Summer of 2017 saw the addition of 7 new Row Markers. The Row Marker Project has become an ongoing OCS project designed to help visitors to the cemetery locate specific graves. Visit our page, “How to Find a Grave in Ross Bay Cemetery“.

One of the assets the Old Cemeteries Society has is a very good searchable database that is accurate and fairly up to date. We are able to search by name, date of death, location, and a number of other criteria.

Our current project is to photograph each grave marker in Ross Bay Cemetery and link the photos to the corresponding plot number on the database. Given that there are in excess of 28,000 burials in Ross Bay Cemetery, this is a huge task. But, how hard can it be to take a bunch of pictures?

In reality, here is what goes into photographing a cemetery.

First you have to establish a starting point and a plot number for each block or section so that the sequence of pictures can be followed throught the whole process. When this list has been completed, you are ready to go into the cemetery.

The second step is the hard part! Each site has to be “prepared”. We walk the rows with brooms, trowels and shovels to clean each monument and make sure that all the features and names are visible. Many of the markers and curbing are overgrown, partly buried or covered with grass clippings from lawn cutting. (The parks maintenance crew do not care if the markers get covered over with grass) This process can take a lot of time but is vital to the whole project.

Once this is complete (sections at a time) we can start taking the actual photos. This process takes a team of two unless the lighting is just perfect. One will handle the camera and the other will use a large piece of cardboard to provide shade so that the photos will be consistent with no shadows. We will take at least two pictures of each plot having a memorial feature on it. One to show the overall plot and one close-up of each feature. By feature, we mean names, curbing, architectural features and other inscriptions. On the larger monuments, this will entail taking lots of pictures! A regular battery will allow you to take around 500 pictures. It’s now time for a coffee or maybe something stronger.

Now you can download the group to your computer, hope the sequence is maintained and edit each picture.

The next step is to transfer the group of picture to the society computer for adding to the database. This requires that each picture be re-named to the correspond with the actual cemetery address. (B87W36-1, B87W36-2 etc). Once this is done, each picture is “linked” to the corresponding database plot number.

Our database is built in Access and allows us to add a variety of fields that show when an address is displayed. Photos are one of the fields.

When this project is complete, we plan on adding this database to this website for all to use. 

For more information, contact the Old Cemeteries Society.

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