The Dead Die Twice: An amateur historian’s new book on forgotten N.S. cemeteries
A Nova Scotia photographer and amateur historian has turned his interest in the province’s abandoned cemeteries into a new book.
“The Dead Die Twice: Abandoned Cemeteries of Nova Scotia” by Steve Skafte features 80 photos along side narrative non-fiction.
Steve Skafte is pictured at a burial ground in Plympton, N.S. (Courtesy: Steve Skafte)Skafte has been chronicling his adventures around the province since the fall of 2007.
“I just came back from a bicycle trip, solo trip across New Brunswick and Maine, and I came back to a job I didn’t much like at the time and I thought, ‘Hey, exploring Nova Scotia that should be just as good as exploring Maine,” he says. “So I started doing it and was pretty amazed at the sort of things I found for a place I’ve lived my whole life.”
He found many overgrown cemeteries and then began researching what was hiding in wooded areas.
Skafte says they are a good reflection of quiet, rural life in Nova Scotia.
“Having grown up in a place that a lot of people I knew moved away, they have that sort of leftover quality that I identify with, but also they give me a chance to -- I don’t want to say own the history -- but it’s like I can have a history that’s in a pocket to itself that I experience and that I can share with people that hasn’t been over said, it hasn’t been covered by anybody else. And the experience is real adventure to me.”
He says not all abandoned cemeteries are necessarily off the beaten path.
Eagleson Cemetery in Upper-Granville, N.S., is pictured. (Courtesy: Steve Skafte)
“Some are surprisingly close, like maybe only 100 feet off the road, but there are other ones that I’ve spent hours going in circles or in grids through the woods to find. You’ll see them anywhere in between deep in the woods where there was a community 100 years ago, to others that are really just off of the field into a tree line, but that’s enough to completely bury them from sight.”
Skafte says he mostly decides which tombstones to research based off where they are located.
“Sometimes, it’s decided for you, because there are a lot of very quick dead ends. As you try to find out more you discover quickly that there doesn’t seem to be any more to find,” he says. “So I’d say that the decisions are largely made for me, but I do want to tell stories about the most beautiful stones or the ones that seem like they were forgotten more completely than the others.”
East Side Cemetery in Voglers Cove, N.S., is pictured. (Courtesy: Steve Skafte)
One of the many stones Skafte found is in Voglers Cove in Lunenburg County, which just says “Siamese twins” along with the names of their parents.
“For these to even be mentioned at the time it would have been very unusual. It’s a sort of story that many families would of tried to bury as there would have been a certain stigma about it at the time and they were, obviously, not inclined to keep that under the radar. They wanted to say what had happened and say it right on the stone there. I really like to be able to get that kind of thing across.”
“The Dead Die Twice: Abandoned Cemeteries of Nova Scotia” will be released next month and is available for pre-order online.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three Quebec men from same family father hundreds of children
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
B.C. mayor stripped of budget, barred from committees over Indigenous residential schools book
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
OPP's mandatory alcohol screening during traffic stops 'not acceptable': CCLA
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
Maple Leafs down Bruins 2-1 to force Game 7
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in Trump hush money trial hear recording of pivotal call on plan to buy affair story
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Southern Alberta store broken into by burly black bear
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
Captain sentenced to 4 years for criminal negligence in fiery deaths of 34 aboard scuba boat
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
New scam targets Canada Carbon Rebate recipients
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.