On July 1st, 1958, the waters of the St. Lawrence river began to rise. The Toronto Star dubbed it “the Dominion Day Blast”. Ontario Hydro provided 5000 parking spots to would-be flood watchers, hoping to draw in tourists to watch the first day in a project that had been in talks since the 1920’s. Visitors were told to book hotels early, pack a lunch, and watch a “boiling carpet of water” flood the area. On July 2nd, the front cover of the Toronto Star reported that 70,000 visitors who flocked to Cornwall were left disappointed. There was no great explosion or rushing waters to be had, but rather a slow inching flood that eventually swallowed up 3200 hectares after four days. As disappointed tourists packed up their lawn chairs and got back in their cars, they probably didn’t think about the number of bodies still beneath the razed area they had hoped to see quickly flood. 6500 people had been displaced by the floodings- all inhabitants of villages and hamlets that would either be relocated or cease to exist altogether. Some came to watch their farms disappear under the water, or see the vacant lot where their homes had once stood. Schools they had once attended were now a pile of rubble. A racetrack that had once been a popular community meeting spot was razed. Highways and sideroads were eventually covered in water. Some looked out at the land in which their family was still buried, knowing they would soon be lost beneath the St. Lawrence. However, not everyone displaced by the flooding came to watch as for some, seeing these things disappear was too painful.As these places were flooded, so too were former cemeteries, now littered with rubble and cement slabs used to keep occupied graves from shifting. This was the “inconvenience” Ontario Hydro had referred to in a promotional film for the St. Lawrence Seaway Project. As a cartoon map of the nine villages that were flooded appear on screen, the viewer is told that “progress is not without sacrifice or inconvenience.” While over 500 homes were moved to new communities and new houses were constructed, the communities were permanently altered. In the wake of such traumatic relocation, the dislocated villagers had to create their own methods of defining their shared loss of collective memory and preserving their heritage. However, government attempts to redefine the heritage of the area has altered the legacy of the flooded villages- referred to locally as the Lost Villages. Both community and government acts of remembrance are most starkly evident in the care of the bodies that were moved prior to July 1st, 1958. A total of sixteen cemeteries were affected by the flooding, with countless bodies moved and many left beneath the expanded St. Lawrence River. Through the examination of memorials and cemeteries created in the wake of the St. Lawrence Power Project, it becomes evident that the act of remembering the dead can serve both as a reclamation of heritage by a community and an exercise in revisionism and exclusion.
The eleven communities flooded for the first time in miniature years before the dam would be demolished. A room-sized model of the portion of the St. Lawrence that would be affected was built for engineers to test a variety of canal and lock systems. That slow trickle of water that had been so disappointing to thousands of tourists actually marked the final step to a project that had been debated since the early twentieth century. Negotiations between Canada and the United States were lengthy. While it was clear the expansion of the St. Lawrence would be beneficial for trade and new dams had the potential to generate much more electricity, (the project was expected to double the capacity of Ontario hydro) political rife prolonged negotiations. Initial planning and surveying was conducted as early as 1913, and engineers, surveyors, and technicians continued to update their research while waiting for an agreement to officially be signed. A conclusion was finally reached in June of 1954 when Canada and the United States jointly created the St. Lawrence Seaway Developing Corporation and authorized it to create “27-foot navigational works on the U.S side”. As for the Canadian side of the river, many new locks and dams were built. Most notable was the Robert H. Saunders/Robert M. Moses Power Dam which spans between Cornwall and Massena, New York and a new locks system at Iroquois. The project was overseen in Canada by Ontario Hydro, the predecessor of Ontario Power Generation. Of the $43,500,000 spent by Ontario Hydro on the project, $15,000,000 was allocated to the moving of homes and payments to those who were displaced.
The flooding required to allow for the new seaway would result in the loss of eleven communities. Morrisburg would be half flooded, Iroquois would be entirely flooded and moved. The true “Lost Villages” are Aultsville, Milles Roches, Moulinette, Dickinson’s Landing, Farran’s Point and Wales which were flooded and were not moved. While not technically villages, the hamlets of Maple Grove, Woodlands, and Santa Cruz are also included in this term. For those communities that were not moved, the towns of Ingleside and Long Sault were constructed to house them. Due to the ease in which newer homes could be moved, a vast amount of houses that were relocated to Ingleside and Long Sault were modern. For those whose homes couldn’t be moved, new houses were built. From the project’s conception, community advocates in the soon-to-be-affected villages opposed the flooding of their homes. While they were promised by Ontario Hydro that the project would bring much tourism and jobs to the newly built towns and generate prosperity in a much overlooked region, many had difficulty believing these promises. When the project broke ground in August of 1954, the community was uneasy about the long years ahead. “For many it sounded the doom of their homes, their farms, their places of business. And despite the assurances given in broad terms by Hydro and the Ontario government, they do not know how they will fare in this upheaval; they do not know where their homes will be, nor how they will be left financially, at the end of it all.”
