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Creston鈥檚 oldest cemetery reflects hardships, triumphs of pioneer life

Hardship, hope, and the stories carved in stone

Tucked away on a quiet street, Creston鈥檚 Pioneer Cemetery lies scattered and uneven. Some graves are marked with weathered stones, others with sunken earth, and many with nothing at all. The cemetery's disorder began at its very founding, with no clear order of death dates or last names.

The first grave

The first burial was an accident of circumstance. In the early 1900s, a man was found frozen to death in the Canadian Pacific Railway station. No one knew his name, his origin, or his destination. With coroner Edward Mallandaine leaving town for a week, a handyman was paid five dollars to bury the body near Dead Horse Creek. However, with the ground frozen solid, he stashed the body beneath the porch of the Creston Hotel and spent the money on drinks. When the smell became unbearable upon Mallandaine's return, he commandeered CPR crew to help hastily dig a proper grave. To this day, no one is sure where that man rests on the bank of the creek.

The first families

From that haphazard beginning, the cemetery grew into the final resting place of the Creston Valley鈥檚 earliest settlers. In 1891, families like the Dows and Littles, subsistence farmers who pre-empted the land that would become downtown Creston, arrived to lives of constant toil. Fred Little lent the town its name, recalling Creston, Iowa.

In 1892, John Arrowsmith, a third pre-emptor of the town, arrive with his wife Emma (nee Huscroft, a prominent family to this day) and daughter Effie. The couple travelled north from Utah with her parents William and Jane Huscroft, arriving with four wagons, 20 cattle, 40 horses, and numerous children and grandchildren. By 1894, the family had established their first home on the flats west of the Kootenay River, but flooding forced them to later relocate to higher ground in an area still known as Huscroft in present day. 

Other families laid to rest in the cemetery also left their mark on the town. Edward Mallandaine, a resident as of 1897, served in various roles such as coroner, postmaster, justice of the peace, school trustee and more, while his wife Jean taught schoolchildren and kept active in many community organizations too.

Sam Speers opened the first general store in 1907, moving through several locations on Canyon Street. The following year Dr. George Henderson arrived as Creston's first doctor. Along with his wife Ellen Ida Knox, a trained nurse, they established a clinic and worked together to make house calls and tend the sick. Charles and Annie Rodgers came to the Creston Valley that same year, pre-empted 8,000 acres of land, logged it off, established a sawmill, and sold the land to farmers in the newly-established community of 鈥淐anyon City鈥. Annie also operated the first movie theatre in town.

Sarah Ryckman, a member of the family that still lives in Creston today, was recognized in 1911 by the local newspaper (unusual for a woman of the time) for boosting the valley with the quality vegetables she grew in her greenhouse and sold in the Crowsnest Pass.

Others added colour to the town鈥檚 story. Boer War veteran John Blinco laid down his gun, came to Canada in search of adventure, and took up playing clarinet. He owned a large orchard and was Creston's first beekeeper. Remittance man Reginald 鈥淗appy鈥 Eastlake, sent to Canada by an embarrassed English family, used his allowance to go on extensive hunting trips.

Hardships of pioneer life

For every pioneer who found success, many more faced tragedy. The challenges of daily survival on the frontier were written most harshly on women and children. Infant mortality was staggering 鈥 by the 1890s, nearly one in three children in B.C. died before the age of five. In the Pioneer Cemetery, the unmarked graves of babies too young to be named tell that story in haunting silence.

Among the earliest marked burials is Sarah Ettie Ennerson, a daughter of the Huscrofts. At the time of her death, she was living in Montana 鈥 possibly because there was not yet a doctor in Creston, and she was expecting her first child. Regardless, she died giving birth in 1904, just as her parents had received a letter filled with her joy and anticipation of bringing the baby home to Creston. Her son, named Ernie after her husband, survived and eventually attended school in town, but his mother鈥檚 grave speaks to the risks of childbirth in that era.

Death came just as swiftly to strong men in their prime. Joseph Wilson, Creston鈥檚 first provincial constable, became ill from exhaustion after a gruelling trek to remote mining claims 15 miles away. He died at age 38 in a Cranbrook hospital. Six hundred mourners followed his casket to Pioneer Cemetery 鈥 a remarkable number in a town of only 750. 

Sgt. George Searle, another RCMP officer stationed in Creston in 1921, met his demise only two months after he arrived. He was making a patrol near the border looking for runners. While crossing the flooding Goat River, his horse was swept away and Sgt. Searle drowned. He was the first RCMP officer in B.C. to lose his life in the course of his duties.

The Spanish Flu of 1918 left fresh scars. Local nurse Gertrude Knott contracted the disease while treating patients in Nelson and died at only 23. Several years later in 1920, the pandemic still took lives. Another Creston resident, Mrs. Boadway, had already been weakened from caring for her five children stricken with the flu, while she was heavily pregnant and ill herself. Just three days after giving birth to her sixth child 鈥 and only son 鈥 she died.

A vaccine for the influenza didn't yet exist, and the ability to diagnose and treat illness and injuries was limited. Many early settlers lost their lives because of lacking medical care that would take decades to advance.

Immigrant communities

The names in the cemetery also reveal the diversity of Creston鈥檚 earliest years. About a dozen Italian families, the largest population of non-British settlers, built lives mostly working on the railway and trying their hand at farming. A young woman named Frances Talarico allegedly married at 16 and died of tuberculosis by 18, leaving behind a baby who followed her to the grave within a year. The incomplete records of the cemetery further obscure their story.

Though her headstone states she died in 1916 at age 16, records suggest otherwise. A marriage certificate shows she wed Charles Romano at 16 in 1912, while an obituary records her death in 1914. The local paper of the time, the Creston Review, also misspelt her father鈥檚 Italian name and misreported the child鈥檚 gender, adding more confusion and making her true story difficult to trace. The only thing that's clear is she was an Italian immigrant whose life was cut short.

Norwegian settlers, like Peter and Helga Andestad, endured separation while establishing homesteads. Peter came to Creston in 1910, followed a year later by his wife Helga. She undoubtedly had to endure a long and frightening journey alone with their four children.

Chinese immigrant and laundromat owner Mah Bing Low has the only grave with a Chinese inscription. His 1934 obituary declared him the first Chinese resident of Creston to die 鈥 an unlikely claim, as many Chinese people worked on the railway in Creston. Due to racism and discrimination, workers may have passed through without record or recognition.

Cemetery upkeep

The cemetery itself has not always been treated with care. For decades, no organization took responsibility for its upkeep. Families buried loved ones where they could. Records were incomplete, with many lost entirely to a fire. In the mid-20th century, village council attempted to 鈥渃lean up鈥 the site in the interests of easier maintenance by removing fences, discarding broken headstones in the creek, and even going as far to lay markers flat for easier lawn mowing. This was done without consulting the families of the deceased. Many headstones were lost or destroyed; some even stolen to be used for building material. Today, mismatched records and unmarked graves leave many stories unfinished.

Pioneer Cemetery closed officially in 1946, yet family plots allowed burials for decades after. The most recent was in 2014, more than a century after that first stranger was buried on the banks of Dead Horse Creek.



Kelsey Yates

About the Author: Kelsey Yates

Kelsey Yates has had a lifelong passion for storytelling. Originally from Alberta, her career in journalism has spanned 10 years in many rural communities throughout Alberta and B.C. Now she calls the Kootenays home.
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