Graveyard tour guide shares stories of Regina cyclone victims

Leading a group of people between graves, Kenton Dejong shows tourists the moss-covered headstones marking the burial sites of the Regina cyclone’s victims.

The cyclone tore through Regina on June 30, 1912. It is considered the deadliest tornado in Canadian history, killing 28, injuring 300, and leaving thousands homeless.

“It’s tragic,” Dejong said. “It’s so sad, because it’s like a library of names, a library of stories here in the cemetery.”

Dejong said his tour is meant to share more about the victims who died tragically when the cyclone swept through the city.

Listen to Dejong on Behind the Headlines:

“It’s so frustrating for me because you go to a grave site, this person died. That’s all we know is that they died,” he said. “We don’t know where they are from. We don’t know where they went. We don’t know who they were, just that they lived here and they died, and that’s just so sad.”

The tour includes the graves of 17 of the cyclone victims within the Regina Cemetery on Fourth Avenue and Broad Street. During his research, Dejong said he discovered that some of the dates of death were labelled incorrectly on the headstones, and one victim was even buried under the wrong name.

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“It’s sad, because the stories are already so fragmented, and now it just gets more so because of these missing records,” he said.

Dejong said there is no official record on how long the tornado lasted, but it is believed to have torn through the city in a matter of minutes.

The tornado formed on a hot summer day, and swooped through southern Regina and around the Legislative Building on it’s way through the city.

The cyclone descended upon the city at Lorne and Smith Street where many of the victims died, before making its way north outside of the city limits.

On the tour, Dejong shared the information that is known about the some of the victims.

Arthur Donaldson was out walking his dog when the storm barrelled down upon him, blowing his dog a block away, Dejong said. Donaldson sought shelter underneath a veranda, but it collapsed, killing him. The dog waited for his master’s body to be recovered, tagging along to the funeral parlour. Dejong said reports show that the dog only left after the funeral.

The tour guide also acknowledged a rumoured Titanic connection in the cemetery.

The story claims that Frank and Bertha Blenkhorn were newly married, and were set to board the “unsinkable” ship, but missed the voyage after an alleged evening of partying.

Dejong said that while the story is interesting, it is untrue. He found documentation that the couple boarded the RMS Titanic on March 2, 1912.

In the cyclone, they were crushed to death against the side of the building that served as Regina Central Library, according to Dejong.

Even 112 years after the cyclone rocked Regina, Dejong said he wants the victim’s stories to be remembered.

“We want to make these stories come alive. We want to carry this forward,” he said. “Even if just a couple of them are remembered after the tour is over, that’s just so much more than when the tour is started.”

While Dejong said there are some memorials for victims around the city, he would like to see plaques on the buildings where each victim died.

Dejong has been doing cemetery tours for a few years. The money raised on the tours is returned to the City of Regina so crews can fix headstones and maintain the cemetery.