Spirit Lake Cemetery - Summer 2025 - Days 1-2

Nikki Simon

June 12th, 2025

The crack team in question. From left to right: Robyn, Marla, Nikki, Sarah and Stephanie

Before I start telling you all about what we're doing up here, I should probably give you a breakdown of our crack team. The two heads of the group and those who hold the permit for this project are Dr. Stephanie Calce, a forensic anthropologist from the University of Victoria, and Dr. Sarah Beaulieu, a GPR (ground penetrating radar) specialist from the University of the Fraser Valley. Making up the body of the team (or more accurately, the arms and legs) are biological archaeologist Dr. Marla McKinnon, Robyn Nakano and I, all from the University of Victoria. We all bring unique bodies of knowledge, perspectives, and skills to this project, which will be revealed to you through these posts.

Day 01 – Sunday, June 1st, 2025

Unfortunately, there wasn't much to be done on day one. Due to the relatively remote location of the site in Quebec and the sheer amount of equipment required for this particular project, it was going to take us a day and a half just to reach Spirit Lake. Some of our team members were coming from Victoria, and some from Vancouver, so, with a three-hour time difference, we weren't even in Ottawa until nearly 5 pm. Once we had arrived (minus Marla, who was already in Ottawa with her parents), we picked up our two rental vehicles, the first half of Sarah's equipment, including, arguably, the most critical piece — the GPR — from airport cargo, and made our way to our hotel.

If you know anything about these types of projects, you know that things inevitably tend to go sideways at one point or another. In fact, things had already started to go wrong before we even left British Columbia. The fact that everything went so smoothly on that first day tragically left us with a false sense of security.

Day 02 – Monday, June 2nd, 2025

On day two, we were up bright and early to pick up the remainder of our equipment and get on the long road to Spirit Lake. Unfortunately, due to the incompetence of Manitoulin Transport, our equipment ended up in two different locations, and we were immediately forced to split up. Stephanie and Robyn headed to Marla's parents' place to pick up Marla and all of Stephanie's equipment, while Sarah and I headed to Manitoulin to pick up the other half of Sarah's equipment, minus a tote that was mistakenly sent back to BC. By some miracle, by 7:30 am, we were all loaded up, secured and on our way.

There really isn't much to say about the drive to Spirit Lake from Ottawa; it's a scenic million-hour trip that takes you through farmland and a series of quaint small towns. You learn a lot about a person when you're stuck in a car together for over seven hours. In this case, Steph and Robyn learned that Marla has quite the talent for belting out '90s pop hits while jammed elbow to elbow in the front seat of their pickup truck. That said, we all managed to make it through alive. By 3 pm, armed with two bottles of liquor and our best French (which, for some of us, is only barely adequate), we found ourselves outside the house of the landowner. Also waiting, just up the hill across the street, were a team from the Ottawa Valley Search and Rescue Dog Association, but we'll circle back to that in a minute.

The first order of business was to meet with the landowner, introduce ourselves, inform him of the various tasks that we would be undertaking while on site, confirm that we have his permission to be there and do all of the things we had planned, and pass on our gifts as a sign of good faith and gratitude. We managed to accomplish this with only a minor amount of stumbling over and through the language barrier, and with his blessing, we were off!

The OVSARDA team. From left to right: Handler Tina, handler Susan, data specialist Bruno and handler Kim.

The second task was running the human remains detection dogs through the site. As I mentioned, OVSARDA were already waiting for us when we arrived, their team consisting of Kim, Susan and Tina alongside K9s Recce, Zappa and Raider. We had only a short time with OVSARDA, less than 24 hours, but we had several goals that we hoped to accomplish with their assistance.

1. We knew that the remaining fence cemetery surround was not original, but we were unsure if the perimeter of the cemetery had shifted at all with the replacement of the fence. So, we wanted the dogs to help establish a working perimeter.

2. We wanted to see where the dogs would TFR (trained final response) and if any of those spaces corresponded with areas we had already suspected to contain human remains.

There were other hopes and dreams for the K9 team, but these were the two primary questions that we needed answered for our project.