One of the most common arguments against the flooding was the historical importance of the area. Though the area was once important to various Indigenous groups, the only prominent commemoration of this fact was in the name of the village of Iroquois, named for the Haudenosaunee on whose traditional land the village was situated. The St. Lawrence River was an important source for travel and trade for many Indigenous groups, yet when local community members were presenting their case for the preservation of the villages, it was the United Empire Loyalist history that they pointed to. The vast majority of the soon to be displaced residents were white settlers, and so even before the moving of these villages this was seen as their shared sense of heritage. The affected communities had been settled by Loyalists in 1784, and their descendants took great pride in this fact. Many homes that would not be able to be moved due to their age were built by Loyalist settlers, and the flooding would result in the direct physical destruction of this heritage. History would literally be washed away on every level. Not only would the homes of their great-great grandparents no longer be standing, their grandchildren would be raised in completely different towns. They would not attend the same schools, or the same churches, or even walk down the same sidewalks. To then grapple with the task of moving the bodies of their relatives was yet another factor in the disassembling of multiple communities.
The process of moving the graves was a monumental task. James A Smart, former member of the National Parks branch in Ottawa was brought out of retirement and undertook the transcribing of 2692 tombstones across eighteen cemeteries. All of the stones were to be moved to a new communal cemetery outside the new planned cities of Ingleside and Long Sault, except for those in Maple Grove cemetery, which was going to be entirely moved. The human remains beneath those stones were viewed as a separate issue. It was decided that it would be preferred to not disturb the graves, instead leaving the remains where they were and moving only the tombstones. For four weeks, Ontario Hydro circulated a notice in local newspapers announcing that under The St. Lawrence Development Act 1952, sixteen cemeteries were going to be flooded. Under the act, “the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario is authorized to flood and submerge a cemetery whether or not all human bodies buried therein have been removed”. The cemeteries that would not be moved were Mille Roches United, St. Andrews United Church, Christ Church Anglican, Our Lady of Grace Roman Catholic Church, St. Mark's United Church Cemetery, St. David's Anglican Cemetery, Emon Family Cemetery, Woodlands East Presbyterian and Anglican,Woodlands West Presbyterian, St. Paul's Anglican Church, Old Trinity United Church, Aultsville United Church, Hickey Family Cemetery, and Trinity Anglican Church. Amidst plans to move their homes and enroll their children in new schools, residents were expected to request the removal of their ancestor’s bodies from these graveyards by January 5th, 1957 by writing to “Mr. E. B. Easson, Secretary, The Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, 620 University Avenue, in Toronto, Ontario”. Bodies that were not claimed by the family were not moved. Their graves were covered in heavy rocks and cement slabs so they would not become uncovered by the shifting river.
The cemetery that claimed bodies were moved to is now called St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery, but was initially referred to simply as a union cemetery. The bodies were moved from their original context and stripped of individual religious association by being interred in all-denominational lands. Though this was most likely a decision that had to do with cost saving- moving all sixteen cemeteries would be extremely expensive and it would be difficult to find space for them- by creating an all-denominational cemetery, the rememb-
rance of the dead at St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery became an act devoid of religious association when in actuality the abundance of sects in the area had reflected on the types of people who had come to settle in the area. A “bitter feud” between Lutherans and Anglicans at the turn of the nineteenth century resulted in some cemeteries changing denominations, a testament to the complicated religious history of the area. This complex history was ignored upon the decision to move graves from every denomination to one communal cemetery. While the cemetery was initially separated by religion when it opened in 1957, this “segregation” is no longer in place, effectively stripping the St. Lawrence Valley of any religious affiliations. In this, we see the first inkling of the complications of commemoration of the dead of the Lost Villages.
