Thursday 7 January 2010

MARBLE CHURCH # 2

Graveyard, Canadian troopsThe following quote is from a marble church publication:

Immediately to the west of the church is Kinmel Park, which was a military camp used by Canadian troops during the First World War. The churchyard contains the graves of numerous victims of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19 in the camp. On 4-5th March 1919 a riot occurred in the camp when the ship allocated to return the troops to Canada was diverted to carry food supplies to Russia, and five Canadian soldiers were killed in the disturbances and subsequently buried in St. Margaret's Churchyard; a common story is that they were executed for mutiny, but this has been denied by the Canadian Department of National Defence.

The picture above was taken in 2009 by Roy Turner of Rhyl. On a recent trip to Canada, Roy was able to tell council members in the town of Ajax, Ontario, about the graveyard and other connections between the Rhyl district and Canada.

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