Grave Offerings
The newer part of the St. Stephen’s church cemetery in the Mt. Newton Valley has an unexpected collection of grave offerings as these photos show.
I think that they accumulate in part because the church is remote and not subject to vandalism and theft.
Fresh grave, with two small bottles of single malt
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Canon AE-1 Program, Canon FD 50/1.8 lens, Kentmere 400, processed commercially, scanned at home
burnt embers 
A lovely grouping! Did someone hang a string of crystals in a cemetery tree too? It’s fascinating to see offerings like these. I followed a road named cemetery road in an agricultural part of central Florida, and found a beautiful old cemetery with some nice offerings. It’s terrible to think these aren’t disturbed because not many people go there, so no one is stealing them, but I guess that makes sense.
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I am an aficionado of old cemeteries and we nearly always stop to explore when we are out and about on country roads. Living in a very rural area it is not uncommon to find these sort of grave offerings and mementos.
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Hi Sherry, I don’t spend much time in rural cemeteries, but feel like I should now. In the main old cemetery in Victoria at Ross Bay there are only a couple of graves that gather more than flowers. One is a child’s grave from the 90’s that has toys gently rotting, a new one every year. The other is artist Emily Carr’s grave that is sometimes almost like a trash heap with so many offerings of pencils and brushes and rocks with notes on them and little carvings and paper things that rot and so on. Someone seems to come along from time to time and tidy up the mess and make it look organised.
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There’s a grave with a Ted Harrison reproduction on top, isn’t there? I saw it perhaps 6 or 7 years ago, before he died. A story…
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Hi Theresa – I had not seen it on this visit, but was back there on Monday and did find it. All it says is Harrison beneath the ‘painting’. An internet search confirms that it is his grave. I took a picture of it that I will post when it is developed.
My middle brother was married at this church so I have memories of it that are more than just being a tourist.
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Thanks, Al. When I first saw it, Ted Harrison was still alive but he must have made sure he had a place waiting. And it’s a lovely church. When we come to the Island, we often amble along West Saanich Road instead of taking the highway into Victoria from the ferry. There are several places we stop along the way and that church is one of them. I used to ride my horse through that valley in the early 1970s.
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