The cemetery was a commemorative tool by design- its eventual official name refers to the area lost in flooding, a unifying name that encompasses the entire affected area. It is in between the new towns of Ingleside and Long Sault, making it geographically neutral. It is as much a memorial to the Lost Villages as it is the people buried there. The sign for the cemetery reads “Where Peaceful Waters Flow”, reminding visitors of the fact that these graves get a riverside view when they very nearly could have been under the water instead. Each year the cemetery hosts a memorial service. As it is an active cemetery, this remembering extends to those interned after the project. However, these memorial services are often a time for the community to reflect on the bodies that were moved there, and the impact of the St. Lawrence Seaway Project. Stones that were once spread throughout eleven communities now stood in one cemetery, with some dates on the stones dating back to the founding of these now lost communities. These stones no longer simply commemorated the bodies that had once been buried underneath them- they were emblematic of the villages in which they had once stood. In 2017, the annual memorial coincided with the 60th anniversary of the cemetery, and guest speakers included Jim Brownell of the Lost Villages Museum. This indicates the cemetery’s role in commemoration is still rooted to the idea of the Lost Villages. Further cementing this are two plaques erected by the Lost Villages Historical Society beside the cemetery’s entrance. The plaques tell the history of the hamlets of Wales and Dickinson’s Landing, prompting visitors to remember these places as they enter the cemetery to remember their loved ones. There are complex layers of memory at St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery, yet it is clear this commemoration is community based. The cemetery is staffed by local residents who lead the memorial services, and the plaques- a physical form of commemoration- were installed by a historical society of volunteers.
However, only a select group of bodies were moved to this cemetery, which means that only a select form of commemoration can occur. The moving of human remains prompts the question- whose bodies count? To Ontario Hydro, it was the bodies that still had family members living to claim them. However, many living relatives did not want the bodies of their families moved, believing that they had wanted to be buried in Milles Roches or Woodlands, and should stay there. Many people who had loved their communities so fiercely their children or grandchildren could not conceive of them ever leaving it, even after death, are not present in St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery. Their tombstones were moved, yet their bodies are absent. Do their descendants view the new resting spot for these stones as a place to also remember their lost relatives? Also absent from St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery are those without descendants to request they be moved. They were likely those without children, without family, now missing from the community commemoration of their now lost homes. Thomas W. Laqueur has written extensively on the role the dead play in commemoration, and he posits that while the dead cannot literally speak to us, they can speak to us differently than the living. The exclusion from certain bodies in commemoration tells us that the heritage we are remembering is a narrow one. There are no plaques or signage at St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery reminding us of the bodies not there. We see their tombstones and assume they are buried there, yet the lack of bodies beneath those stones is in and of itself an act of commemoration. These empty graves memorialize those who are not physically included at St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery. If the dead do talk to us differently from the living, only a select group of dead can talk at St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery. The silence of those left underneath the river is telling.
It was not just the community who clung to a selective sense of memory. The legacy of the Lost Villages was chosen for the community before flooding began. The St. Lawrence Parks Commission was formed in 1955 by the provincial government with the mission to preserve and promote the heritage of the seaway. Its first order of business was to create Upper Canada Village, a living museum that reflected an interest at the time to create an immersive museum experience. The aim in creating Upper Canada Village was to create an attraction that could summarize the history of the area of the Lost Villages, and the St. Lawrence Parks Commission chose to present this attraction as a 1860’s Loyalist village. Indigenous history was included as an afterthought, with the showcasing of “relics”. The fact that the houses that had been moved to the new museum were homes that had been moved due to flooding was a mere footnote. Rather than speak to the generations of history, the many unique communities that had been lost, or the variety of people who had lived there, the St. Lawrence Parks Commission chose to make what was essentially a summation of the history of the Lost Villages about the area’s 1860’s Loyalist settlers. In doing so, the heritage of the region was reduced to a single point in history, focused on one specific group. However, the legacy of the dead were not absent from this narrow form of commemoration. They were not invited inside the village, but were just outside, tucked behind walls.
When the process of moving graves began, it became clear that many tombstones were of historical significance. Some cemeteries dated back to the early nineteenth cemetery, with prominent Loyalist settlers and soldiers among the buried. The St. Lawrence Parks Commission, also referred to as the St. Lawrence Development Commission, had decided to create a Pioneer Memorial in which they would move historic gravestones they deemed significant to the founding of the area. A cross-shaped walled memorial garden was erected in 1961, with the walls made up of scraps from buildings that had been destroyed in the floodings. The walls are an impressive memorial, elevating bricks and pieces of wood to relic status. The shards of now long-gone buildings are a sad testament to the lack of heritage protection laws at the time of the St. Lawrence Seaway Project, and the pieces embedded in the brick walls conjure up images of what the buildings they belonged to might once have looked like. The plaque at the front of the memorial states clearly the intention of the memorial garden:
This garden is erected to commemorate the pioneer founders of Ontario who settled the upper St. Lawrence Valley. Selected gravestones from cemeteries in the eight communities submerged in 1958 beneath the St. Lawrence are set in walls of brick and stone from vanished pioneer buildings. Of the names not found upon these walls their best memorial is the country they lived to build.
