A photograph provided by Curt Tugnum portrays his great grandparents John and Elizabeth Parry near the turn of the 20th Century with their two daughters, Nora and Elizabeth. After searching historical records, Tugnum located John Parry's unmarked grave in Medicine Hat last year.--Supplied Image
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Curt Tugnum will travel to Medicine Hat next month to mark the long-forgotten, now-found grave of his great grandfather, Northwest Mounted Police Const. John Henry Parry, at Hillside Cemetery.
It has been a much longer journey for Tugnum, a former 32-year member of the RCMP who like many others became interested in genealogy in retirement.
He became fixated on what was an obscured history for his paternal great grandparents.
Research revealed that Parry worked in the late 19th Century at Regina Depot training facility where Tugnum retired as chief superintendent in 2005, then to homesteading and illness.
Parry, destitute and a widower at age 38, died of tuberculosis in 1908 just three days after arriving at sanatorium in Medicine Hat. The $3 funeral costs, not including a stone, were handled by the Medicine Hat Hospital.
“It’s helped me put it all where it needs to be,” Tugnum told the News on Friday during a phone interview from his home in Kamloops.
“I couldn’t say it better than there’s some satisfaction and it’s gratifying” to have pieced together the family’s history, he said.
“But it’s a bigger story than that.”
He found the numbered gravesite thanks to the “outstanding” work of administrators at the city-operated cemetery, and visited it last fall with his wife.
“It was quite emotional just to stand there, and I knew that we had to do something more.”
That will occur in mid-June with a graveside service and the placing of a tombstone provided by Medicine Hat Monumental.
It will include the NWMP crest, Parry’s regimental number (No. 3099), the dates 1870 to 1908, but also “Found 2024” and “We embrace you – Now Rest”.
The service is being arranged in part by Heinz Hauser, of Redcliff, who leads the Cypress Hills Division of the RCMP Veterans Association.
He told the News the group exists to support former members and that includes attending and caring for the gravesites of former members.
He expects a solemn occasion, with RCMP presence and fitting observance.
Tugnum said as well that he considers it a duty to take on marking the resting spot and recognizing his service and as founding a family with deep policing roots.
The family’s history though, is not a happy one, Tugnum discovered, but one torn apart by tuberculous.
The disease forced the family to abandon its farm east of Regina and eventually killed both Parry and his wife Elizabeth.
Tugnum’s grandmother, Nora, was a three-year-old at the time the two children were split up and adopted. The disease eventually killed Tugnum’s great aunt, also named Elizabeth, at age 10.
“I am honoured to have done this work for my great grandfather,” Tugnum concludes in an essay that details his findings. “If there was only some way for him to know that his only surviving child gave life to nine children and each of those children gave life to many grandchildren and so on.”
Other generations and “my grandmother would be pleased … to learn about the man she could not possibly remember.”
“Most importantly, my wife and I know this is right,” Tugnum said.
John Henry Parry was born in Wales in 1870 and emigrated to Canada to work as a painter in 1891. He joined the NWMP three years later – at a time the chapel at Regina Depot was reconstructed, then was employed with the Moose Jaw police and as a commercial artist.
After meeting his wife, a widow with children of her own in the early 1900s, the couple farmed east of Regina before the family was broken up by illness.
“One of the questions was always, ‘How did he wind up in Medicine Hat,'” said Tugnum. Clues came from a letter found in Parry’s RCMP service file requesting financial assistance from the Regina Detachment, but apparently was never acted upon.
He believes a family friend escorted Parry to Medicine Hat, which was renowned for his tuberculous treatment, in February 1908, and burial records confirm his death shortly thereafter, but little else about the burial.
Questions about religious service at the time, attendance or marker will no longer need an answer after next month’s service.
