Broadacres Cemetery Project
Written and submitted by Beverley Volk
After 13 years of planning, logistics, and everything else involved in seeing this project completed, the Broadacres Cemetery Project is now finished. The signage and fence have been installed, and the cross has been rebuilt and refurbished. This project is dedicated to the early pioneers and settlers of Broadacres and District, whose vision, hard work, and contributions have made this beautiful farming district what it is today.
Click for larger images
Broadacres is located between the communities of Tramping Lake to the north and Kerrobert to the southwest. It was and still is the centre of some of the finest grain-producing areas in what was once St. Joseph's Colony in west central Saskatchewan. Broadacres is aptly named after the great expanse of the flat Russian Steppe farmland north of the Black Sea. The majority of the settlers in this area were of German Russian descent and traced their heritage to the Kutschurgan Villages just northwest of Odessa (once part of Russia and now Ukraine) on the Black Sea.
Dr. Joseph S. Height, in his book "Memories of the Black Sea Germans", described the pioneers of the district:
"We have here a most remarkable and fascinating parallel to the earlier migration which the ancestors had made a hundred years ago when they traveled from the Rhineland valley plains [of Germany] to the steppes of the Black Sea. The tremendous desire for land had impelled our Alsatian and Palatinate ancestors to travel almost two thousand miles by river routes and overland roads to what was then known as New Russia. The same innate desire for land a hundred years later impelled their descendants in Russia to travel several thousand miles by water and land from the Kutschurgan to Saskatchewan." — Memories of the Black Sea Germans 1979, pp 297-298
Once a prosperous community boasting some 30 families in 1930, Broadacres was a predominantly Catholic community with its small population, a strong faith, and belief in God and their community's future. They requested the bishop to authorize the building of a church in Broadacres, which was approved in 1924. A drive was organized to raise funds for the construction. However, a series of poor crops and dwindling donations delayed the long-awaited church construction until 1928, when work began on the basement and framework of the church. The basement was closed off and dedicated to services, with the first Holy Mass celebrated on December 28, 1928. A small cemetery was surveyed the same year and separated from the churchyard by a tree windbreak. The four stone pathways leading out from the cross in the cemetery are still visible today along with traditional ornate iron crosses. The Sacred Heart Church was never finished and was closed and demolished in 1959. A new Sacred Heart Church was built in 1960 and was utilized and funded by the parishioners until 1974. The church was closed and moved to the town of Luseland in 1975.
Progress and time have depopulated the land, but it was thanks to the hard work and dedication of those German Russian pioneers in the early 1900s who carved out their homes from the prairie sod and plowed the land for the first time. These very same pioneers built a larger community where we walk and work every day taking for granted the rights and freedoms we have. Towns may come and go, but the memories and accomplishments of their founders will be with us for all time.