Today, you enter the cemetery from either the West entrance off Beechwood Avenue, or the East entrance off St. Laurent Boulevard. However, visitors to Beechwood in the nineteenth century, entered from the Northwest through the main gate once located in the wooded area captured in the video.

The rural cemetery was designed to be a romantic landscape that emphasized beauty within nature. These spaces existed in stark contrast to the urban landscape of their surrounding cities from which their visitors came.

At Beechwood, and other rural cemeteries of the nineteenth century, romance was found in more than just their landscapes. Rural cemeteries were public spaces in which young people could spend private time together.

Erected in 1873, it is the first monument erected at Beechwood, and among the first monuments in Ottawa. For any visitor of Beechwood in the nineteenth-century the Forsyth Monument was a highlight on their walk through the cemetery.

Topley left behind an important legacy in the photographic history of Canada and Ottawa, and that included Beechwood. His photographs allowed people from far away to see Ottawa, to envision it. Topley even photographed the Forsyth Monument.

Barrack’s Hill Cemetery was created in 1828 and located in today’s downtown Ottawa. Until the 1840s, Barrack’s Hill continued to be the main burial place for Ottawa’s canal workers and their families. Human remains from Barracks Hill Cemetery were discovered in 2013 and reinterred at Beechwood in 2017 and 2019.