Armed Forces receives cemetery in Oromocto

[formerarmybrat23]

Final resting place reserved for veterans and active members; will include area for cremated remains
MICHAEL STAPLES
staples.michael@dailygleaner.com
Published Tuesday August 14th, 2007
Appeared on page A3

http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/cityregion/article/48527


Veterans or active members of the Canadian Armed Forces who pass away or lose their lives while serving their country will soon be honoured with their own special resting area in Oromocto.

The municipality has set aside more than four hectares of land off Leger Street to create the new burial ground.

The non-denominational Oromocto Pioneer Gardens Cemetery, which is expected to be ready for use by next April or May, will have three components to it: a columbarium (a storage area for cremated remains); regular burial sites; and a military field of honour.

Patrick Love, president of the Oromocto Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, supports the establishment of a field of honour.

Having such a place of final rest is particularly relevant considering the danger of missions, such as in Afghanistan, that Canadian Forces currently find themselves engaged in, he said.

"I think it is outstanding from our point of view," Love said. "The closest field of honour (elsewhere) is in Fredericton or Saint John."

The legion will have final say as to who will be allowed to be buried in their section of the cemetery.

Oromocto Mayor Tidd said the creation of a burial ground is overdue.

"For a long time we have had people say that, if they had burial sites here, they would probably have had the remains (of loved ones) buried in Oromocto rather than go back to their home areas."

Work on the site has already started with the clearance of about 1.6 hectares of land.

It's a project the town is taking seriously and one that it's prepared to invest as much as $350,000.

The town hopes to recover the money over time through the sale of plots and spaces, said Tidd.

The municipality has already given the Oromocto Pioneer Gardens Cemetery committee $50,000 to pay for the clearing of the land.

It is also expected to add another $200,000 to the pot in the near future, so that additional work can get underway.

Another $100,000 will be made available next year to complete the project.

Those expenditures, however, have yet to be approved by council.

Tidd said the need for another cemetery in Oromocto came to light prior to her return to the mayor's chair in May 2004.

There are only two cemeteries in the town -- one located at St. Vincent de Paul and the other at St. John's Anglican Church.

Other churches are using a cemetery near the Burton courthouse, but all are beginning to fill up.

Fred Hackett of the Town of Oromocto's technical department said not just any spot can be chosen for a cemetery.

"The requirements for a cemetery area is that the hole be easy to dig and dry," Hackett said.

"Not just any field. You could end up with some white areas, and you could end up with water flowing into the excavation zone and that's not desirable either."

The columbarium, meanwhile, will be the first of its kind for the model town.

Columbariums are structures above grade that have access doors. People can purchase a niche for the storage of cremated remains.

"It's becoming more common," Hackett said.

"In fact, in our research we found that, in the Maritimes, (up) to 50 per cent of funerals are cremations. In the larger cities across Canada, they are in the 80- to 85-per-cent (range)."

Tidd said having a columbarium in town is simply Oromocto's way of keeping up with the times.

"We are hoping that we can get the foundation in this fall for part of the columbarium," Tidd said.

"We are just about ready to say that the foundation can be put in."

The older Heritage Cemetery, situated near the new site, will be connected to the new burial ground in a manner yet to be determined.

 

[1feral1]

Gagetown's Arlington?

Cheers,

Wes

 

[The Bread Guy]

Kinda-sorta - CDS talked to the National Post about the idea of a network of National Cemeteries in June.  I'm guessing guess it would use the Military Cemetery of the Canadian Forces at Beechwood near Ottawa as the hub. 

I understand in addition to Arlington Nat'l Cemetery in D.C., the USA has a network of National Cemeteries all over the country.  (Interesting factoid:  The unknown soldier in the Tomb of the Unknowns from the Vietnam war was identified in 1998 as USAF Lt. Michael J. Blassie, and was later interred at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, closer to family.)

Soldiers deserve better
We should ensure dignity for Canada's war dead
DON MARTIN, CanWest News Service, 5 Jun 07
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=cb1d3dad-74b1-4a06-85f8-5f3a6f9f1b6d
http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=34796&sc=89

OTTAWA -A Sherman tank and a pair of Howitzers guard the Canadian Armed Forces freebie nobody wants to collect. The only cost is your life.

A free burial plot, coffin interment and simple grey headstone with a carved black cross await any slain soldier whose family requests space surrounding a 24-tonne stone memorial in an Ottawa cemetery.

But in the wake of one soldier family's very public disclosure of their struggle to cover a slain son's funeral costs, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier told me he is exploring the idea of a cross-Canada network of military cemeteries for the fallen.

The burial decision for families given the dreaded call with news they're an Afghanistan casualty's next of kin is complicated by geography. They have to decide whether the soldier will be buried near them or within the military fraternity. There is only one military option -- and less than a third have accepted their rightful space in the National War Cemetery, despite having a retail civilian value of almost $6,000.

Gen. Hillier has ordered an investigation into ways to reduce or eliminate distance from a family's burial decision.

"I've asked the chief military personnel to consider the need for several military cemeteries across our country in the longer term, perhaps one per region," Gen. Hillier said in an interview.

"Soldiers whose families live within driving distance of Ottawa are prone to have them buried here. The closer you live, the more you consider that option to put a soldier among other soldiers because you can still come visit his grave. Coming from British Columbia, for example, it's more difficult."

It only makes sense to have Canada's military casualties buried together in a suitably dignified setting that doesn't inconvenience their families. Locating them near or on the country's major military bases would not seem to be logistically complicated or expensive.

I visited the two tree-laced sections of land in the national historic site on a dull Monday morning in the capital.

A few students were planting geraniums, but there wasn't a visitor to be seen. Sod had not yet been rolled over the plots of the most recent casualties from Kandahar. A handful of newer graves were marked by a red rose in the mud, others with a Maple Leaf flag.

The most recent row of headstones is a grim roll call of still-familiar identities from the ramp, repatriation and funeral ceremonies of the last year: Nichola Goddard, Jason Warren, Francisco Gomez, Shane Stachnik, Robert Mitchell, Allan Stewart, Darcy Tedford.

But the most sobering sight is the line of headstones waiting to be expanded, an inevitability without a miraculous turn of events in Kandahar.

This is no Arlington, the Washington, D.C., national cemetery for America's war dead, which attracts four million visitors to a site with more than 300,000 graves, including former presidents, Supreme Court justices and astronauts.

That's good news. They bury 27 bodies a day in Arlington and the sprawling grassland reserved for the continuing carnage from Iraq stretches beyond the horizon. In contrast, the most recent addition in our eight-hectare National War Cemetery was a month ago.

But there are other steps Gen. Hillier plans to take to put the public relations disaster of the funeral expenses flap behind him, a serious black eye for a military-saluting government that could yet cost Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor his job for cumulative bad judgment.

A Hillier-launched fund to support families has $500,000 in the bank even before it becomes operational.

He vows the government will now cover rental costs for any halls or arenas needed for military funeral services where mourner demand exceeds church space. And he's ordered all victim families to be revisited to ensure they weren't dealt with under outdated Treasury Board guidelines.

"As right as you can make something in arrears, we'll do it. We'll go back and check with all other families and make sure about the support they're getting," Gen. Hillier says. "If there is anywhere that demand exceeded supply, we cover it for them."

It all adds up to an impressive, albeit overdue, military operation of political damage control.

If the next step is to dedicate military burial space for the fallen yet to come, well, the public humiliation heaped on the government by the Dinning family -- who complained last week of being cold-shouldered by Ottawa -- will have done a service to our military.

They deserve special dignity in death. Canadian soldiers shouldn't fade away as just another plot in a sprawling public cemetery.