In 1920, the then Provincial Hospital for the Insane first buried a deceased patient in a cemetery behind the asylum building in New Westminster. For 38 years the cemetery was the final resting place for more than 3,000 patients and residents who died in the institution.
It's been 10 years since Michael de Courcy finished his Asylum project, which was a multi-media exhibition that examined Woodlands before the final building was torn down. Since then, de Courcy said he always felt there was some unfinished business calling him back to the site.
His latest project, called Dead and Buried: What became of the cemetery at Woodlands? is a virtual exhibition that maps out the 3,065 plots at the old Woodlands Cemetery site - now the Woodlands Memorial Garden.
"It was like peeling an onion and getting to the real story here," he said. "When I was looking at Woodlands I was also looking at the cemetery; it was starting to catch my eye. It was a beautiful cemetery, it didn't have the memorial garden or anything, there were a few stones left."
In fact, there were nine stones remaining on the site, in their original positions. These grave stones, along with the trees - which now tower over the cemetery - are the only things that remain from the old Woodlands site.
As de Courcy researched the cemetery, he soon discovered there were thousands of people buried in the small 2.2-acre site, from both the Woodlands institution and Coquitlam's Essondale institution (now Riverview Hospital).
"I felt the least (the patients) could have was recognition of their grave sites," he said. "(There were) over 3,000 burials here and not one photograph of a person being buried. There was never a funeral, it was all very businesslike."
While some may argue this is for the best and that Woodlands, and everything that it encompasses, should be forgotten, de Courcy disagrees.
"I always felt like there was something missing from (the gardens). It's a nice display but personally I would have preferred it be restored," he said.
And so that's what he has done, virtually. De Courcy hired a surveyor and together they re-mapped the cemetery using old records from the provincial government. Then he assigned each plot a GPS coordinate and created a list of all the people buried at the cemetery. Relatives of the deceased can visit his website, record the coordinates and come to the cemetery and map out where their family member was buried.
"This is key to 100,000 people's genealogical records at this point in time," he said. "I've been working at Woodlands, here, since 2003, so it's been a 10-year project and it's still going on."
De Courcy's website links ancestors of those who died and were buried at Woodlands to the location of their graves. He told The Record that people constantly reach out to him, looking for their long lost family members.
"I get a lot of traffic from all over the world of people searching for members of their family," he said. "If you look at the database of names on the website you'll see that there is Russian, Japanese, Italian, Indo-Canadian; there's every nationality represented there."
Burnaby resident Marie Montalbetti was one of these people. De Courcy suspects Montalbetti's grandmother Matilda immigrated to Canada in the early 1900s. She eventually became a resident at the Essondale institution and died on Sept. 3, 1937. Seven days
later, Matilda was buried at the Woodlands Cemetery.
Montalbetti and de Courcy met at the cemetery in early May to map out the exact location of her grandmother's grave. They were able to find it using the GPS coordinates and a tape measure. Anyone who visits can find a small orange tie near the centre of the cemetery.
"When I went out to the site I felt really emotional because I thought 'my goodness, I've finally found her,'" Montalbetti said. "I think it's amazing what (Michael's) done."
Montalbetti came across De Courcy's website while she was tracing her grandmother's death. The New Westminster archives suggested she speak with de Courcy. The experience provided answers to questions that couldn't have been answered without de Courcy's help, she said.
"My project gives people the opportunity to reestablish a connection with the actual ground that their family are buried in," he said. "It's closure, in a way. It's a gap in their genealogy that they've kind of filled." The project is also about New Westminster, and showcasing an important part of its history. No matter how you feel about Woodlands, everyone in the city is linked to the site, de Courcy said.
During his research he spoke with many people who remembered someone who worked there or lived there.
"It was very close to the heart of everyone in this community," he said. "It made me feel closer to the community, too."
The project and the cemetery map can be viewed at www.michaeldecourcy.com/ dead_and_buried.