Just as they did with the creation of Upper Canada Village, the St. Lawrence Parks Commission has created a very specific and exclusionary memorial to commemorate the Lost Villages. The commission has chosen the Loyalist legacy as the heritage worth preserving and presenting to tourists and the community. The commission chose very specific graves at this memorial to further establish Imperial devotion being the order of the day in the “eight communities submerged”. Among those tombstones embedded in the walls are those of Loyalist soldiers, their children, and their wives. However, there is no context provided for these graves, no plaques indicating who they were and why exactly their tombstones were chosen for the memorial. Though their names and life dates have been deemed important enough to be saved and presented, they are indistinguishable from one another in the memorial, divided only by the cemeteries they were moved from, given the blanket term “pioneer founders”. The memorial also makes no reference to the fact that the bodies that were once below these tombstones are not present. They were left underneath the water, their legacies deemed more worth saving than their remains. The St. Lawrence Parks Commission recognized the power of cemeteries as a commemorative tool, and utilized the tombstones for this purpose. Tombstones are associated with death, and the Pioneer Memorial equates this death with sacrifice. They insist that those who have had their tombstones moved here “lived to build” Canada, despite the fact that some of the stones belong to children under the age of three. The memorial also gives itself the task of commemorating those whose tombstones have not been included, claiming that Canada itself is their memorial. It is at once extremely selective and excluding, yet also gives itself the authority to speak on the legacies of those it has chosen not to include.
Also present at this faux cemetery are the Lost Villages. Along the outside of the walls that make up the memorial are the names of the villages carved in stone. The memorial seems to be a resting place for these now vanished places, commemorating the death of these communities while simultaneously memorializing the dead who once made their homes there. Though the St. Lawrence Parks Commission would present the Lost Villages and its notable residents as things of the past, long buried with its legacy in stone, those who witnessed the destruction of their communities and eventual disappointing displacement are very much alive. Associating the Seaway Project with death distracts from the fact that these places are within living memory, as are the protests staged by those who did not want to leave their homes. While the villages may be commemorated with tombstones and cemeteries now, those same things were once tools of dissent. Prior to flooding, an Aultsville resident placed a headstone on his front yard to send a message to Ontario Hydro: leaving his home would be the death of him. His front yard has now been under the St. Lawrence for over half of a century, yet this morbid image lingers. Cemeteries and death are linked with history, and we cannot help but wonder who is buried where, and why. It is no wonder that commemoration for a project that left countless dead beneath a river is then intrinsically linked with death and burials, despite the fact that the project itself did not cause any deaths. However, these memorials bring no closure. The community enables a cemetery to serve a commemorative function for an event that transpired after the lifetime of those buried there. With the roads flooded, homes torn down, and historic sites gone, a mismatched cemetery becomes a sort of convoluted commemoration. While the meaning attached to St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery is a very powerful community reclamation of history and heritage, it arises out of a lack of proper memorial. In terms of official commemoration, all that can be offered is a graveyard with no bodies, honouring a very narrow and select heritage of what was a diverse and large area.
Many displaced villagers felt the St. Lawrence Seaway Project had failed them. Like many other relocation projects in Canada in the 1950’s and 1960’s, such as the Fisheries Household Resettlement Program in Newfoundland,“the promise of a better life went unfulfilled.” The surplus of jobs never materialized, businesses that had been destroyed by the flooding were bought out for less than they were worth, and many were struggling with the trauma of relocation. The contract and construction work required for moving homes, destruction of the Lost Villages, and building of new communities had provided a sudden influx of cash that soon dried up. For communities that could not agree on how they felt about being moved in the first place, the issue of how to remember the places they had left (some willingly, others not) remains complicated. The trauma of the death of communities following the St. Lawrence Seaway Project has never been formally recognized by the Ontario government, and this leaves reconciling squarely in the hands of the community. For some, this means memorial services at St. Lawrence Valley Cemetery. For others, it means moving on and appreciating life in new towns. While heritage has certainly been lost, the new communities of the St. Lawrence Valley have proven they are able to come together to define their collective history on their own terms, both at the graveyard and in their own living memory.
Heritage Lost
I have the stones
but not the bones
of my ancestors –
their bones:
concrete-slabbed
beneath the dammed lake;
their stones:
transplanted north
to higher ground.
Of my ancestors
all I have are lies –
here-lies
carved in stone;
their stones
but not their bones.
1991-08-29
Norm SD Esdon
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