This N.S. photographer is saving the province’s abandoned cemeteries

Steve Skafte has been following the road less travelled most of his life

"I started in my daily journal taking pictures and exploring the area I live in back in 2007,” said Skafte. “I eventually got into driving all the back roads.”

During the pandemic, the artist from Bridgetown, N.S., became drawn to forgotten places and people left behind in the woods.

"I started hearing about these old cemeteries,” said Skafte. “I started trying to track them down."

Finding beauty in the obscure, he began photographing old tombstones -- some dating back as far as the 1790s. Skafte has managed to track down over 50 abandoned cemeteries just in Annapolis County alone.

“I imagine there are several hundred in the province all together,” said Skafte.

His quest to find burial sites has turned into a pursuit to save and preserve them. He often gets leads from locals on where they could be located.

Skafte said he ran into a woman at a Catholic cemetery in Mulgrave, N.S., who told him a story about a man named Father Alec who earned a sinister nickname.

"The locals called him Alec the Devil,” said Skafte. "No one knows for sure, perhaps he wanted the land opened up, but he ordered the headstones be bulldozed after the old church burned down. They were just laying there in the woods since the 60s."

His preservation work is documented on his YouTube channel, as well as a Facebook group. Skafte says he’s been able to help families locate burial sites of relatives.

“I’ve had people message me from places like Utah or Denmark that their ancestors were buried in those sites,” Skafte said.

The amateur historian has turned his photographs into a new book called “The Dead Die Twice: Abandoned Cemeteries of Nova Scotia.”

Skafte says it includes a series of short passages about people’s stories that are a reflection of our everyday lives.

"I've always liked the idea of telling a story that maybe doesn't have a big historic significance,” said Skafte. "Folks like me, who didn't necessarily matter in the big scheme of things, but wanted to be remembered."