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Irvin Payne’s roots in this area run deep, and he wants to make sure they are not forgotten. That’s why he puts so much time and energy into the Williamsport Cemetery.

Born on a cold January day in 1934 in a log house his grandfather, Wesley White, had built in Williamsport, Payne  attended SS#9 Chaffey until it closed in 1947.  

Payne’s family was no stranger to sorrow: his three-month-old brother died in 1936, followed by his mother when Payne was 13.

“She went for an operation and never came out,” Payne explains. “It was quite a shock.”

Both of them were buried in the Williamsport Cemetery with Payne’s grandmother and great-grandparents on his mother’s side. The funeral for his mother was the last one before the church adjoining the cemetery closed.

When he left school, Payne worked with his family cutting pulpwood to sell.  Later, he held a variety of jobs in the bush, including some with bigger companies like Muskoka Wood and Weldwood (now Tembec).

“I loved working in the bush,” he says. “I enjoyed that more than any job I ever had. It was hard work, wet work, cold work, but I loved it.”

In 1953 Payne met his wife Phyllis.

“I saw her walking up the street, and I said to my chum Don Irving, ‘See that girl there? There’s my girl,’” he recalls.

“What’s her name?” his friend asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” he replied.

Irvin and Phyllis were married June 18, 1955 and had four children, two boys and two girls.

Payne spent his last 20 working years in various jobs with the Ministry of Transportation.

“We started with nothing and still don’t have a lot, but what I’ve got I own,” he says.

When Payne’s youngest brother died at 19 in a car accident, Payne returned to the Williamsport Cemetery for the first time in years.

“A lot of old families had died or moved out and no one was looking after the cemetery,” Payne says. “There were big trees growing up. We worked for a day or more before my brother could be buried there. It was a mess.”

For the next few decades, Payne was busy providing for his family out on Hwy 60; he didn’t often go to the cemetery.

However, about three years ago Payne, now retired, became involved again when his younger brother Ivan died of cancer.

Ivan was cremated and there was no funeral at his request, but Payne created a monument in his brother’s memory. He bought a 20” by 12” plaque and set it into cement, then placed it in the family plot.

Payne also began working alongside his brother Wilbert to clean up the rest of the cemetery, cutting down trees that had encroached on the space and creating temporary markers for unmarked plots whose inhabitants are known.

He and Wilbert began mowing the cemetery regularly, and Phyllis planted some flowers and revived others that had been planted long before.

The space became so welcoming that before Payne’s sister-in-law died last May, she chose to be buried there as well.

Then, at the beginning of the summer, Payne decided the cemetery needed a proper sign. He worked on it for months, finding the materials, preparing them and then hand-carving it. The sign went up in early October.

Payne thinks it’s important to keep the memory of the original settlers alive.

“I would like to see someone else take more of an interest in the place,” he says, adding that the cemetery could really use a new fence.

“My granddad White and great-granddad Payne were forefathers who helped open up this country,” he says. “They need to be remembered. People put up things for war vets, why not settlers?”

Payne says he hopes someone will take over and look after the cemetery when he can’t anymore. It would be a shame for the history to be lost. “This graveyard’s got stories in it that you wouldn’t believe,” he says.