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Bill and Joyce Anaka spent part of the summer of 1996 creating an inventory of two dozen cemeteries in the RM of Good Lake, part of a project sponsored that year by the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society.

It was familiar territory for both of them, having grown up near the south end of the lake. Joyce's grandfather first came there in the 1880s because of the good grazing land, and the Gunn family became well-known to the area, including Yorkton, for Gunn's Beach, and later Gunn's store, which provided goods not only for the local rural residents and nearby Indigenous people, but for the many visitors to the lake in summer.

Now 97 years of age, Joyce recalls the summer of searching out cemeteries, some of them abandoned in bushes or plowed over, one of them in a rural road ditch, and creating an inventory of those buried there, at least where the names on headstones were recognizable or obtainable. 

She also talks about her family's history on the land that now forms part of Good Spirit Provincial Park. And we talk about the name of the lake. Back in those days, Good Spirit Lake was known locally -- and still is referred to today by many oldtimers -- as Devil's Lake. 

The RM of Good Lake website

Complete record of cemeteries compiled by Joyce and Bill Anaka in 1996 (49 pages)

Other cemetery records and maps of the RM

1920 RM map showing the lake as Devil's Lake

Saskatchewan Genealogical Society website

List of branches of the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society

An Interesting Summer Recording Cemeteries, by Bill and Joyce Anaka, published in the SGS Bulletin, December 1996

Introduction to Trading Post to Provincial Park (Gunn's Beach and Beyond), by Joyce Anaka

Cemeteries as they were in 1996

Stefanyshyn Cemetery, small abandoned fenced plot along fence line, used in the early 1900s, in the former Beblo School District


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