you might learn something new the next time.”

A recent tour I attended also included a few references to the vandalism that’s occurred over the years which helps explain another motive for holding the tours: they encourage Calgarians to learn about and respect the sites and become stewards of those spaces. After all stories aside these cemeteries are worth visiting on their own.

“We really want Calgary to interact with our cemeteries with that respect for history and come and visit the cemeteries more often” says Happonen. “They are a nice peaceful place to come and relax and be alone or have a nice picnic. It’s a beautiful place to visit.”

TAKING A TOUR

All tours are free and run from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. from July through October. Union Cemetery tours run every Sunday and Burnsland Cemetery tours run the last Saturday of the month; both tours meet at the Galloway House on the east side of Union Cemetery (28 Ave. and Spiller Rd. S.E.). St. Mary’s Pioneer Cemetery tours run the third Saturday of the month and meet at the Pioneer Cemetery gates (Erlton St. and 32 Ave. S.E.).

Special tours are also scheduled — next up is a military-themed tour at Union Cemetery from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Remembrance Day.

Tours may be cancelled due to weather. Contact 3-1-1 or visit facebook.com/cityofcalgaryparks for updates.To become a volunteer guide contact 3-1-1 or visit calgary.ca/parks to find out how.

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