Tag: Blog Update

Just a Quick Update

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It’s been a week since I have been back from vacation, and I am just now starting to feel settled back into my regular routine. It was great to take a break from work life and focus on relaxing and enjoying time with family. 

Although my vacation did get off to a rough start.

At the beginning of July, while visiting cemeteries in Cobalt, I picked up a bad case of poison ivy, except I didn’t realize it was poison ivy till about two weeks later. It spread quite a bit before I realized what it was. I was given some medication and spent most of July housebound, to try and heal up as fast as possible. 

This is a good reminder to always dress appropriately when exploring overgrown cemeteries! 

On top of that, a week before we were set to fly to Montreal, I also caught COVID-19. And because bad things usually happen in threes, the airline canceled our flight the night before our Monday departure and rescheduled it to a later flight on Tuesday. This change completely kiboshed our plans as we had appointments in Montreal booked for early Tuesday. We scrambled to try and make the trip work, regardless of all the challenges thrown at us, but alas it just didn’t work out. We had to cancel our whole trip. It was a huge bummer and left both my fiancé and I feeling defeated.

If we had made it to Montreal, I wouldn’t have had a chance to visit Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery after all. The labor strike is over, but due to the need for maintenance and cleanup, the cemetery is not open yet. As of this writing, their website states that site cleaning is only at 45% completion. I suspect that they will be opening in September sometime.

So the first week of my vacation was a bust. 

  • Just a Quick Update

I was able to enjoy the last week of my vacation, after finally testing negative for COVID. I enjoyed some beach days with my fiancé and a three-day trip with my mother. 

That being said, I have some great cemetery road trips and stone stories to share with you! Keep an eye out for some upcoming posts about visiting the second resting place of Tom Thomson, and seeing his artwork in person. We also made a stop to visit the grave of Billy Bishop, Canada’s own World War I flying Ace. We also had a chance to visit his childhood home which has been preserved as a historic house. 

Despite the medical setbacks, my summer vacation was still enjoyable, with lots of cemetery visits completed. The summer isn’t quite over, but I am starting to look forward to spending more time in cemeteries in the fall. I am also already starting to plan some fun spooky season content for the blog. There are only 79 days till Halloween after all!

I hope you have had a great summer so far too, and have been able to take some time to do the things that you enjoy. I would love to read about what you have been up to on your summer vacation in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

Blog updates & more…

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I realize I owe you all a blog post after missing last Sunday, but I don’t have anything that is quite ready to share with you yet. I have a few posts that I have been working on, but more research is needed. So instead, this will be an update, to share what I have been working on and what you can look forward to on the blog in the coming months. 

  • Blog updates and more

Most recently, I have been working on a piece inspired by Death’s Garden Revisited, edited by Loren Rhoads. My piece is about my own personal connection to cemeteries. After speaking with my Mother about the subject, it created more questions than answers. As we chatted we uncovered our own little family cemetery mystery, which sent me down yet another research rabbit hole. I’m sure you all will find that story very interesting. 

I have also been saving a cemetery story, especially for this month, as February is the anniversary of this local tragedy. I need a little more time to work through the research and sort through my photos from last summer’s road trip. That will be another post to look forward too.

Along with writing and creating content for the blog, I have also been taking an online course to sharpen my writing skills. The course is through Atlas Obscura and is called Historical Nonfiction: Research-based writing with Hadley Meares. This 4-week course promises to help you write historical essays using a research-based lens. I am on week 3 of the course and it has already solidified the good writing habits I already had while introducing new habits, methods, and resources to my writer’s toolbox. I look forward to sharing the article that comes from completing the course. 

Amidst all this writing I have also been updating the portfolio section of my website. I have posted many additions to my existing web portfolios and have added some new ones entirely. Sorting through, editing, and posting my archive of cemetery photos has been a great way to look back at all the cemetery adventures I have had over the years.

I have also been working on researching some new areas and cemeteries to visit. I have some great cemetery road trips already planned for this summer and can’t wait to get back on the road and photographing. I plan on visiting Owen Sound, for part two of Chasing Tom Thomson, while also stopping in at some fun interesting spots along the way. I also have another trip planned for early spring which will include my first visit to a loyalist cemetery, and seeing table stones in person. I’m pretty excited about that trip.

I have also been busy getting some submissions ready for a local photography contest, and a gallery showing. I am not quite sure how my cemetery work will be received, but I think they could be great opportunities to get my work out there, regardless of the outcome.

Hopefully, some of these upcoming posts sound interesting and will have you coming back to read more. As always, if you have any book or cemetery recommendations, or cemetery stories of your own to share, please leave me a comment or send me an email at hello@chantallarochelle.ca

Thanks for reading! 

Year in Review – 2022

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2022 has been a very good year for Cemetery Photography by Chantal Larochelle!

I wanted to take this opportunity to look back at some of the highlights and achievements from this past year.

My biggest goal for 2022 was consistency. It has been an issue that I have struggled with for years. I finally found myself working and maintaining a consistent posting schedule on the blog. The top 5 most viewed posts on the blog this year were: Haunted Cemetery Road Trip – The Beck House, A Gift Guide for Taphophiles, My Local Haunted Cemetery, Finding the abandoned Happy Valley cemetery, and 25 Cemeteries in the City of Greater Sudbury. It’s an amazing feeling to share these stories with you, and grow this passion project of mine.

2022 was a year full of adventure! I visited 78 cemeteries this year and was able to break my record for the number of cemeteries visited in one day—15. A personal best! I visited my first pet cemetery and went on many fun and fascinating cemetery road trips. There are a few that stand out, like hiking through Algonquin Provincial Park and finding the first grave of Tom Thomson. That was a bucket list trip for me, and one of my biggest adventures so far. A lot of planning and research went into that trip, and the journey was incredibly worth it. Spending the night at the haunted Beck House was another highlight for me. Haunted holidays with my fiancé are always my favorite, but this year will be hard to top. This beautiful victorian style mansion is beautiful on its own, but its history makes it even more interesting. We had an amazing visit and made sure to pay our respects to the Becks, at their family mausoleum. I look forward to sharing more cemetery road trip adventures from 2022 but I am excited to see what 2023 will bring.

I am amazed at the following I have been able to foster on my social media channels. Over 2 000 followers on Instagram! Wow, what a milestone! Thank you to everyone who has liked, followed, commented, and shared my social and website posts. It means the world to me. I am so proud to be part of the online cemetery community, and love connecting with like-minded taphophiles. Because of this, I have branched out from Facebook and Instagram to Flickr and Pinterest as well. 

Cemetery Photography by Chantal Larochelle, Top Nine images on Instagram for 2022

This year has also been one of recognition! I am so thankful to all those who have shared my posts and photos. Not only was I featured in the March 2022 Ancestor Hunting newsletter, under Links we like. I was also asked by the Sudbury Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society to write something for their newsletter. My post Cemetery Symbolism in Sudbury District Cemeteries was published in the December issue of Ancestor Hunting. My Gift Guide for Taphophiles also garnered some attention and was shared in the Association for Gravestone Studies November e-newsletter. 

I feel that I am continuing to grow in my writing and am slowly finding my voice. I love sharing my cemetery adventures and am so happy that I have found an audience. I hope to continue my growth as a writer into the new year, by honing my skills and sharing even more stone stories and insights.

Thank you to everyone who has followed along with me on this journey! Sharing my passion for cemeteries with you all has been an amazing experience. I look forward to continuing to share my photography and adventures with you and seeing what 2023 will bring.

Happy New Year Everyone!