Veterans' headstone restoration underway at Fredericton cemetery

Bill Henwood was given time off from his regular day job at York Funeral Home to help take the burden off the families of veterans whose headstones were desecrated by vandals at Forest Hill Cemetery.

It's not part of his actual job, restoring headstones is more of a hobby, something he does on his own.

“It's not something I could ever see myself getting paid for,” Henwood said.

“This was just wrong and it needed to be corrected,” he added. “To do this to any stone, not just a military stone, but the fact that it is in the actual Field of Honour for the military, it makes it that little bit worse.”

Beverley Michaud was surprised to learn about the damage to her Mother's headstone.

"I seen it on the news,” Michaud said.

“I noticed the last name was Cusack and I said that looks like my mother's tombstone, I'm actually quite upset about it that somebody could come up and do such a terrible thing to especially the military,” she added.

The Fredericton Legion says they're working on plans to ensure something like this doesn't happen again. In the meantime they're happy to see restoration work on the headstones progressing.

"Looking at what he's done so far it's amazing how he's cleaned them,” said Joanne Gibson with Fredericton Legion Branch 04.

“The best thing to let people know is let these people who know what they're doing professionally clean them,” Gibson said.

Henwood says he has cleaned plenty of headstones but none with this kind of damage.

"A couple different cleaning chemicals that I typically use weren't all that effective so then I went looking for graffiti cleaners,” Henwood said.

“Things that were environmentally safe things that wouldn't hurt the granite, that's a very important part not to just come bleach a stone because you can actually hurt the stone,” he said.

CTV asked the president of the cemetery board for an on-camera interview to talk about the vandalism on Thursday, but they did not answer our request for comment.

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