Welcome back, my ghouls, to the Haunted Saskatchewan series! In this video, I show you some of the video footage and photos from the Regina Cemetery that I visited back in November 2021. Check out the video below, and make sure you Subscribe to my channel to be notified about future videos!
Transcript:
Welcome back my ghouls to the haunted Saskatchewan series. So if you’ve been following, you know, that we’ve already covered a couple of locations in Fort Qu’Appelle area, as well as a couple locations in Indian Head area. And now we’re going to move into actually my hometown. So this today, we’re going to talk about Regina Saskatchewan.
Uh, for the next few videos of the series it’s all going to be actually based out of Regina. And the first location that I went to is the Regina cemetery. So to give you some kind of history and some context of who might be in the Regina cemetery. Uh, I’ll give you a little bit of history first about Regina itself.
And then we’ll dive into some of the graves and types of tragedies that went on in Regina that resulted in the Regina cemetery growing as big as it is today. So welcome my ghouls to the Regina.
All right. First let’s talk about Regina itself. Regina is the capital of Saskatchewan and it came to be around 18 80 when the Europeans settled in the area. Prior to that, it was indigenous hunting ground. Uh, as far as we know, and it was originally called and I’m don’t know that I’ll say this, right, but I’m going to try oskana ka-asastēki.
I’m not sure if you know how to say it, let me know. Uh, but this was originally indigenous ground. And so that’s also why the nickname pile of bones sometimes comes about, but we won’t get into that in this video. So when the Europeans did begin to settle here, it happened around the same time as the Canadian Pacific railway, which I talked about in my previous videos.
And this was one of the major stops along the railway. So as the European settlers came into the area, they did change the name to, of their settlement, to be Regina after queen Victoria, instead of using the indigenous name for the area. And this has, like I said, this happened in the 1880s, but it actually didn’t become a city until 1902.
So the interesting thing about the Regina cemetery is it became sort of an unofficial burial ground with its first burial in 1882, which was a young boy named David. And he was two years old at the time. I couldn’t find any more information about David, but he was considered the first burial in the Regina cemetery location.
After that it actually became an official burial ground in 1883 and has been used ever since. Now, it is now located in downtown Regina because Regina kind of grew around it. Of course. Uh, so there is 43 acres that is used by the cemetery right in downtown Regina. So that’s, I think that’s what I found the most
interesting when we got there is you are kind of secluded from everybody, you’re kind of there’s trees all around. So it’s really calm and quiet. So as long as there’s no like sirens going by, it’s really quiet and really secluded. And you do feel like you’re, you know, more closer to the middle of nowhere, less in the middle of a city.
However, even when you’re in the center of it, you’re still surrounded by something like 30,000 cemetery plots. So it is quite full. Which you’ll be, you’d be able to tell because a lot of the graves are extremely close together, but there’s not a lot of space in between them. But I guess that comes from it being one of the oldest urban cemeteries in Saskatchewan, if not the oldest. Now they’re various sections in a cemetery based on different
tragedies, different things that happened throughout Regina’s history. There’s a Jewish section as well as a Chinese section. And so the graves are slightly different than you’ll find in all the other parts of the cemetery. One of the first biggest tragedies that happened in Regina that would have caused the Regina cemetery to expand significantly was known as the Regina cyclone.
And so this happened in 1912 and what it actually was, was a giant tornado, uh, F four rated, I think they said it was. So an F4 rated tornado came from the south and went right down the center of Regina, came up north through it, and it destroyed a lot of buildings and a lot of homes. And this happened on June 30th, 1912.
So during this tornado, 28 people were killed and at the time. I think they said there’s only about 29,000 people living in Regina at the time. So it’s a bigger proportion to what it would be now. And somehow it missed the newly built legislative building and went straight down through like the park and destroyed a bunch of businesses.
And a bunch of homes were completely destroyed. I can’t remember how many people, they said it left homeless, but it was in the thousands. So it was a, quite a big tragedy for a fairly new city to go through. Then the next tragedy that saw a major growth in the Regina cemetery would have been the Spanish flu.
So in 1918, when the Spanish flu through came through Saskatchewan, it actually ended up killing about 330 people here in Regina. So there is actually a section in the cemetery of unmarked graves. So you aren’t first. We don’t know for sure how many are under there. I couldn’t find any definitive stats on it, but there’s a whole bunch of unmarked graves from people from the Spanish flu, because they couldn’t
get through the deaths fast enough, they couldn’t have, the funerals were short and quick and they had to just quickly move through them. Of course, this area also has, uh, some, they believe that have no church affiliations or maybe they had no family in the area to pay for a funeral. So they were put into an unmarked grave in this area.
