Honouring soldiers one headstone at a time

On June 19, local veteran Kyle Scott posted a smiling selfie to his Facebook page. Visible behind him was a gravestone from one of three soldiers that he recently discovered buried in the Mayerthorpe cemetery with unmarked graves. Through his position with the Last Post Fund (LPF), Scott was able to get them properly marked gravestones. Scott has been volunteering with the LPF for nearly three years. He said that there are more soldiers just waiting to be uncovered in Mayerthorpe, and he is working hard to do just that. Anyone who knows him knows that history is his jam. After proudly serving his country, he came back home and found that his love for history could become something so much more. Through the LPF, he has been able to breathe new life into veterans that would have otherwise been forgotten.

A simple walk was how Scott was able to discover the three veterans in Mayerthorpe. “I saw the depressions in the ground. You could tell someone was buried there. It was lower than the rest of the ground, and there was thick grass growing out of certain spots. So, I went to the town office. I had taken photos of existing headstones that were nearby, and through a process of elimination, we got those three figured out,” he explained.

The process that each unmarked grave goes through is lengthy but beyond worth it. In this specific case, the Town of Mayerthorpe was involved from the beginning. “The main thing is not to step on any family member’s toes. If they have plans, you don’t want to ruin that, but if someone is buried since the 1970s and nothing has happened, there’s a good chance they don’t have anyone to follow through on that.” He hopes that once he gets a few more of the unmarked graves taken care of, that he can bring the community of Mayerthorpe together to celebrate them. “For now, it is just a huge success for these three. They were essentially forgotten, faded into obscurity in a sense, and are back now, and we can commemorate them every year.”

The Last Post Fund has been around since 1909. “They provide dignified funeral and burial services for those who can’t afford it, and a major portion of what they do is the unmarked grave program that I’ve been volunteering with. It’s incredible what they do.” Scott is one of roughly 12 other volunteers with the fund in the province and said that there are people across the country too. Even though he works out of Alberta, he does not just stick within the confines of the provincial divide. “I go where the wind takes me, and it’s possible to do that because there are so many databases available to us online now.” This freedom has enabled him to locate unmarked graves across the country. He even found 51 veterans in one cemetery in Stratford, Ontario. “I’ve identified and submitted 37 of them so far, and 22 have since been approved. Eventually, we will get to the bottom of the rest of them.”

In his short time with the Last Post Fund, Scott has found 150-160 graves, and about 100 of them have been marked, so far. There are an estimated 3000 unmarked veteran graves in Canada, though Scott believes the number is much higher than that. “The program covers veterans back to the first world war, but if it’s before the first world war, then we have to fundraise and come up with the funds separately. That is just the way the legislation is,” he said. To help facilitate that part of the program, Scott held a Facebook Birthday Fundraiser back in February in hopes of raising a couple of hundred dollars. “I think on the first day we went up to $300, and I was shocked. By the end of the first week, we were up to one thousand, and the next thing I knew, it was over two thousand and then three thousand. We ended up raising almost $4500. I’m surrounded by incredible people, and I’m so grateful!”

Of the pre-WW1 veterans, he has found, one of the most amazing stories is that of an African American man who came up from Kentucky and was living in Victoria, BC, during the Civil War. “Canada had an all-black rifle infantry unit in Victoria, and this was at a time when the civil war was raging south of us, and up here we had entire battalions of rifle corps of black men to serve in uniform. I found the grave of one of these fellows in Victoria, and he is possibly the only known grave before confederation, at least that we are aware of, that we know his final resting place. We just had that one paid for in a special case. He died in 1890, and he will probably be the only Victoria Pioneer Rifle Corps Regiment gravestone that we know of in Canada.”

Scott said that given the current events, it’s a history we can never lose sight of. “That’s our history. It’s a very proud and proper history, and it is so important.” In the same cemetery in Victoria, Scott also uncovered 13 others. “It’s pretty cool because it’s just up the street from where my mom grew up. She used to peddle her bike through there with her grandfather,” he recalled. His goal is to uncover an unmarked veteran grave in every province and territory. The definition of an unmarked grave is absolutely nothing on that grave. “Temporary markers can also be replaced by permanent markers. So, if someone has a wooden cross or something non-permanent that can degrade and fall apart, we can replace it with a permanent military marker.”

The three soldiers uncovered in Mayerthorpe were Private Alan Lewis (31st Battalion Canadian Infantry), Private Charles Martin (Canadian Forestry Corps.) and Private Neil McDonald (144th Canadian Infantry Battalion). If you have a lead on a buried veteran without a marker, please contact Kyle Scott on Facebook, through the Whitecourt Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion.