Special: Stanley Mission, Holy Trinity Anglican Church

Saskatchewan has a very special church, Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Stanley Mission that is celebrating it's 150th anniversary this year. Not only is the church the oldest church west of the Red River, it is also the oldest wooden building in the province.

On June 13th, I was a part of a group that bused the four hours from the city of Prince Albert up north to attend convocation for members of the Stanley Mission congregation with Bishop Michael Hawkins presiding. It was an enjoyable, once in a life time opportunity, undertaken on a gorgeous sunny day.

The church is an absolute marvel and, being a taphophile, the churchyard was an area of extreme interested that I investigated after the church service (which was held mostly in English with all the hymns in Cree) and picnic lunch.

The churchyard was an absolute profusions of fenced plots, the odd ledger stone, and markers. Fences and markers all often brightly painted with an abundance of offerings for the recently deceased. While most of the more "recent" burials were marked with fenced plots, there were a few nameless fieldstones and crosses scattered throughout the wild array and not all of them were close to the church itself where the first burials occurred.

My one regret for the churchyard for future generations that don't have access to the oral traditions or other resources, is that many, many of the wooden marks are silent witnesses.

What I found interesting, besides the variety of markers, crosses, fieldstones, and headstones was that sometimes a grave would have more then one marker in conjunction with the plot fence and on occasion, ledger stone inside the plot fence. And on occasion, when a headstone was combined with a plot fence and cross one could not see the headstone clearly.

And like the church service, there were a smattering of headstones with the Cree syllabary, to be found in the churchyard. While I did not get the time I wished to devote to my tour, especially in the older section, I'm going to share a few pictures of the headstones written in Cree and the oldest marked grave that I found.

Now, does anyone know how to rotate photos in Picasa? (Found out how!)