CEMETERY HISTORY
The Catholic Cemetery was established in 1906 and was moved to the current location on Pine Street South in 1917. In November 1966 was acquired by the Town of Timmins and amalgamated with the Timmins Memorial Cemetery.
The Township of Tisdale has operated the Tisdale Cemetery (highway 101 east) since the early 1900’s.
The Whitney Cemetery (off Haileybury Crescent, Porcupine) was originally established as a burial site for the victims of the Fire of 1911. Since then, it has been referred to as Dead Man’s Point as often as the Whitney Cemetery.
All three cemeteries were incorporated into the City of Timmins Cemetery Department at the amalgamation/incorporation of the City of Timmins in 1973.
MORE CEMETERY HISTORY
Reverent Father Theriault used the churchyard on Fifth Avenue Timmins for a burial ground for his parishioners from 1912-1917. In 1917 he saw that Timmins was growing rapidly and he saw that it would be preferable to have a cemetery beyond the town limits. The site chosen is the present Timmins Memorial Cemetery. The 72 graves in the churchyard were moved to the cemetery.
J. Easton, the pioneer undertaker of Timmins then commenced to bury non-roman Catholics in the neighboring lot of land. Previously, non-roman Catholics had been interred in the Tisdale Cemetery, which served the entire Porcupine District up to that time.
In the later years, the Town of Timmins surveyed the land and fenced the two fields.
In 1934, Mayor George S. Drew installed a draining line to maintain the ground water line below 7’6”.
In 1937, the Canadian Legion formed the Legion section and the efforts made by them were instrumental in arousing public interest in the cemetery.
The cemetery did not have any income up to this time since the town did not subsidize the cemetery and the sale of plots had not been possible since the deeds for the sites had never been obtained.
In January 1939, Mayor JP Bartleman appointed A. Skelley, R. Richards and J. Parsons as members of a cemetery committee and gave them a small grant of money. They formed the Timmins Cemetery Board. These hard working public appointed men have contributed much in giving Timmins an organized Cemetery.
After a great deal of difficulty, they obtained the title of land. They rebuilt the fence and had endeavored to make the cemetery self-supporting by an organized sale of plots. A caretaker was appointed for the summer of 1939 and his work made noticeable improvements in the cemetery.
The graves of the flu victims of 1918 (Spanish Flu), are located in the first two rows of section C Protestant and are for the most part unknown graves. The Finnish victims of the Hollinger mine disaster of February 10, 1928 are interred in row 7 of the same section.
The northern half of Section D Protestant is made up of single graves of adults while the southern half is entirely babies and children’s graves. Rows 5, 6, 7 and 8 in the babies half have been subdivided forming 4x5 graves.