Manitoba Penitentiary/Stony Mountain Institution Cemetery
Manitoba Penitentiary/Stony Mountain Institution Cemetery
Stony Mountain Penitentiary Cemetery
Operated at least from 1902 to 1954
Operated by Correctional Service Canada
Non-denominational
Over the history of the Indian Residential School System, Indian Residential School students could be moved out of the system and into a range of different institutions and facilities for a variety of reasons. These institutions could include facilities for the physically, developmentally, or intellectually handicapped, child welfare institutions, and reformatories, jails, prisons, and penitentiaries. Indigenous students who had been transferred from the Indian Residential School System to one of these other institutions and died while there were most likely to be buried in a cemetery associated with the institution they had been sent to.
Located behind the Rockwood Institution, part of the Stony Mountain Institution complex, the Stony Mountain Penitentiary Cemetery is the final resting place of prisoners who passed away at the Stony Mountain Penitentiary and whose remains were not removed for burial outside the facility. A list of names provided by the Penitentiary’s warden in 1989 to the Manitoba Genealogical Society identifies 32 people buried in the cemetery, however, an article in a prison magazine from 1997 indicates that there may be more burials than this in the cemetery.1
The first death at the Penitentiary was in 1880, but burial records currently available begin in 1902. The cemetery itself includes numbered grave markers and a cairn listing the names of those known to be buried there. After 1954, people who died at the institution and whose remains were not claimed by relatives have been buried in the nearby Stonewall Cemetery. There is at least one known burial of an Indian Residential School student in this cemetery.2
1 Find a Grave, “Stony Mountain Penitentiary Cemetery,” https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2591258/stony-mountain-penitentiary-cemetery; Stony Mountain Penitentiary Cemetery/ Stony Mountain Penitentiary (RM of Rockwood). Cemetery Code: 0427, 1989. Cemetery established 1880, N50.08229 W97.22663; Stony Mountain Innovator, Stony Mountain Penitentiary, Summer 1997, 15, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiAzNyFtIL_AhUnkokEHY-VDKgQFnoECAkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpenalpress.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FInnovatorSummer1997Vol2No4_Jun.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1NH8jW1HaRjpAT3UT1vzas
2 Find a Grave, “Stony Mountain Penitentiary Cemetery,” https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2591258/stony-mountain-penitentiary-cemetery; Stony Mountain Penitentiary Cemetery/ Stony Mountain Penitentiary (RM of Rockwood). Cemetery Code: 0427, 1989. Cemetery established 1880, N50.08229 W97.22663; Stony Mountain Innovator, Stony Mountain Penitentiary, Summer 1997, 15, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiAzNyFtIL_AhUnkokEHY-VDKgQFnoECAkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fpenalpress.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FInnovatorSummer1997Vol2No4_Jun.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1NH8jW1HaRjpAT3UT1vzas
