Close to 1,000 people are buried in the Bethel-Union Pioneer Cemetery including some of Janie Cooper-Wilson’s ancestors.
It’s a peaceful setting in Clearview Township nestled among farmer’s fields in the shade of a grove of birches where the only sounds you hear on a summer’s day are the swishing of the wind in the trees and the staccato cries of blue jays.
This Saturday evening, the internationally renowned burial site will be glowing with candles for the 20th annual candlelight service, an event Cooper-Wilson started herself.
“It’s a vigil for all the ancestors. Those that went before that helped build our community,” she said, giving a reporter a tour of the cemetery.
“This was a very important site because a lot of the blacks from Oro, when that settlement started to dwindle, and the roads opened they came over and opened the Sunnidale Road in 1833. My family has been here since 1829. A long time.”
The public will be welcome at 5 p.m. for a tour and the program starts at 7 p.m.
Organizers have created a self-guided historic tour of cemetery.
Visitors will learn about the Epidemic Ridges, a site of the mass grave of epidemic victims of the late 19th and early 20th century
The Cathedral of Trees is where there are several hundred unmarked graves, many are those of fugitive slaves. Black settlers arrived as Loyalists or on the Underground Railroad following enactment of the infamous Fugtive Sale Act of 1850.
The centrepiece of the cemetery is the SilverShoe Monument, installed by the SilverShoe Historical Society in 1997.
It was erected in memory of the 25 original first and second generation African-Canadians who settled in the Old Sunnidale Township.
Graves on the side of the cemetery are marked with tombstones. One of the most rare markers is wooden.
In addition to tours, there’s entertainment at Saturday's service, along with speakers at the family-oriented event.
There are powerful history lessons In honouring the black pioneers, according to Cooper-Wilson.
“My great grandfather is here. We have 15 in the family plot over there where that little tree is. The cemetery was larger but some of the land was sold off. This was before the laws so there’s people buried there," she explains.
“It means a lot. Because of my African heritage we believe that if you don’t honour your dead and those that went before, they cannot intercede with you.”
The cemetery was established in 1855 and was considered one of the only integrated cemeteries of its time, with black, white and aboriginal peoples all buried in it.
It remained an active cemetery until 1940 and it fell into a state of disrepair in the 1960s with overgrown vegetation as high as six feet.
In 1997 Cooper-Wilson and a group of volunteers secured permission from the Township of Clearview to restore and maintain the site.
Cooper-Wilson says the candlelight service is a very spiritual event that incorporates a lot of African traditions but also incorporates all the settlers.
"It’s just lovely. The candlelight service is a step up from a candlelight vigil. It’s very beautiful," she said, adding, "We’ve never been rained out."
