Construction work at veterans cemetery God’s Acre spoiled a graveside visit for a Parksville couple on Friday.
Terry and Corie Greene were making a Remembrance Day visit and planned to place a poppy on the grave of Terry’s father, Glen, a Second World War veteran buried in the Esquimalt cemetery in 2014.
But toppled headstones and tracks left by earth-moving equipment as the cemetery is expanded have made it so the couple could barely tell where the grave was.
“It’s such a desecration to do all this,” Terry Greene said. “My dad gave four years of his life to this country, and he deserves better than this.”
Last year, Veterans Affairs Canada reached an agreement with the surrounding Gorge Vale Golf Club to buy 0.62 acres of land to expand the 2.7-acre cemetery.
Local historians, including members of the Old Cemeteries Society, had long lobbied for its expansion so more veterans could choose to be buried beside other service members.
Joel Eltom, construction superintendent at the site, said that the work is proceeding and everything will be put back as it was.
God’s Acre dates to 1868, when a single acre of a turnip field was purchased for $250 to bury sailors and officers of the British Royal Navy then stationed at Esquimalt.
It contains the remains of more than 2,500 military veterans and their families from all branches of the service.
The cemetery includes the body of one Japanese midshipman who died during a visit by his ship in the 1920s. Even now, when Japanese naval vessels pay a visit they send a delegation to the grave site.
A tiny chapel, still used for weddings and christenings, has tales to tell. The wood used in its construction came from all over the British Empire. A deliberate choice was made not to consecrate it so all religious faiths could be observed inside.
