Fort Resolution (June 30/03) - Dorothy Beaulieu will finally be able to put flowers on her father's grave.

Dorothy Beaulieu of Fort Resolution holds a picture of her late father, William McSwain. Until last week, she did not know the location of her father's grave in Edmonton. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

For decades, Beaulieu did not know where her father was buried. He contracted tuberculosis in the 1940s and was taken to hospital in Edmonton, where he died and was laid to rest.

Beaulieu was told the location of the grave only last week.

"Oh, thank God," was her response when finally told of her father's final resting place.

Her father, William Thomas McSwain, died in 1949 at the now-closed Charles Camsell Hospital, where many Northerners suffering from tuberculosis were sent. His grave is at St. Joachim's Cemetery in Edmonton.

News/North located the gravesite by contacting Edmonton Catholic Cemeteries.

"I feel so relieved," said Beaulieu, 10 years old when her father was taken away to hospital in 1948. "It was something I really wanted to know."

Beaulieu says she can now visit her father's grave, say a prayer and lay flowers. "To show I haven't forgotten him."

McSwain, who was born in Hay River in 1894, was living in Yellowknife when taken away to hospital.

Over the years, Beaulieu and other members of her family went to Edmonton looking for the grave. However, they concentrated their search on a cemetery in St. Albert, where they were told many tuberculosis victims from the North were buried, and at a cemetery close to Camsell Hospital.

She says there are so many cemeteries in Edmonton. "We didn't know where to go."

Others still searching

Beaulieu's dilemma is not unique. She estimates there are at least six Fort Resolution families with relatives buried at unknown locations in Edmonton.

Stanley Beck's mother, Sophie Louyine, died at Camsell Hospital in 1961.

"They never brought her back," he says.

"I don't know where she's buried."

Beck says he would like to know the location of his mother's grave. "But it's kind of a long time ago now. Forty years now."

There is no record of Sophie Louyine's final resting place with either Edmonton Municipal Cemeteries or Edmonton Catholic Cemeteries.

Calls to a number of federal, Alberta and Edmonton government agencies failed to find anyone who could explain the past policy on burial or the return of remains of TB victims.

Eliza Lawrence has a unique vantage point on the situation. The former Tu Nedhe MLA worked at Camsell Hospital as a nursing assistant from 1956-59 and knew of many Native people from all over the North who were buried in Edmonton.

"Sometimes the graves are not even marked. So how can they find out?"

Lawrence said she believes the lack of information may have been caused by poor communications in the past.

Former patient knew many who died

Gene Norn of Fort Resolution was a patient at Camsell Hospital in the late 1950s, and he also knew of many Northerners who died there. One was his brother-in-law, whose gravesite is still unknown.

Norn says that, from the 1940s to the early 1960s, many tuberculosis patients were unwillingly taken from their communities by police and doctors to be sent to Camsell. "Them days you had no choice."

Norn says that, beginning in the 1960s, the remains of tuberculosis victims were returned to their communities.

Beaulieu believes that, since her father's grave has been located, it may offer hope to other families.

"I know quite a few who are still looking."

She is planning to go south in July for the annual pilgrimage to Lac St. Anne, and will then make her first-ever visit to her father's grave.

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