A new series for the new year
The Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network (QAHN) is virtually launching its world premier of a new series of its popular mini cemetery documentaries called “Scandal Makers.” The first series, presented in 2020, features the stories of some of the more disreputable characters of the past buried in rural cemetery sites in the Eastern Townships’ Missisquoi County. In this new series, viewers will enjoy seeing local historians visit the graves of legendary or notorious folks in graveyards found in Compton and Stanstead counties.
QAHN’s mission to protect and preserve the history and heritage of Quebec includes the historic and often abandoned cemeteries that are found in the rural landscape across the province.
“The documentaries are a way of keeping the past from fading away by continuing to tell the stories of the dearly (or infamously) departed,” says project director Heather Darch. “The words ‘beloved mother or father’ hardly tell the full story of a life, and most of us pass by graveyards never knowing the stories of the people laid to rest there. It’s people like Kathy Curtis from the Colby-Curtis Museum, local historians like Anne Leydet or QAHN’s president Grant Myers who help keep those stories buried beneath tombstones and inside mausoleums from disappearing.”
The goal of the documentary films is to engage the communities that are situated near the sites in the care and protection of the cemeteries. Bringing an awareness to the sites and the stories they hold helps people to discover aspects about their community they might otherwise never know. It is hoped that the series can serve to educate people about the importance of protecting these sites and seeing them as important to a community’s past and Quebec’s history in general.
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