A retired history professor at Memorial University believes there is no way to respectfully dig into the cemetery between the Anglican Cathedral and Supreme Court in downtown St. John’s.
The Anglican Church wants to expand the cathedral by building a more modern extension to replace the Parish Hall.
Robert Sweeny is an Honourary Research Professor in Memorial’s Department of History. He taught at MUN for 28 years as a historian of pre-confederation Canada – the land in question is a cemetery dating to the early days of the migratory fishery.
He says people often think of cemeteries as something organized with boxes and plots, but that’s not the case here. The very earth they want to dig into is made up of thousands and thousands of working men’s bodies that have decomposed there over the centuries.
An equivalent cemetery that ran for 70 years in Quebec City has 10,000 bodies in it. This one ran for at least 180 years, and had a large migratory fishery feeding it.
Sweeny estimates there are between ten and twenty-thousand people buried there. He says there is no way to respectfully dig there and not disturb something sacred.
He compares it to Beaumont Hamel.
Sweeny says there is no respectful way to dig up the land of Beaumont Hamel as there are spaces in our world that are made sacred by the sacrifices of people.
He says we’re talking about several hundred years of young men giving their lives in the Newfoundland fishery, and being buried here, thousands of miles from home, never being able to go back to loved ones and live their lives as they had hoped.
Sweeny says the Anglican Church needs to look at their ethics. He says he believes the church has lost its bearings, and doesn’t know what is ethically correct anymore.