Now, the cemetery site itself is about a 1.25 km hike down a slightly swampy, forested path off the main property (a farm site), and before OVSARDA could even enter the site to do their work, Sarah and I had to go in and set up some equipment and Steph needed to come with us for her first introduction to the site, and to get an idea of the areas that the dogs would need to run. For Sarah and me, this walk was a somewhat bittersweet experience as we had already visited the cemetery the year before and had to walk that path MANY times with heavy equipment in tow.

Once we all reached the cemetery site (which was a bit of a trial to locate off the main path, and we initially overshot, to our embarrassment) Sarah and I gave Steph a brief tour of the site and Sarah showed Steph a proposed control area for the dogs to work through alongside the known cemetery site. The control area had to be a space that we were reasonably sure was free of human remains. For this purpose, Sarah had chosen a section that she had remembered from the previous year, located about 10 meters north of the cemetery entrance and off the pathway to the right, rather than the left, as with the cemetery. The control area contained what appeared to be the remains of a privy, a small collapsed building of some type, and various metal objects. Once this was done, Steph hiked out again to wait with the dogs while Sarah and I got to the equipment.

The first piece of equipment in question was an RTK (real-time kinematics) system, which is essentially a more accurate GPS system. The purpose of this system, in this case, was to collect the coordinates of any locations if/when the dogs TFR’d. The second piece of equipment was a Kestrel, which records wind direction, wind speed, humidity, temperature, pressure, altitude, etc. We planned to have OVSARDA run the site with the dogs at two separate times, once that afternoon and once first thing in the morning the next day, so the Kestrel was meant as a way to determine the impacts of different variables like temperature, wind speed and direction on the dogs’ ability to detect human remains.

Handler Kim and K9 Recce

Once we had everything set up, we messaged Steph to let her know that we were ready to proceed. While we waited, to make all things equal, we walked in and around the control area and spread our scent. Steph began leading the handlers and their dogs down the trail, one at a time, toward the site. First, Susan and Zappa, second, Tina and Raider and third, Kim and Recce. Each handler stopped about 20 meters back on the trail, an arbitrary staging area they had chosen in which to collar their K9s and let them know they had begun to work. They then proceeded on to Sarah and me at control area one. OVSARDA was not provided with any information beforehand that might bias their work or results, including spatial information about the site or features contained within, or any indication of which of the two sites was the control and which was the main site. Once the handlers reached us at the entrance to the control area, Sarah directed them to go in and see what they could find. The K9s were allowed to run that area, and then the handlers were directed to see if their partners could naturally detect the entrance to the cemetery up the pathway and lead their handlers into the second site without assistance from us. Then, each team ran the cemetery site, walked back to the farm, and the next team was sent in. During this process, the handlers were not allowed to communicate amongst their group about what had happened during their runs. They were only allowed to communicate with Bruno, the team's designated data specialist.

At this time, I’m not permitted to share the results of this exercise. However, I am able to share that all three dogs successfully located the cemetery pathway from the main pathway without any assistance from our team. During all three runs, Steph, Sarah and I followed behind taking photos and videos which could be analysed later, and Sarah input any TFRs indicated by the handlers with the RTK. Once this was complete, the last team and Steph headed back to the farm while Sarah and I cleaned up the equipment and headed out ourselves. In all, this took until about 6:30 pm.

We all reconvened at the farm, ordered significant quantities of pizza, and passed around the address to our Airbnb, where we would be living for the duration of our stay. Steph and OVSARDA then headed off to the house while Sarah and I retrieved the pizza. Now, where have Robyn and Marla been this entire time, you might ask? They had been tasked with checking us into the Airbnb, picking up groceries and organizing what were referred to as “The Bins.” These turned out to be several totes organized by task – two excavation bins, two documentation bins, one bin to hold completed documentation, and a sixth that held miscellaneous, less specialized equipment that wouldn’t be needed all the time, such as tarps and first aid. The organizing was still in process when the rest of us finally arrived, and so the house became an overstuffed, albeit cozy, pocket of pizza, people and equipment.

After a delightful dinner among friends, we spent some time discussing what had transpired during the first runs and making plans with the handlers for how we would approach the second runs the following morning. By this time, it was quite late, so the handlers and their pups departed for their own Airbnb, and the four of us prepared for what would be quite a long day of site cleaning and preparation on Tuesday.