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Page 7 West Vancouver Historical Society September 2005 Do Spanish Ghosts Still Walk in Old Reserve? By Beryl Gray (Beryl originally wrote this piece for the West Van News) Andy Pauli, honorary president of the North American Indian Brotherhood and an authority on the historical background of local Indian tribes, says this tiny graveyard was the first in Greater Vancouver. This fact accounts for the burying in the cemetery of the people bearing the Spanish names. Families of the deceased paid to have their bodies placed in the only available cemetery in the area. Mr. Pauli recalls that in his childhood he attended school with children bearing the names of Caresco, Gonzales and Cordecido. Long ago when we were children, we used to take the ferry to North Vancouver, and walk to the Indian Reservation. Somehow the Reserve seemed different in those daysâ€"quieter, further away, and less touched by the encroaching hand of civilization. We used to visit an Indian woman with her family, and give her clothing. In return we would get hand-woven baskets, and sometimes pails of glossy cherries. We were happy, all of us, while we were there. We climbed trees, and laughed and played, and picnicked on the shores of a little river that curved through the woods, with glimpses of tall, snow-clad peaks in the distance. We have never quite forgotten that woman’s dark, vividly handsome children, with their black hair and eyes, shining white teeth, and the gayest colored skits and sweaters. Somehow they seemed to fit perfectly into the whole picturesque scene. And once we went beyond the garden of the cherries, along a boardwalk by a railway trestle, and won a trail into what seemed deepest bushland. And there, in a place surrounded by tall trees, we found the little graveyard. We tiptoed in, with the solemn us of awed children in a sacred place. We walked through long green grass, and spoke in whispers. We saw graves of tiny Indian babies, and of Indians who had lived to venerable years. We read out the names, softly and wonderingly as we walked. Then slowly the names began to change, and they did not come so easily from our lips. No longer were they simple names like Charley, Joe, Tom and Peter. They were names strange and unfamiliar.... Celestien Magdelien, Susan and Dolly Guerrero, Torribio Gonzales and Bernadette Baselle. These were unutterably intriguing names, and they haunted us long after we were gone. Yet, childlike, in time we put the matter from us. We went again to the little graveyard. The changes still were few, and the old graves with their tall, smooth rounded wooden boards stood by the southern fence. This time the names rolled from our tongues wit a sweetly mysterious sound. Torribio Gonzales. Surely he must have been a bearded stranger! The very name conjured up a vivid, swashbuckling vision of someone dark, handsome and romantic. And Bernadette Baselle. As once before, the name stood out. There was a soft, caressing quality that lingered in the mind and heart. Who had been Bernadette Baselle? Would we ever know? The old board headpieces were much older now. They were grey and worn down with the ravages of time. The names were far less legible. We knelt and traced the words out slowly, running our fingers carefully over the raised imprints made by the rough caring. This time we found a few more. Maria Filoma Louisa Carasco, said oneâ€" and we found nothing else to tell whether Maria had been a little child, a half-grown girl or young woman when she had been placed there. The changes were she had been very young. There was another. We traced what words we could. En Memoria de la Nina Pita Flores Nasio el 18 de Maio Fallesio 21 de Deciembre 1881 This time we wrote the names carefully in a little book, for perhaps we knew then that this was a page of history nearly turned; “that barriers of time and language lay between, and here were stories that perhaps would never be unfolded. And then, not very long ago we wentâ€" and not all of us who had gone in the beginningâ€"back to the scene of our youthful dreams again. At last the years had wrought their changes in that once quiet little place. A busy road, rumbling with trucks on their way to and from the waterfront industries, almost seems to touch the western fence. The trees no longer looked so tall, and the river where we picnicked was just a pleasant little stream. Everywhere, all around us, we felt the pressure of modem civilization. Yet the certain hush that always surrounds man’s last resting place on earth remained. Once more we trod softly, thinking of the days of long ago as we sought the old remembered head stones. Who would ever know, in idly wandering through that North Shore cemetery, that once with our own eyes we had seen names like Torribio Gonzales and Nina Pita Flores? And where was Bernadette Baselle? There are still some rotting boards, lying in sad neglect, half hidden in the grass. By their very age and shape we know they once marked the sleeping places of our old friends. There is on standing even now, if you know where to look, upon which you can barely trace the one word, “Nacio”. But who was born, and who died here, no one can tell. (906 Words) So history again closes a chapter in her book of the past. But who knows? Beryl, one of the two daughters of Coralie and Gordon Gray, was a respected Canadian author. In her lifetime she had 140 short stories and twenty-two serials published in Canada, England, New Zealand, Australia, the U.S. and several of the Scandinavian countries, firstbook, which ran as a serial in the