Design firm unveils cemetery plans to Iqaluit city council committee

Designed by Lees and Associates, Iqaluit’s new cemetery in Apex will be built in three phases. The first will hold 413 burials in 10-year period. The cemetery will reach capacity in at least 30 years. (COURTESY LEES AND ASSOCIATES)

Iqaluit’s engineering department unveiled design plans for the city’s new cemetery to city councillors June 5, revealing a three-phase site which will hold 1,346 burial plots during the first two phases and last at least 30 ears.

The cemetery site, located on Simonie Michael Lane at the eastern end of Apex near Rotary Park, is on 3.4 hectares of “windswept” terrain with little snow accumulation, according to Erik Lees of Lees and Associates, the Vancouver-based landscape architect firm commissioned for the project.

City residents had a chance to see the same project plans in Apex at an open house on June 4.

City council then discussed the landscape planners’ concept design at the June 5 Engineering and Public Works Committee of the Whole meeting.

The city’s engineering department will present a final plan for council approval next week.

Councillors at committee meeting heard that the site’s first phase will take on 413 burials, enough for 10 years, with two successive expansions to accommodate burials “for at least 30 years.”

The first phase will include areas for cremated remains. Also, burial designs call for caskets to be placed in concrete grave boxes at burial plots.

This, said Lees, ensures that “when the grave is opened for preparation for burial, the grave will have integrity — that the walls will not collapse and it will be safe to gather around.”

The boxes will also give “absolute clarity as to where each grave is located,” and allow the cemetery to contain more individual plots.

The boxes also bring big savings in maintenance of the cemetery grounds, Lees told council, as ground surfaces would be kept level.

Asked about the expense of the grave boxes, Lees said they typically cost $1,000 in southern Canada, adding “there’s a number of ways we think we can minimize that cost.”

Coun. Kenny Bell warned about the possibility of permafrost gradually pushing the boxes to the surface over a period of years, and Coun. Mark Morrissey asked if such boxes have been used elsewhere in Northern Canada.

Lees replied that the design is used throughout the country, including northern Canada. Meagan Leach, the city’s director of engineering, said geotechnical tests showed the ground is suitable.

Most other questions from councillors centred on the boundaries to be put in place around the new cemetery.

Lees and Associates’ concept design calls for boulders to line the property. But these barriers could cause more snow accumulation on the grounds, councillors said, which would do nothing to discourage snowmobilers and all-terrain vehicles to cut through the cemetery.

Design presenters Lees and Leach of the city agreed, and heard other proposals for barrier designs from councillors such as wooden posts and barriers stylized in the form of qamutik runners.

Asked if the cemetery will divide graves by religious affiliation, Lees replied that this was no longer the norm.

“That used to be the way cemeteries were laid out many years ago,” he said. “But with an increasingly multicultural society, that becomes increasingly difficult for us to do.”

Once city council votes on the cemetery design, as expected at the next council meeting, engineering work will begin. The city’s engineering department plans to complete the cemetery by the fall, in time to take the place of the city’s old cemetery, which had 50 plots remaining last year, according to Leach.

Lees said 18 residents showed at the city’s open house on the project, June 4, where eight people completed questionnaires about the project. The city and the design firm will consider the feedback when they draft the final plan for city council.

This new, recently-selected Apex site replaces the last selected site, which was located near the Road to Nowhere and chosen in 2009.

But progress there suffered from delays, cost overruns and engineering problems.

Construction on the Road to Nowhere site was eventually halted due to terrain issues that would have led to a reduction in the number of potential burial plots.

As of last June, Iqaluit had two years in which to build a new cemetery before the old one fills up.

The city has been seeking a new cemetery since at least 2003.