Photo: Cemetery superintendent Ted Kubinec, historian June Kanderka, and renovation specialist Greg Kubinek with the church steeple that found new life in a remote rural cemetery east of Three Hills. Rural Alberta Report/David Nadeau

Last Sunday afternoon.

Nine miles east of Three Hills on pavement, then a mile north on gravel until you see a full-size church steeple in the middle of an old but well-kept graveyard.

No mistake. It's supposed to be there because it serves as a vital link between a Catholic church that no longer exists and its descendants.

This is St. Theresa's Lumni Church cemetery. Can't miss it with that restored 30-foot steeple soaring to a fabulous blue dome sky that superintends spring crops and gentle Kneehill County rolling hills.

Sunday, May 24, and the cemetery parking lot is busy, making room for 50 parishioners, area residents, and visitors from as far away as Calgary. They came for what might be the fifth or sixth annual cemetery blessing; that, coupled with finger food and an opportunity to lay flowers, pull weeds, share hugs, and visit deceased relatives, friends, and others who built farms and history decades ago.

Area historian June Kanderka is pleased to relate how the steeple was removed from the Lumni Church a few miles distant and taken to Greg Frolek's farm where he checked the architecture, re-shingled the beautiful structure, applied needed paint, and superintended stuccoing and its placement as a legacy cemetery landmark a year ago. The renovation bill was just over $3,000.

The Lumni church, founded in 1929 mostly by Slovak settlers, was closed in 2015 by the church's governing authority—the Catholic diocese of Edmonton. Its parishioners found other church homes, many in nearby Trochu. Adjacent to the church, also long gone: a school, teacherage, and stable. "At least," said one cemetery visitor on Sunday, "we still have the steeple to point us to our roots."

"We didn't think," said Frolek, "that keeping the beautiful-sounding bell in the Lumni Church steeple was a good idea in this isolated location, so we'll install it in the St. Anne of the Prairies Catholic Church in Trochu. That'll give their steeple two bells and we'll set them up to ring in synch!" 

The 99-year-old cemetery, owned by the Catholic diocese of Edmonton and locally operated, still welcomes interments.