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Wandering around a graveyard in the dead of night is how one would expect a horror movie to start. But the Galt Museum's Belinda Crowson sees it as an educational opportunity — a way to step back in time and explore some of Lethbridge's sordid history.
"I don't try to freak them out. They freak themselves out," said Crowson, after leading a group of southern Alberta teachers through St. Patrick's Cemetery on the north side of the city during a recent Galt Museum Cemetery Tours by Flashlight.
It's pretty easy to get spooked by the ominous shadows of aged trees overlooking headstones silhouetted in the moonlight.
"It's easy to get freaked out," the museum educator said.
"We had deer in the first year, and all they could see was these glowing eyes and we've had porcupines in our third year."
It is easy for one's imagination to get carried away, especially since Crowson will tell the enthusiastic groups stories of suicides, unsolved murders and Henry "Kamoose" Taylor, the first man the Northwest Mounted Police arrested for whisky trading back in 1874.
"They confiscated his whisky, his horses and a lot of his money. He hated the police ever since," she explained.
She hosts not only the spooky flashlight tours that are held in the evenings as late as 10 p.m., but also tours during the day for families and classes of students.
The history buff is full of interesting historical tidbits, such as the nurse at Galt Hospital who lived at the hospital and passed away 39 years later — without taking a day off and was told not to go to church for fear of spreading communicable diseases. {Mildred Dobbs worked at the Isolation Hospital and while she worked 39 years without a day off she actually died after 20 years of retirement — in her 90s. There's also the two nuns who have two different headstones in two different parts of the cemetery because the originals were lost.
There are also more tragic tales including two young boys who died in a May blizzard and another boy killed after he wrapped his arm around the reins of a horse, who was later spooked.
She touched on tales of Lethbridge's red-light district, of some of Lethbridge's more gruesome crimes like the case of a man who was tarred and feathered by a group of vigilantes headed up by a police officer because they blamed him for the suicide of his landlord and who was suspected of sleeping with his landlord's wife.
She observed that St. Patrick's is the final resting place of people not only from Lethbridge, but all over southern Alberta.
There are also a variety of tales of coal-mining accidents and suicides.
“Most of the more scandalous stories I tell you tonight will be in the Catholic section. It will seem unbalanced because most of the Protestants are buried at Mountain View. If we were at Mountain View I could tell you about the mayor's widow who ran off with the married Anglican minister. But since we're not at Mountain View, I can't tell you,” Crowson joked with the crowd.
"I spent a lot of time reading obituaries from the Lethbridge Herald.
I tried to find stories of people who died in every possible way," she explained to her group.
Some are more heartbreaking, like any story about children who die, especially the children who lost their lives in a blizzard or the horse accident.
Since 2001, Crowson has spent October leading throngs of teachers, classes, and members of the general public who either want to learn about Lethbridge's weirder, wilder side or just get themselves into the Halloween spirit a month early.
While it is technically illegal to be in a cemetery after dark, the tours operate under special permission from the city, and respect for the families is a priority.
Crowson sticks to a set script for these tours but she admitted she went off book for this particular Wednesday night tour, which included teachers and Galt Museum volunteers she has worked with before. She pointed out some of Lethbridge's especially weird and horrifying stories as well as jokes to share with the group.
Taylor Fulton, a 13-year-old student at Gilbert Patterson Middle School, thought the tour was "really cool." Her parents brought her on the tour as a birthday present.
"I like all of the different graves," she said.
Some stories spoke to some of the teachers, who will be incorporating some of them into their classrooms.
"It's a great way to engage the students, and get them interested in the curriculum," said Amy Korver, who teaches at W. R. Myers High School in Taber. Her imagination was captured by the tar-and-
feathering story so much that she is going to incorporate it in her first-year social studies class. She also took away some interesting stories about communism from Crowson's tour, which she is also going
to incorporate into her lessons.
Milk River Elementary School teacher Nicole Freel, who is also a Galt Museum volunteer, thought the cemetery tours are a good idea for field trips for her students.
"It's a really cool resource for people to get interested in history, especially kids in middle school to get them engaged and motivate them to get interested in the curriculum," she said.
The tale of Henry Kanoose Taylor captured Copperfield Farms Colony School teacher Terri Hansen's attention and she hopes to incorporate it into her social studies class.
"We deal with a lot of different stories. We teach Canadian and U.S. history," she said.
Crowson chooses October for these tours because there is a proper amount of darkness at the right time of day for them (early evening around 7 p.m. for the earliest tours), "and March is too cold to do them."
"It's incredible for people to see this part of history," she continued.
The tours are popular and sell out quickly, she added. She'll guide up to 30 people a day on these tours.
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