Caretakers of the century-old cemetery in Ignace, Ont. are taking steps to learn more about the number of people actually buried there, and their identity.

The graveyard, near the CP Rail yards, has many headstones, but there are also several areas with plain stones in the ground featuring no inscriptions to mark a grave site, and in some cases there are no markers at all.

"It's just too bad that they're not all marked," said Cheryl Manchulenko, the chair of the cemetery committee during a visit to the graveyard.

"I understand why they couldn't be all marked. I mean, back then, people didn't have the money to buy markers."

Trees and other plants have grown through this grave that may belong to a young girl who drowned under a log boom. (Jeff Walters / CBC) The cemetery committee recently hired an expert from southern Ontario to scan the grounds using ground penetrating radar in order to determine how many unmarked graves are at the site. They hope to have those results in about three weeks.

"We don't know about these people that are unmarked," Manchulenko said, adding that a real bonus would be being able to identify any of them.

"We'll never know, but our goal is to mark them all."

A simple wooden cross, along with rocks, mark several graves. There are no inscriptions. (Jeff Walters / CBC) The graveyard, which was replaced by a larger cemetery on Davy Lake Road about 50 years ago, is separated into sections for Anglican and Catholic plots. The latter area features the foundation for a church that was never completed.

The site itself, located on Pine Street behind a local grocery store, is bordered by some streets, the remains of the foundation and a back lane.

"We're not even sure how far the burials extend outside the gates yet," said Coun. Chicki Pesola, who also sits on the cemetery committee, adding that one thing is for certain: that nobody is buried under the neighbouring back lane.

A flat rock with no inscription marks another grave. Officials with the Township of Ignace are trying to find out how many people are actually buried in the old graveyard, and who some of them may be. (Jeff Walters / CBC) Work to preserve the cemetery didn't begin in earnest until a few years ago when Manchulenko brought the issue before town council.

Pesola agreed that money and the community's relative isolation likely contributed to the modest ways in which the graves were marked decades ago.

"Maybe they weren't able to get headstones from other towns because of our locations," she said. "There's probably a few things, money being the main one."

Anybody with information on the cemetery is being asked to call the township office in Ignace.