With the face of traditional tomb-sweeping set to change in the coming years, as private funeral homes and city governments toy with online tomb-sweeping Web sites, a plot of land in Tamsui, will, thanks to members of the Canadian Society, continue to get the personal touch -- and do so in a much-improved environment befitting the memory of some of the earliest foreign nationals who called Taiwan home.
Located adjacent to the Tamkang Middle School (淡江中學), the Tamsui Foreign Cemetery (外僑墓園) is the resting place of somewhere in the region of 65 foreign nationals of various nationalities, ages and professions who passed away between 1870 and 1950 while resident in Taiwan.
Although one grave was surreptitiously added in the 1970s, a government decree outlawed the use of the site as a burial ground in the late 1960s when foreigners who died in Taiwan were, instead, posthumously repatriated.
Officially taking the name of the Tamsui Foreign Cemetery in 1870, the plot of land, which is roughly the size of two tennis-courts, was first designated as a foreign cemetery in the late 1860s.
"After Tamsui became a treaty port, increasing numbers of foreigners of all nationalities were coming to Taiwan for trade and as government representatives," explained Jack Geddes of the Canadian Society, who has called Taiwan home since 1959 and carried out extensive historical research on the cemetery and its residents. "And with the increasing number of foreign nationals coming to Taiwan, it obviously became imperative to create a place where those who passed away could be laid to rest."
Originally overseen by Presbyterian missionaries, it was not solely a resting-place for members of the church. Sailors, merchants, children and even a military adviser from Europe, whose presence in Taiwan remains a mystery, were also laid to rest there.
Although members of the Presbyterian Church initially oversaw cemetery maintenance, representatives of the British government in Taiwan took responsibility for the cemetery from 1890 until the outbreak of World War II, when hostilities between the Imperial Japanese Army and the allied forces took priority over cemetery maintenance.
Following the Japanese surrender in 1945, the cemetery and the land it stood on became the property of the government of the Republic of China. Maintenance, however, once again fell to the British, who took charge of the cemetery until the UK government recognized the People's Republic of China in 1972 and severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
The Australians took charge for a year, only to pull out in 1973, leaving the cemetery in the hands of the American Embassy.
The US tenure as caretaker also proved short lived. When the US pulled out in 1978, the cemetery was abandoned until its plight was brought to the attention of Geddes, his wife, Betty, and their close friend and fellow Canadian national, Georgine Caldwell, in 1983.
"When we first went there it was totally overgrown. Parts of the wall were missing, the gate had disappeared and the cemetery, had, quite literally, become a garbage dump," recalled Geddes. "And to cap it all, students used it as a short-cut and many of the nicest stones had been vandalized."
The trio convinced the board of the Canadian Society that it should somehow adopt the cemetery. With funds from private individuals and groups, which included the British Trade Office, work on the cemetery soon began in earnest. In addition to restoration work, the Canadian Society ensured the site would not be forgotten by placing a commemorative plaque at its entrance.
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