SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
There's a sandy clearing in the trees on Back Bay that's always seemed like the perfect place to bury the dead.

Raymond Lessard - Norm Glowach's uncle - was laid to rest in Back Bay cemetery in 1946 – having died of pneumonia. The last person was buried there in the 1950s. Read about this in the third installment of this three-part series. - photo courtesy of Norman Glowach

Back Bay stories Part 1 of 3: Yellowknifer looks at the history of the city's oldest cemetery.

Since its last interment in the 1950s, Back Bay cemetery fell into disrepair but when erosion began exposing graves to scavengers and elements in the 1990s the city moved some of the graves to Lakeview Cemetery and ultimately put the True North Rotary Club in charge of grounds-keeping at the scenic cemetery on the shore of the bay.

"We've been looking after the cemetery for about four years now," said club member Michael Kalnay, after declining to venture an hour through the bush.

"We cut the grass, we clean up the trash, we maintain the trail, we've got a long-range plan to repair things. It's taken it from being a derelict piece of bush to a well-tended cemetery, so it's a little bit more peaceful and people who do have relatives there. It's a nicer place to go and visit now."

Historian Ryan Silke said there's a number of Dene burial sites around the bay but Back Bay cemetery is said to be the burial site of the first person to die from town. The site's natural beauty and proximity to the city's early mining settlements in Old Town meant it became the final resting place of Art McIntyre, the first person to die in the city called Yellowknife.

"When people were looking to bury some of the first tragic deaths ... (the site) was attractive ... as a sandy spot to bury people," said Silke. "It's really quite beautiful."

According to Silke, McIntyre - a young miner working at Con Mine - went missing from his bunk house one night in the early fall of 1938, prompting an area search.

"Airplanes went out to follow his tracks in the fresh snow," he said. "He was found a couple of days later, not too far from Con Mine."

The city's short-lived local paper The Prospector reported McIntyre - of Erskine, Alta. - "committed suicide by cutting his throat with his own razor."

Silke said the discourse of the day concluded McIntyre was suffering from a fear of mining.

"Some of his buddies talked about how he had a fear of working underground," he said.

Silke said McIntyre's grave marker is long gone and so its location is unknown. It's just one of the unsolvable mysteries of the place, he said.

"There's not a clear documentation of who all's there," he said. "Maybe 30 or 40 graves. There's a good list of 20 names or so. But there's no maps, no plan of who is buried there. We're never going to know exactly who they were or their story."

Silke said many of the people buried on Back Bay were victims of industrial accidents in the new town and many died very young, he said.

Kalnay said the Rotary Club members haven't noticed erosion worsening in recent years, since the water level in the creek which runs past the cemetery from Jackfish Lake is so low. He said it's a worthwhile hike down to the cemetery, and in addition to making grounds-keeping trips with the club, he also visits the site leading his scout group.

"They often do a bit of historical research before we go," he said.

Kalnay said you can find the old burial yard about 800 metres beyond the Yellowknife Ski Club, at the end of a narrow path.

"You come across a beat-up old bridge - it's shifted with the frost heave," he said. " And then you come into the cemetery and it's 50 or 60 metres across and a couple of hundred metres long. And about a third of them have little picket fences around them. It's a nice little opening in the forest."

There are many well known names at the cemetery, Kalnay said, and he's aware of Norm Glowach's relatives - Gerard and Raymond Lessard - whose graves have been lost to the passage of time, but are said to be somewhere on the grounds. But at least one grave - an unmarked plot - is still visited regularly, said Kalnay.

"There's always been at least one grave year after year that someone maintains and puts flowers on," he said. "It's not marked so I don't know whose it is."

"Buffalo Joe" McBryan's grandmother, who used to operate a water-taxi service before a bridge connected Latham Island to Old Town is buried at Back Bay cemetery.

See next Wednesday's Yellowknifer for part two of this three-part series.

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