Riverside Cemetery in Neepawa has been a hot topic among residents and visitors alike for several years now. In 2018, due to steeply rising costs, the town council made the controversial decision to cease the practice of planting flowers on every grave as part of perpetual care and transition to a more holistic approach to cemetery care and landscaping. A new bylaw was passed by council in 2019 and work began in 2020, but historic flooding and then drought on top of the COVID-19 pandemic have forced changes to the timeline.

Mayor Blake McCutcheon and Deputy Mayor Brian Hedley take us in person to the cemetery to help illustrate where the project currently stands. This summer marked the removal of several old trees and scraping the ground in several areas to level it, giving the cemetery a disheveled appearance to visitors. In another year, grass would have come in to the leveled areas and the areas where flowers would have previously been planted, but a summer of drought meant that weeds took over in their place.

While most local residents have had the chance over the last couple of years to consult on the direction the cemetery will take and see the work in progress, visitors to town may be startled by the changes and seeing what amounts to a work in progress at the moment.

The Councillors stress that cemetery staff, including many summer students, have been working hard to keep on top of things including watering as much as is responsibility possible, mowing and weeding, and planting dozens of trees along the walkways through the cemetery. It will take years for the trees to grow to maturity, but the Council is taking a long-term view of the project

One major element that McCutcheon hopes to see come to fruition within the next couple of years is a pergola on the north side of the cemetery to accommodate outdoor services. Along with that they are planning several flowerbeds at the entrances and throughout the cemetery in addition to the trees that have been planted and the repairs and renovations to the columbarium area which have largely been completed.

“The other thing that I think I’ve learned in my first three years is that people, they had something really good here and it’s hard for them to let go of it,” says McCutcheon. “And I understand that. But I think if they would just take a look at what we’re planning-- I think what we always said at the Council table when we passed that bylaw was, ‘Give us a chance.’”