Sask. community building new cemetery entrance after neighbour blocks access

A rural municipality in southern Saskatchewan has been forced to help fund a new entrance to a local cemetery after a nearby landowner blocked the gatethat has been in use since about 1940.

Dozens of people are buried at the Point View Cemetery near Eastend, Sask., about 380 kilometres west of Regina.

A local landowner agreed to allow access to the cemetery through their property after the cemetery was built in the 1930s.

The agreement ended when the property changed hands but none of the subsequent landowners ever objected to people accessing the cemetery through the property.

That is until early 2016, when residents say aheavy vehicle appeared parked in front of the entrance gate, forcing anyone who wanted to visit the cemetery to find another way. Notrespassing signs were also erected.

Cliff Arnal has more than 10 family members buried in the Point View Cemetery, including his three young sons who died in two accidents on his family farm.

He said anyone should be able to access the cemetery at any time.

"I spent the last 40, 45 years there looking and helping and maintaining it so that someday I could be buried in there," he said.

"Of course some of the things went wrong and there is more of my family buried in there than I want to be, but it's important to me that my family can go there at any time."

RM tries to find resolution

The cemetery is owned by the Point View Cemetery committee but the Rural Municipality of White Valley has been involved in trying to reopen the main access gate.

It offered to purchase the section of land needed to restore the access but said that offer was turned down. It is not clear why the owners blocked the gate but there are reports of a personal dispute.

The owner of the land where the gate was blocked has not responded to a CBC News request for comment.

With the absence of gateaccess forcing people to crawl under fences to visit the cemetery, the committee and the RM have worked with another neighbour to create a new access point.

Arnal said the new entrance is steeper and more confined, making it harder for seniors to access in winter and more difficult for a hearse to manoeuvre through.

With an additional portion of land agreed upon by the otherneighbour, the RM will pay to smooth out the new entrance and build a betterparking lot.

Plans to document new access agreement

Although there is no written agreement with the neighbour over the new entrance yet, the RM has plans to ensure it is documented to stop the same problem arising again.

Reeve James Leroy said the RM was contributing because the cemetery was important to the community.

"The RM has decided to help with alternate access to give the public proper, safe, year-round access to the cemetery so that they can visit their loved ones," he said.

Although the disruption caused by the closed gate has been painful for some members of the community, working together to rebuild has brought some comfort to residents.

A group of committee members and neighbours have already built a new steel gate and laid new gravel at the second entrance.

"Once we got a bunch of people together [we said]'we can do this, we can do that' and more ideas came up, and what we were going to build isn't anywhere near what is there now," said Arnal.

"We were just going to fix up something halfway and then we said, 'that's no good, the best isn't good enough.'"