By Margaret F. Sadler
(Editor’s note: This is the account of how a family paid tribute to a great-grandfather who died and was buried in Weyburn in an unmarked grave, 65 years after his death. Sadler is an editor and writer based in Edmonton whose husband is a great-grandson of Filip Heise.)
“An old man, out early in the morning, to walk in the garden, say his prayers, and sing hymns...” It’s one of the few memories the family has of great-grandfather Filip and one of the memories shared this summer at his graveside.
In August 1952 a small family group had gathered in Weyburn to bury 90-year-old Filip Heise. In August 2017 a family group a generation and more on gathered at the same place to mark Filip’s place with a gravestone.
How is it that 65 years later, his gravesite had not been marked? In 1952, his four eldest children who had accompanied him to Saskatchewan from Austria were still hard at work supporting themselves, and his grandchildren were starting families of their own.
Filip had lived his final year in the Weyburn Mental Hospital, a common enough solution for the elderly with dementia of some sort. One daughter had moved to the States; the other daughter had cared for him until he was 89. The two sons’ households were caring for their elderly in-laws.
Weyburn was a long way from his daughter, and was no Sunday afternoon drive. One granddaughter remembers trips to Weyburn in order for her parents to visit Filip, but she herself stayed with relatives along the way or in the car with her small children.
Meanwhile, two of Filip’s younger daughters were firmly rooted in Austria and raised families there, but two more of his sons, who had been too young to accompany him in 1909, uprooted from Austria and sailed to Brazil in 1925. There over time, they worked, married, raised families. Seventy-five years after this emigration, one of Filip’s Brazilian great-granddaughters met a Canadian engineer working in Sao Paulo. In a bold move, she came to Ontario with her new husband, where in her free time she sought out her Canadian cousins. She landed on cousin Karen’s Facebook page coincidental with a family reunion in Saskatoon, so she made another brave leap to attend, thus connecting the dots between the Brazilian and Canadian families.
In the summer of 2016, two of Filip’s western Canadian great-grandchildren were encouraged by the few remaining grandchildren to consider marking his grave in some way. Marcus is the son of a daughter of a daughter of Filip’s and Karen is the daughter of a son of a son of Filip’s. In that way, Karen carries Filip’s family name, but Marcus is two name changes on. The two of them went to work tracking down their cousins. One email led to another and another; eventually there were 50 names on a circulation list.
Marcus contacted a funeral home in Weyburn about prices and procedures for gravestones in Hillcrest Cemetery. A stone was chosen. With a price in hand, the target was identified. Marcus and Karen began their family-exclusive crowdsourcing efforts with the Filip Heise Memorial Project Letter #1. Within a matter of hours, the first contribution had been e-transferred to a bank account from the Brazilian cousin. Each successive month, Marcus added information and reminders to a sequence of Filip Heise Memorial Project letters. It wasn’t long before the goal was achieved.
A great-granddaughter with graphic skills helped shape the design — simple but tasteful, with enough information to give visitors a sense of the man lying beneath. Since Filip’s descendants now stand on three continents, his great-grandchildren were inspired to find an epitaph that spoke of that expanse.
Although the gravestone had been installed, Marcus threw out one more test—was anyone interested in gathering at the new stone to dedicate it in Filip’s memory? Again, the positive response was immediate; he and Karen prepared a service for August 14, 2017, the date marking 65 years since Filip’s death.
Marcus kept it simple with an opportunity for those with memories to share them and with a request that people bring a pebble from home to mark their presence at this time. Twenty-seven descendants — grandchildren to great-great-grandchildren — gathered on a windy but sunny summer day to commemorate a simple man who had taken a bold step to emigrate from Europe to western Canada.
