The cemetery which completely surrounds the chapel, Holy Cross Cemetery, is of the same vintage as the chapel, opened in 1843. By 2011 both cemetery and chapel, which is a registered historic site, had become vandalized and neglected, at which time an army of volunteers, 150 strong, was recruited to renovate the, then, 168 year old cemetery. It is the final resting place of over 23,000 persons, including some prominent citizens, such as Sir John Thompson, Canada's first Roman Catholic prime minister.
As the cleanup and renovation project was underway CBC News had a crew on the scene to report the goings on. Their story is reproduced in part below.
Can you imagine a church being built in only one day? The Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows, located on a hill in the Holy Cross Cemetery at South and S. Park Streets, was built in one day by 2000 men. It went up in a single day on August 31, 1843; about 2,000 volunteers gathered at St. Mary's Basilica and marched down to the cemetery to get to work.
The chapel is commonly known among Halifax residents as the Church Built in a Day. It has seats for 70 people, and has a large stained glass window dating from 1661. Woodcarvings in the chapel were taken from a Flemish church of 1550.
From Halifax Kiosk
Volunteers resurrect Irish cemetery
in Halifax
CBC News Posted: Aug 12, 2011 3:23 PM AT
A volunteer crew in Halifax is attempting to resurrect a graveyard that has been plagued by vandals.
Holy Cross cemetery in the city's south end has had tombstones repeatedly destroyed by people who slipped under the fence at night.
Brian O'Brien said the 168-year-old graveyard near Fenwick Tower is a major historical site in Nova Scotia's Irish history.
"There are 25,000 people buried here and most of them of Irish descent, and that's one of the things that got us involved here initially," he said.
That includes Sir John Thompson, Canada's first Roman Catholic prime minister, who died in office in 1894.
O'Brien said his group, the Charitable Irish Society of Halifax, has restored 1,280 grave markers so far.
"Why they get their kicks out of smashing gravestones I do not know. I haven't got an answer to it," he said...
..."Look at this place now. This is a substantial improvement since day one, that's for sure. And we're very pleased with it. There's a real sense of accomplishment and we're having fun," he said.
Chapel built in one day
The cemetery also has a chapel that 2,000 volunteers famously built in one day. The Our Lady of Sorrows Chapel was erected on Aug. 31, 1843, but now needs repairs.
"A couple of hundred thousand dollars if you want to do it up first quality into relation to how it was built," O'Brien said.
The Diocese of Halifax owns the cemetery. Peter Brown, the financial administrator, said it has a limited budget to maintain its 180 buildings.
"[Cemeteries are] lower down the list. Certainly we want to have tidy sites and respect the dead, but there are other things that come first," he said.
O'Brien got involved because of his own Irish heritage, but is now motivated by a wider sense of duty to everyone buried at Holy Cross.
"We owe these people. We live in Canada and we're lucky to be here. So we owe these people some debt of gratitude, and the only way we really can do it, the only way we can say 'thank you' is making their resting place respectable looking. It was pretty bad before," he said.
Nearly 300 people and organizations have made donations to the Holy Cross Cemetery Foundation.
Read more at CBC News