Fernhill Cemetery is a good place to start to find the resting place of people who have been key to our history. Several prominent politicians are buried here, including two Fathers of Confederation, William Steeves and Samuel Tilley. Robert Foulis and Wallace Turnbull, both engineers who had inventions that were important worldwide, can also be found here. Foulis invented the steam powered foghorn that would have saved countless lives and Turnbull invented the variable pitch propeller which was very important in improving efficiency of airplanes. Fernhill is also home to a few war heroes and at least one notorious murderer, John Munroe, a prominent architect in Saint John who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his mistress Maggie Vail and her daughter, a story that scandalized Saint John in the late 1860’s.
Cemeteries can also force us to face some of the less savoury aspects of our history. The first Canadian-born Black lawyer, Dr. Abraham Beverley Walker, is buried in the Church of England cemetery on Thorne Avenue in Saint John. Dr. Walker was born in Kars Parish in 1851 and received his law degree in Washington, D.C.. When he returned to New Brunswick, the overt racism of the time denied him the chance to practice law and instead he became a magazine publisher and a civil rights advocate.