The area is called the Potter’s field. And I noticed while we were walking through, there were quite a few just wooden crosses with no names, no dates. So it made you wonder if these were some of these unmarked graves scattered throughout? Uh, I didn’t notice a lot of them in the Potter’s field area, but it would be interesting to know how many people are actually buried there.
It does make you think that there might be some unrest because of this. Because there are so many souls that, you know, went to an unmarked grave that they’re no longer being recognized. It makes you wonder how, how many ghosts this could bring up. Right. Uh, unfortunately, while we were there, or maybe it’s fortunately, I don’t know.
Uh, but we didn’t actually see any ghosts that we know. Unless you catch something in some of the video that I’m playing. Uh, but we didn’t notice anything. So then the next area I wanted to point out is in the center, there was this large circular area with plots that go in a circular motion and in the center is the cross of sacrifice.
So this area is soldier plots. It’s the section that they consider the soldier cemetery at the, when you first walk in from the south axis, you’ll see two German field guns that had been captured back in 1918 and brought into Saskatchewan. And this section of the cemetery officially opened back in 1920 to recognize some of the Saskatchewan fallen soldiers.
And it is still used today. And in fact, you can still go there every remembrance day in Saskatchewan, and they will have, they have a service that you can attend. So another kind of creepy building, in my opinion, uh, that is also in the Regina cemetery is the crematorium. So this is one of the community crematoriums in Regina and it’s right inside the cemetery kind of on the Eastern side of it.
So you can actually go walk by the crematorium while you’re walking through graves. There’s also, this is also right beside the only mausoleum in the Regina cemetery, which is the Darke Mausoleum. So who’s why have one Mausoleum? Well, this was for Francis Darke and Francis Darke is a fairly well-known person in Regina history.
From what I gather. Again, I’m not from Regina originally. So all of this was new to me. Uh, but he actually built places like the Stonehouse castle here in Regina. He also built the Darke Hall for the community, for arts and performance and that kind of thing. And supposedly he still haunts the Darke Hall.
So I’m hoping that I can go do a tour there, uh, maybe in the summertime, cause right now it’s currently under renovation, so they’re closed to the public, but hopefully I’ll be able to go there when they open back up. And Francis Darke was also one of the youngest mayors to lead in Regina. Other tombstones in the Regina cemetery include Cheun Lee.
Uh, so Cheun Lee, you may you’ll hear about in my, in one of my next videos, Cheun Lee is also known as Howie and he’s thought to be the ghost that is haunting the Government House .As he was one of the chefs in the Government House back when they still used it for well as a house, instead of as a museum. There’s also a grave that you can go visit for James Strathdee which is another potential ghost that will be coming up in a future video. He’s thought to haunt Bushwhakkers and the Strathdee building warehouse.
So that is where he is he is also located and he was thought to actually be murdered, even though it was ruled a suicide. So lots of potential tragedy around that. So that is all I can really say about the Regina cemetery right now. Other than I guess the other thing I didn’t mention is for the Darke mausoleum, there was a weird symbol above the door.
So interestingly, they had a lot of problems with vandalism, including there was vandalism back in, I think it was 2011. Yeah, it was 2011. They had a major vandalism and a lot of the gravestones were broken, unfortunately. But the Darke mausoleum has also been one of the main, uh, buildings that gets vandalized regularly.
So they’ve actually had to seal it. Uh, but it had a strange symbol on the top. I’m not really sure what it means. I tried looking for it, but I don’t know what it means. So if you happen to know what that symbol means, make sure you leave a comment below because I am very curious. Uh, otherwise it was really a calm day.
It was a little eerie because I think cemeteries just our little eerie and because there’s a lot of tragedy and the unmarked graves might cause some unrest. It was kind of a spooky feeling. I don’t know that I’d want to go back at night. Uh, at least not without somebody else with me, but it was still a nice walk and it was interesting to see the soldiers plots and to walk through them and to see some of the messages written on their gravestones.
And some of them had pictures, which was really interesting to see. And that it was just, there was just a stillness and it was calm. And even though we were there in November, And it was wintery and cold. It was still a nice day and a nice walk. So that’s all I have for today for the Regina cemetery. The next location is another Regina location that I’m excited to start talking about.
So make sure you subscribe and like the video so that you’re notified when the next one comes out. I’m also thinking about changing the name of the haunted Saskatchewan series, but I haven’t decided to what. So if you have any ideas that you think might work, drop the comment down below. I’d love to hear them. Until next time, my ghouls.
K. D. Kulpa 