Beyond the crops, tucked deep in a boggy forest on a farmer’s land in the Abitibi region of Quebec, you’ll find the remnants of a cemetery, a few crosses still visible between the trees.
More than 100 years ago, at least 16 detainees from the nearby Spirit Lake internment camp were buried here.
But there’s no commemorative plaque or historical protection for the land that is slowly being swallowed up by forest.
“This is a sacred space, hallowed ground,” said Lubomyr Luciuk, a professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ont., and a member of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
After the internment camp closed, the federal government sold the land to Quebec in 1936. In 1988, the parcel of land where the cemetery sits was acquired by a private farmer.
