EXCERPT from INTO THE SILENT LAND: HISTORIC CEMETERIES & GRAVEYARDS IN ONTARIO by Jennifer McKendry, copyright     home page

chapter four, Grave Markers, pages 175-6

.....Sunbursts and scallops were portrayed as decorations on Roman mosaics and carvings but also have Christian meaning with Christ as "the sun of righteousness" as prophesized in Malachi 4.2; the scallop, associated with pilgrims, suggested on headstones the journey to death and everlasting life. John Martindale's stone of 1832 in St Mark's (Anglican) Cemetery, Niagara-on-the-Lake, shows a flaming urn flanked by stylized willows and quarter-sunbursts with a scallop in a round arch triumphing over all (fig. 4.28). In the same cemetery John Kemp's (died in 1837 at age 75) shale headstone has a rose in a top round arch (fig. 4.50). Below is a daringly stylized willow - from the trunk grows three rope-like branches or leaves curving over a flaming urn. Torches burn into small arches near the corners of the top edge. The rose (discussed more fully under Flowers and Plants, Nature, Images on Grave Markers) is a symbol of mortality and the passage of time. Our souls, however, find immortality through Christ's intervention.

One of the most interesting classical monuments is for the Rev. John Bethune (born on the Isle of Skye in 1749 and died in Williamstown in 1815) in St Andrew's (originally Presbyterian) Cemetery, Williamstown (fig. 4.29). It is protected by an iron enclosure made of lance-headed uprights with urn finials on the corner posts and resting on a square limestone foundation. The three-dimensional monument itself is quite large with limestone foundation blocks that decrease in size as they ascend. In the monument's middle or main area white marble panels are set into each of the four sides, which have Ionic pilasters guarding the corners. Above a series of shallow stone ledges decrease until they met the base of a very large stone flaming urn that is decorated by four faces (fig. 4.30). We learn a great deal about the pastor from the fulsome inscriptions, including that the monument was erected "as a mark of filial affection" by his six sons. Bethune, "a faithful steward," died in his 44^th year as a Presbyterian minister, mourned by his numerous congregation of the Kirk of Scotland, Glengarry, "who shed the tribute of unfeigned sorrow over his grave." One of his sons, Alexander Neil (1800-79), later became Bishop of Toronto for the Church of England, a conversion promoted by Bishop John Strachan in 1824. The family traced their origins to Normandy in the eleventh century, when they moved to Scotland.[1] John Bethune immigrated c1773 to the Carolinas as chaplain to the Royal Militia. Caught up in the turbulent times of the American Revolutionary War as a prisoner, he had to make his way to Halifax, NS, where he helped organize the Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment; to Montreal, where he founded St Gabriel's Presbyterian Church; and finally in 1787 to the Williamstown area, where he had received 3,000 acres as a Loyalist. He was the first Presbyterian pastor in Upper Canada for many years, and his preaching circuit included Martintown, Williamstown, Lancaster, Summerstown and Cornwall.

This may be the earliest use in the province of a Classical Order on a monument, which may have been made in Montreal, given the proximity to that city and the date of 1815, when there was likely a scarcity of skilled carvers in Upper Canada. The pilasters are fluted with volute capitals carved as if they were made of spiral-twisted cords. A flower sits above each capital. The urn has leaves carved on its base, gadrooning on the bulbous lower portion of the cup, a "wreath" of tied bay leaves (for triumph and eternity) encircling the lower edge of the cover and flames for the finial....[continued]