Hello readers, I am very excited to be writing this introductory post for you all with Dr. Meghan Burchell, of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Dr. Burchell taught the undergraduate course ‘The Archaeology of Death’ this Fall 2020 semester, and I had the honour of being her TA! One of the student’s assignments for the course was to create a ‘blog-style’ post which would explore a monument, mostly within the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, to examine the history and politics of monumentalization. 

Part of the challenge with the course and its assignments this semester was, of course, the fact that it was not face-to-face teaching in light of the pandemic. Adapting to the sudden switch to remote teaching brought to light the importance of creating records for, and digitizing said records for, historical artifacts and sites such as graveyards. While part of their coursework was to do just that, create digital records and analysing gravestones in Newfoundland, this blogging assignment asked different questions.

Their blogs answered a number of questions, including:

• “What does the landscape of monuments in Newfoundland and Labrador look like?”
• “How can we create a digital landscape of monuments, whether they are memorials, graves, or other monumental sites or objects?”
• “How are people and events commemorated and remembered in Newfoundland and Labrador?” 
• “What does a memorial tell us about the site / event / person, as well as the people who erected it?”

Everyone did an amazing job on their blog posts, and in the end I selected six examples to post on Spade & the Grave, that I thought fit well into the theme of this website and with the research that I undertake in death and burial archaeology. The next six posts, written by undergraduate students at MUN, examine monuments and their meaning across the province. In this series we will look at the Peter Pan Statue in Bowring Park, the Terry Fox statue by the harbour in St. John’s, the Statue of Amelia Earhart in Harbour Grace, the Ocean Ranger Disaster Monument, the Renews Grotto, and the controversy of the Gaspar Corte-Real statue. 

It was wonderful to read what the students thought about monumentalization within the province, as well as how these sites impacted their view of the historic events or people they commemorated. Please join us for the series, as we share this series over the last two weeks of 2020!

Student Blog Post Links:

1. Emma Nugent: The Controversial Statue of Gasper Corte-Real
2. Alison Batstone: Betty’s Statue – A Grandfather’s Remembrance
3. Calum Brydon: Terry Fox Memorial, St. John’s, NL
4. Megan MacKinnon: Ocean Ranger Memorial Garden
5. Hannah Cooper: Amelia Earhart Statue, Harbour Grace, NL
6. Jasper Pritchard: The Renews Grotto

Thank you for joining us for this exciting series!