Lauren Bird CBC
This past fall N.B. Power paid for a new gravestone to be placed in the forgotten and flooded Kingsclear cemetery- historically a black burial place in New Brunswick. The Kingsclear graveyard was forgotten, and the gravestones placed there to memorialize the dead were lost to floods of years past. A new documentary, called Written in Stone, tells the story of the graveyard, and brings light to the injustices caused by the racist actions of past leaders.
Mary Louise McCarthy-Brandt, a relative of those who deserved to have a proper burial ground, but had it taken away, pressed for a new memorial to be made to replace the old one that was lost to floods. McCarthy-Brandt, pushed to honour Black New Brunswickers whose remains were left behind when the graveyard was relocated.
McCarthy-Brandt’s ancestors were early black New Brunswickers, whose graves are not actually in the Kingsclear cemetery, but, instead, under water at the bottom of the St. John River. The gravesites, home to the remains of Early Black New Brunswickers were deliberately left behind by racist prejudice; when other gravesites in the same area were relocated due to fears of the burials being destroyed by flooding.
Written in Stone, the documentary dedicated to spreading awareness about the racial prejudice that lead to the loss of the gravesites, has shed light on an inequality that many New Brunswickers were ignorant to. McCarthy-Brandt started doing her own research into the graveyard to find the names of those who should have been buried there. By searching tirelessly through the provincial archives, McCarthy- Brandt and her cousin Jennifer Dow were able to create a list of almost 50 names of people who would have been buried in the Kingsclear Cemetery. McCarthy Brandt pushed for the much-needed change and with the help of N.B. Power had a new stone with those names carved in it, placed at the cemetery.