Vines, Gates, and Temples: Using Cemeteries to Understand Mormonism in Canada

Members of minority groups must negotiate and balance their religious, ethnic, and cultural identities in our increasingly diverse nation. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints offers a case study of an often-overlooked minority faith in Canada. I propose a study of the built environment in predominantly Mormon towns in southern Alberta, where they first permanently settled in 1887, with a focus on cemeteries and architectural expressions of identity.

Like religious architecture, the cemetery is “a physical space and a spiritual place,” but it is the cemetery, per Wright, that “confuses the symbolic and physical to allow memories forgotten in other locations to survive--often silently.”

 I propose that gravestones offer evidence for understanding the process of integration into Canadian society. Using data from six cemeteries, I observe three periods: Generic Christianity, Mormon Symbolism, and Temple Imagery. During their first decade in Canada, Mormons commemorated the dead with generic Christian images, such as vines of ivy. Like their meetinghouses, there was nothing identifiably “Mormon” about their graves. In the 1900s, they favoured Mormon symbols related to their views of afterlife. Finally, with the construction of the Cardston Alberta Temple in the 1910s, the Mormons in Alberta solidified their presence in the nation and images of the sacred structure in their cemeteries marked their confidence as Canadians.