The mystery surrounding the burial place of an 18th-century North-West Mounted Police constable from North Bay has been solved.
This week a ceremony was held in Union Cemetery on Golf Course Road to honour his memory and mark his grave.
Cst. William Sache served in the NWMP from April 17 1882 to March 19, 1886. He was posted to Fort MacLeod Alberta during the North West Rebellion of 1885, a violent, five-month insurgency against the Canadian government, fought mainly by Métis and their First Nation allies.
He paid $50 to be discharged early from his five-year term of enlistment so he could return home to work on the family farm near Port Hope, Ontario.
In 1888 he moved to the North Bay area and became a pioneer resident in Widdifield Township, serving on its council and school board.
Sache died on February 17, 1924, and was buried in Union Cemetery in an unmarked grave close to other family members.
His grave was found because part of the RCMP act is that graves of former members are inspected yearly. "We make sure the graves are kept in good condition, and so veterans have taken this duty over from RCMP," said Glen Oickle President - RCMP Veterans Association -Georgian Bay Division.
"It's important because he served in western Canada as part of suppressing the Louis Riel rebellion so this is truly a piece of Canadian history that needs to be recognized by people, and so that's why we're here to pay honour to his life and his service to Canada."
Grave markers have a notation denoting that the person served in the NWMP/RCMP. Currently, seven known grave sites in the North Bay area are inspected annually to ensure they are in good shape. Cst. Sache's grave site will be the eighth.
Finding the unmarked grave has been the passion of former RCMP member John McIntyre for three years now. The RCMP veteran checked graves in this area and knew he was missing Cst. Sache because the grave was unmarked. He knew it was in Union Cemetery and was determined to find it.
"As I went checking all the other graves I saw the markers and regimental numbers and it started to bother me that there was one of our members here in an unknown grave that also deserved a marker," McIntyre told BayToday. "We started researching and we had to narrow down where he was actually buried because there's several unmarked graves in this area. Now we know he's here it's almost like the completion of a story."
About 40 people were at the ceremony including several of Sache's relatives, some travelling from Edmonton, Ottawa, and Kitchener Waterloo.
"There's are so many of them here. It meant something to them, and adds something to us," said McIntyre.
One of those relatives was Linda Sache-Berard, the oldest great-granddaughter of William Sache.
"Oh it's wonderful," she said with a broad smile on her face. "My mother thinks he joined the Northwest Mounted Police because his great great grandfather was an Irish Dragoon from Ireland. He was at the Battle of Waterloo. His father was in the Battle of Crimea."
That fits the profile of men who joined the NWMP adds Glen Oickle,...those seeking adventure.
"it was pretty meagre conditions. Members served on horseback, they lived in barrack conditions, They had minimal pay, their food was second rate, to say the least, but they did everything they could to keep the country peaceful. A lot of young men signed on for the sense of adventure and to see the frontier as it was then. Members didn't serve that long. They were in the force for a number of years and then they returned to their other occupations as farmers or whatever they were. But it attracted people from all walks of life."
RCMP Chaplain Gerry McMillan describes himself as a "history buff" and says Sache was known as a "good man, who served well."
"What is so exciting about this is that the family has an 89-page diary. It's very difficult to understand some of it, but family members tell me that he wrote a lot of times quickly while riding a horse. So it's almost like you knew him, like you're there through his eyes through his writing at that time of Canadian history. But it's just fascinating. He talks about riding the horse, he talks about chasing after horses that got away, you know, all the things that police officers do. "
McMillan says Sache helped subdue the Northwest Rebellion, a "dark time" in our history that "should never ever have happened."
"The indigenous were suffering from the loss of the buffalo, at the same time they were starving they were insecure because they lost their homeland. They went to government agents for help but they were turned away, and then of course an uprising began. Many of the Northwest Mounted Police cared for the Indigenous people and the sad thing is they got caught in between the government's actions or inactions.
"So he was a part of that. One of the most difficult days that he had was when he came upon the Frog Lake massacre. He would have seen the bodies of military people, many Indigenous, civilians, and two Catholic priests. It must've been shocking."
As a result of the efforts of numerous RCMP veterans, after 100 years of being at rest at Union Cemetery, Cst. William Sache , Regimental Number 774 now has a grave marker denoting his service in the North West Mounted Police so many years ago.
