Standing water, long grass at cemetery called disrespectful

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/06/2022 (1260 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brookside Cemetery’s grounds have become so unkempt in some areas, a Stony Mountain man says he wasn’t able to reach his father’s marker to honour his memory last weekend.

Much of Gary Van Den Bossche’s family is buried at the Notre Dame Avenue cemetery— both his parents, uncle and grandparents — and the 68-year-old had purchased a plot for himself to one day join them in the northwest Winnipeg burial ground. That was before the older sections fell into a disrespectful state of disrepair, he said.

“If I left my grass like that when I lived in (Winnipeg), the city would be knocking on my door, cutting it or sending me a fine,” he told the Free Press on Tuesday.

Van Den Bossche visited several cemeteries throughout Manitoba on Father’s Day weekend, and said the others had been maintained. He was distraught to find, past the well-manicured entry, the area where his father is buried at Brookside was covered with overgrown grass and standing water caused by low ground that hadn’t been filled.

“Every year, it’s getting worse and worse. For grass cutting, maintenance, stones tipped over, branches in the streets. The roads are terrible at Brookside Cemetery,” he said.

Even grave stones vandalized years ago remain toppled in the mud, he said.

Van Den Bossche worked at Brookside in 1987. Much of what he did then in terms of grounds maintenance is being neglected today, he added.

“We’d trim grass in the pouring rain, there was no excuse,” he said. “Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Canada Day and Remembrance Day had to be perfect, whether we liked it or not.”

The standing water would be an easy, long-term fix, regardless of flooding: just level the land by filling low spots with clay and top dressing, he said.

“It’s just like a pothole — you don’t fill the pothole, it’s going to be full of water.”

Recent heavy rainfall had prevented staff from properly cutting all the grass, and the creek running through Brookside Cemetery had overflowed and made the issue worse, a spokesperson from the City of Winnipeg cemeteries department said Tuesday.

“Generally speaking, (the) cemeteries (department) is short a number of seasonal positions that have not yet been filled, which is similar to challenges faced by other city departments recruiting for seasonal staff at the moment,” the spokesperson said in an email.

“However, the main challenge facing our grounds crew is standing water at our cemeteries.”

The cemetery will be up to standard within two weeks, the city said.

Brookside Cemetery is the largest in Western Canada, the final resting place of more than 200,000 people. It’s also one of the oldest in the country, having been established in 1878.

It hurt to not be able to visit his father’s grave on such an important day, Van Den Bossche said. He’s speaking out because he knows others with loved ones at Brookside feel the same way, he said.

“It’s really bugging me,” he said, holding back tears. “I wouldn’t bury a dog there. That’s how bad it is.”

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca