County approved additional funding for Gleichen Cemetery

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The Gleichen Cemetery rejuvenation project is nearing completion, but with graves collapsing and headstones knocked over, the project is desperate for funding, which is coming up short in operations within the 2015 budget.
The issue was brought up to Dave Churchill, general manager of infrastructure and transportation for the county, by a contractor who brought it forward to his team because there was not enough funding in the 2015 budget to complete the work on the community cemetery that started last fall.
Churchill requested from Wheatland County council an additional $10,000 on top of the initial $5,000 at the Aug. 18 meeting, for extra operations such as additional staff and equipment to complete the community cemetery, while the Catholic cemetery was already included in the budget at $24,000.
He mentioned that this was a case of giving the cemetery the necessary upgrades as caskets and soil are starting to collapse and are becoming a safety hazard.
“It’s been quite some time since we’ve been responsible for it as a county,” said Churchill. “Our concern is that it be safe and look nice. My concern with safety is for my staff that is in there working on it as well as maintenance crews that are volunteers. As well, the people who come visit their loved one’s gravesites.”
The feedback has been mostly coming from the people who want to see those changes.
However, regardless of the demand, many are against disturbing the grave sites of their loved ones for religious, personal and various other reasons.
“Just personal feelings, religious feelings or whatever they learned,” said Churchill.
Division 2 Councillor Rex Harwood, took a tour recently and thought that this project is a sensitive issue and one that cannot be taken lightly.
“There’s family, there’s heritage and friends in there,” said Harwood. “You know that the work has to be done but you got to try and treat each case with respect. There’s definitely an element to that you have to be cognitive of [it] for sure.”
He added that there is still a lot of work to be done as he felt it’s only at the ‘tip of the iceberg’ stages.
“You tour through there, there’s headstones knocked off, graves falling into the ground, things like that, there still needs to be work done,” said Harwood.