BOWDEN - Members of the Bowden and District Cemetery Association (BDCA) and town officials agree great care needs to be taken in locating and identifying gravesites in the town's cemetery, especially now, as they're looking at adding cremated remains.
Concern was also expressed about making sure officials know exactly who is buried in any grave, because in at least one case, an unknown person was found to be buried with a former town councillor's parents.
Those concerns came up during council's Dec. 10 meeting as BDCA chair Shirley Adams gave a presentation to council.
"What we were really saying is that great care needs to be taken in the identification of gravesites; particularly now that we're adding more cremains to them," Adams said.
"They have to be clearly marked, because in the future, sometimes people investigate the gravesites," she added.
That led to a discussion on the need for improved computerized mapping of gravesites. That in turn led BDCA member and former town councillor Sheila Church to cite her own family's experience.
"I'd just like to say I guess that it's important for records to be kept accurately, because I discovered that there was an unfamiliar body buried between my parents, according to the records," Church said.
"And of course, they had a double plot and then I saw both of them buried. But someone shows up as being between them. So somehow things weren't entered accurately."
Chief administrative officer Jacqui Molyneux says a program installed on a town computer back in about 2011 has proven to be a problem. A couple of town staff members trained on it when it was first installed are no longer there.
Molyneux said she has worked with it from time to time when she's had an opportunity, but it's slow going. She has to read old documents and go from there.
"It's finicky, is basically what it is," she said.
Mayor Robb Stuart suggested contacting other communities that use the same program for their cemeteries to see if they could provide help.
Adams liked that idea.
"It is so important to be accurate," she said.
Adams noted the town has a cemetery map on its website. She said in the future the association hopes to install a map in the cemetery itself as well.
Also in the future, the BDCA would like to have a columbarium -- an above-ground burial facility for cremated remains -- installed in the cemetery.
Adams indicated they're an efficient use of land and becoming more and more popular.
The BDCA would also like to add more rails to the cemetery gates.
Signs identifying the cemetery and when it began were erected during the past year. Adams said plans are afoot to set up big flowerpots at the front of the cemetery as well.
Plans call for the memorial garden, set up a couple of years ago, to be expanded as more residents buy trees memorializing their loved ones. As that happens, she said, the sign alluding to it will have to be expanded.
Adams praised the Bowden Institution for providing inmates for a week each year to help clean up and improve the cemetery.
"I do want to personally thank -- and on behalf of town council -- thank the cemetery board," Stuart said. "You're a sterling example of how a committee should work, and we're very proud of our cemetery too."
