If you saw someone walking into a cemetery with a shovel, a pickaxe and a long crowbar, you might call the police. If you noticed he also carried a level, you might put the phone down because you’d know it was probably Keith Elliott, and those are the tools of
his trade.
As a headstone restorer in Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, he’ll be in that cemetery for several hours, standing and gazing at the oldest headstones, running his hands over the growth of lichen and the deep cracks that have developed over the decades, even lying on the ground to get a good look at the base (after first assuring the heavy stone is not going to fall on him).
Turns out, however, that for a man who spends hours in cemeteries, many in remote rural areas, toppling grave markers aren’t the biggest occupational hazard.
“In my first year of doing headstone restoration, I got run over by a deer,” Elliott says. “I was down on my hands and knees, working. It was really quiet but I could hear this sound—kerthunk, kerthunk—and I looked up and here was this deer, just a little guy, coming towards me. I hit the dirt and he ran right over me. Little hooves on my butt and arms. You could hear his heavy breathing. He took off and I sat up. Then I wondered what he was running from!”
The monument man
The W. B. Wells Heritage Foundation, created in 1985 after the death of William Black Wells, supports the work of preserving the burial grounds and cemeteries of Cumberland County. Many rural churches, dating back to the 1800s, have their own cemeteries, and Elliott’s work began in 2016 with 11 stones at the cemetery of River Philip United Church, where the oldest stone dates back to 1790.
“It took me six or seven visits to do the stones,” Elliott, 48, explains. “You can only do so much then you have to leave and come back. It’s great there’s a foundation for this because it’s labour intensive.”
The stones get covered in mossy lichen, pitted from erosion, cracked from the cold or falling over after a frost heave. Birds poop on them and bugs lay eggs in the cracks. Elliott says there isn’t a cemetery in the country that couldn’t use hours and hours of work.
“It’s nice to preserve history and it’s meaningful to people.”
Elliott considers his solitary work in cemeteries peaceful, not creepy. It’s the ticks in the grass he worries about, not the dead buried beneath his feet, their lives and deaths marked by old limestone, granite and sandstone markers he cleans, fixes and restores.
“It’s rewarding to get in there and bring stones back for another generation. A lot of places are documenting graves now because people appreciate it.”
Elliott says he’s self-taught through trial and error; he now designs and carves custom headstones.
Connecting with history and mortality
Elliott’s work sometimes takes him outside of Cumberland County, where restoration work is funded through private donations and public grants. He’s often found at the large cemetery across from the mall in Truro, and he may not be alone.
“There’s always someone in there looking for a grave,” Elliott says. “You can tell by the look on their face that it’s really emotional to stand there and see the old stone. You can’t put a picture to the face, no one remembers them, so [the stone] is a way to make it real. Almost everyone, when they find a stone, they kneel down and touch it. They rub their hand over the lettering, over the carvings. I think that tactile interaction seals it.”
Restoring the very old headstones allows people to connect with their family history, but perhaps also their own mortality.
“I know in the grand scheme of things, there’s more pressing work in the world, but I think people are thinking more about where they come from,” Elliott muses. “People are thinking more about death now, it’s more on their mind. I know this sounds strange but if you take a walk in a cemetery, it’s kind of comforting. You see all these people who died of the flu or typhoid fever, so [death] isn’t anything new. That part shouldn’t scare us. There’s a small comfort in that.”
Having spent five years staring at the traditional carvings on the old stones, Elliott started designing and carving his own headstones. He’s a self-taught stone carver, learning the techniques and honing his skills through his work at the quarry in Wallace, on the north shore of Cumberland County.
Self-taught by trial and error
Born and raised in Wallace, Elliott returned to the area in 2004 with his New Brunswick-born wife (the couple now have two boys). He began working at the Wallace quarry, which was managed by his late uncle, Stan Flynn, who taught him how to make headstones from the quarry’s famous sandstone (Halifax’s city hall is built with Wallace stone).
“He gave me pointers, but mostly I’m self-taught through trial and error,” Elliott says. “You have to get your hands in there and do it and figure out what works for you.”
Over the years, he’s also discovered what best suits the stone and as a result, Elliott has changed the way he restores and creates headstones. For one thing, he now puts stones on a wide base, whether he’s resetting one that has fallen over or installing a new one.
“A lot of the headstones are on a long, narrow base, but we have frost, so they topple over. Why are they so narrow? Probably because they were made in England hundreds of years ago where there is no frost. You can’t fight the frost but you can delay the stones toppling over.”
He also changed the way he cuts and carves sandstone—his stone of choice—because he better understands the layers in the stone. He said when sandstone comes out of the quarry, it’s difficult to tell which way the “bed” is so it was called free stone, since they believed it could be carved in any direction.
But, Elliott explains, “Sedimentary stone has beds. When you take it out of the ground and stand that piece up, it can de-laminate. If you take it out of the ground the way it was laying there and turn it into a monument, it’s going to last a lot longer.”
Elliott has incorporated this new knowledge into his work as a stone carver, allowing the stone he works to guide his tools and his imagination.
With two young boys in school, Elliott worked at the Wallace quarry in the winter and engraved decorative stones at his home workshop during the summer and fall. The winter of 2021 was the first season in nearly 20 years he didn’t work at the quarry.
Keith Elliot’s work results: a gravestone before (left) and after he has worked on
“After Christmas, I decided I would do things around the house that I’d been putting off and I wouldn’t do anything creatively. Nothing. For the whole winter,” he laughs. “Things started to pile up in my head, ideas and things I wanted to try. It was good. In the spring, I had all these things I wanted to do then people starting coming to me for stones. I’ve done more new, different carvings this year than I’ve ever done, and there’s more.”
He says people are asking for the old symbols, like angels, but in modern, cleaner styles.
“You’re looking at them all the time so they do inspire. And there’s more I want to try.”
As his reputation as a monument man grows, Elliott wonders about taking a course in grief counselling because he can tell when someone isn’t ready to create a grave marker.
“Some people think they should do it, but they’re not ready. I tell them to come back. I don’t want anyone to rush into it. I think they’ll make a better decision when they wait for when they want to...not when they feel they have to.”
One of those custom orders pushed his artistry and his instincts further than he’d ever gone as he provided his interpretation of what a mother wanted for her deceased son. It was a five-piece project with engraving on three of the pieces, using sandstone from the Wallace quarry.
In a post on his Instagram account last July, Elliott described how he felt about completing the installation of that lengthy project: “After the final touches today, I felt like someone dumped a truckload of emotions onto me,” he wrote. “I’ve never experienced anything quite like that before with a piece of work.
“It’s always a privilege to provide a lasting tribute for someone.