The Pioneer Cemetery Committee
The restoration of St. Margaret of Scotland Pioneer Cemetery grew from a simple conviction: the people who helped establish this community deserved to be remembered, and their burial place deserved care. In 2008, descendants and community volunteers formed the Pioneer Cemetery Restoration Committee to turn that conviction into action.
Three sisters and a shared commitment
Among the committee’s founding members were sisters Anne Kells, Helen MacDonald and Pat Malone. With deep family roots in St. Margaret’s, they had watched the cemetery deteriorate and resolved to help restore its dignity. Helen is the mother of this website’s creator; Anne and Pat are his aunts.
Their commitment brought together family memory, local knowledge and practical work. The task included repairing and resetting monuments, recovering stones that had disappeared into the ground, and clearing the cemetery’s perimeter. It also meant collecting the stories and records that would help future generations understand the lives commemorated there.
Finding the means to restore the cemetery
The sisters and their fellow volunteers sought help from descendants, residents, community organizations and public funding programs. Donations, grant applications and fundraising events helped turn an ambitious undertaking into a practical restoration project. The committee’s early objectives joined professional restoration and continuing maintenance with the preservation of stories, photographs and family history.
As the website’s creator recalls, this fundraising was undertaken without financial support from the Diocese of Charlottetown. The committee’s determination to find other sources of funding was essential to moving the work forward. That account concerns diocesan funding; the contemporary history also records support for the project from the parish council and local community.
An award-winning community achievement
The results were substantial: fallen and damaged monuments received attention, the historic stone boundary became visible again, and the cemetery was renewed as a place where families could visit and remember. The restoration gave renewed visibility to a significant part of the parish’s history.
That achievement received recognition beyond the families involved. The cemetery earned a Rural Beautification Award in 2009 and a second award in 2010. Its recognition as a provincial Heritage Place further underlined the importance of preserving the site. These honours reflected the work of the founding sisters, fellow committee members, volunteers, donors and supporters.
Their success can be measured in more than awards. They helped return dignity to the burial ground, encouraged descendants to reconnect with their ancestors, and established a foundation for continuing historical and genealogical research. This archive gratefully acknowledges those achievements.
The website: a note from its creator
My mother and aunts supported the development of this website as another way to honour the pioneers and share their stories. The Committee contributed part of its funding. Over approximately two decades, however, I have personally provided most of the website’s funding and sustained its development.
The former partnership with the Committee has now ended. The Committee does not support this independently funded website. The archive continues as a separate undertaking dedicated to honouring the pioneers, preserving records and helping families discover their connections.
Joanne Petrunik, the Committee’s leader, and I are related. That family relationship does not change the website’s independent status or imply Committee support. This distinction is offered for clarity, while retaining respect for the restoration work and the people who made it possible.
We hope that our values and goals will align at some point in the future.
Historical background: Honouring their ancestors, Mary MacKay, The Guardian, November 27, 2008; the committee’s early objectives; and the archive’s 2009 and 2010 award announcements. The account of diocesan funding, website funding and the current relationship is provided by the website’s creator.