Fort St. John residents outraged by removal of wooden crosses and adornments at cemetery

A summertime amendment to a cemetery regulation and maintenance bylaw has caused an uproar in the City of Fort St. John after residents noticed some of the wooden crosses and handcrafted adornments that were made to honour loved ones have been removed.

The northern B.C. city's bylaw prohibits wooden gravesite markers, as well as non-permanent adornments such as candles, glass vases and picture frames. Only memorials constructed of granite, bronze or other permanent materials are permitted.

Local Don Spencer was contacted by the city to remove the lights he had used to mark the spot where his wife is buried in the graveyard, but when he went to the cemetery to collect them, he was shocked at all of the grave markers that are now missing.

"There was about four or five crosses and one had a sign that the person had deceased in 1961 and now they've just pulled all that out and it's just all in the corner, so that's getting pretty personal," said Spencer.

"It was a handcrafted cross and a lot of people went to painstaking [lengths] to do their own thing and it's wrong."

Other residents have posted on social media their dismay that the city removed the memorials they built and some didn't receive advance notice that it was happening.

Last week, the city posted an apology to Facebook and said it would be reviewing its procedures to make sure this doesn't happen again. 

'We missed the mark,' says councillor

Coun. Trevor Bolin said they've heard the concerns of residents "loud and clear."

"A bylaw doesn't show the emotion, it doesn't show the sensitivity, which is unfortunate," he told Daybreak North host Carolina de Ryk.

"We missed the mark on the sensitive side of crosses."

When council decided to revisit the bylaw in the summer, the thought was that wood quickly deteriorates, explained Bolin. However, they didn't take into consideration wood that has been treated or memorials that have been well crafted and designed to last for long periods of time.

Numerous people have reached out to the city, and some have also asked council to consider the religious significance of wooden crosses, he added.

"That's the sort of feedback that I'm glad we're getting because we can now use that when we go forward with looking at what kind of changes need to be made," said Bolin, adding that council will be getting to work on creating amendments to the bylaw and bringing it back up in an open meeting.

The items that were removed from the cemetery have all been tagged and put in storage, he said.

"It wasn't our intent to upset people or to make them relive some of the tragedies they lived when when they made these crosses or when they made these sites, and now it's time to fix it."