Buying the right and interest, meant purchasing another settler’s claim before full payment had been made to the Canada Company; a common but risky practice that allowed land to change hands as fortunes shifted. Money remained scarce, and survival often depended on labour beyond one’s own farm. Fortunes could be gained or lost in a season or at the hands of an illness.

I’ve always carried this quiet belief that no one truly wants to be forgotten. Even the humblest life holds a hope; that someone, somewhere, will remember we were here. That we mattered, that our story didn’t simply dissolve into the soil, or drift away on the winds of time. It’s that belief, that has shaped me for years, but it wasn’t until recently that it became something more than a feeling. It became a responsibility. My journey into the unmarked graves of St.Marys began