{"id":699479,"date":"2026-05-28T14:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/699479\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T14:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T14:14:10","slug":"the-ottawa-illustrator-turning-centuries-old-graveyards-into-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/699479\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ottawa illustrator turning centuries-old graveyards into art"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2021, Ottawa illustrator Alisha Giroux sent her mother a text that read: \u201cMeet me in the graveyard. Bring a shovel.\u201d<\/p>\n

To anyone outside of the family, the message would be highly suspicious. Luckily, her mother knew exactly what she meant: Giroux had probably found another family headstone.<\/p>\n

Growing up on her family\u2019s farm in Glengarry, Ont. \u2014\u00a0a small Eastern Ontario community near the Quebec border \u2014 Giroux knew there was a family cemetery on the property. The land has been in her family since the late 1700s, with the first known interment happening in 1802. \u201cIt\u2019s 224 years ago, which is wild in terms of Canadian timelines,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, the cemetery is made up of 13 or 14 headstones on a small hill. For most of Giroux\u2019s life, the plot was simply part of the landscape; in the summer, the bush would get so overgrown you could hardly see it, Giroux says \u2014\u00a0while in the winters, just the tops of the headstones would appear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"TheA before and after image of a grave marker restored by Alisha Geroux at her family’s farm in Glengarry, Ont. (Courtesy Alisha Geroux)<\/p>\n

During the pandemic, Giroux left her Ottawa studio to spend more time at the farm. Strolling the cemetery with her dog, she began to wonder what lay under all the lichen. After researching headstone conservation \u2014 and finding \u201cthis whole community of headstone repair,\u201d she says \u2014 Giroux ordered a gentle cleaner and got to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese stones have been black my whole life,\u201d she says. \u201cThey wash up to white stones, and suddenly I could read them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Names, carvings and motifs slowly surfaced, such as that of Ellen Cameron, who died in 1882 at the age of 87. Cameron\u2019s stone has a willow tree carved into it, meaning she lived \u201cto a ripe old age,\u201d Giroux says. \u201cI was hooked immediately. This became my whole personality\u00a0\u2014\u00a0I dove in so hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the next three years, Giroux found new headstones, and even accidentally unearthed silver casket handles which she put right back, she says. \u201cSeeing all of this history and artistry and family names I’d never seen before was very satisfying.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

To help pay for stone repairs and plant new trees, Giroux made artwork connected to the cemetery, including glow-in-the-dark enamel pins and a small book about graveyard myths.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AnThe cover of “Grave Matters,” Alisha Geroux’s book about graveyard myths. (Courtesy Alisha Geroux)<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s not knee-deep in conservation work, Giroux is a freelance illustrator, working on projects with major companies from Farm Boy to Penguin Random House. She credits The Royal Mint for kick-starting her career; headquartered in Ottawa, the crown corporation produces Canada\u2019s circulation and collector coins. In 2014, while working with Ottawa design agency Greenmelon, Giroux created five loonie designs for special-occassion coins. The following year, half a million of those coins were released. \u201cTo this day, it\u2019s still crazy to think about,\u201d Giroux says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2018, the Mint approached her again, this time about a personal illustration she had made years prior, where each Canadian province was shown through animals \u2014 for example, British Columbia was shaped like a spirit bear and Ontario was shaped like a loon. The Mint asked if Giroux would re-create the designs as silver coins to commemorate Canada 150, to be sold for around $340 each.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

With a run of 2000, the coins were a hit, selling out within two or three weeks. The sales brought with them a flurry of media attention for Giroux, and her own prints sold out, too. \u201cIt was like a month of fame, which is super scary,\u201d she quips.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, Giroux is booked and busy in a field she didn\u2019t see coming: board games. It all began in 2023, when U.S.-based board game company Allplay came across one of her designs: a wolf in a forest with fire surrounding it. The company asked if she could make five more for a card game, and Giroux accepted, calling her entry into the industry a \u201chappy accident.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since then, Giroux has worked on about 20 published games. One of her biggest clients, U.S. based-Facade Games, recently commissioned artwork for a historical game set in Rome, just after the death of Julius Caesar. With the game\u2019s Kickstarter almost hitting $1 million, Giroux was able to hire her friend with a Roman history degree to help guide her on accurate visuals. \u201cIt was just a blast to work on,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Giroux splits her time between Ottawa and her family farm. Now that her family\u2019s cemetery is largely in maintenance mode, she has turned her attention to a nearby decommissioned Presbyterian church graveyard, volunteering to help restore the headstones there. She\u2019s at 40 out of 100 so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re a small group of volunteers that upkeep the grounds, and it’s brought me a lot of joy to be part of it,\u201d Giroux says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Giroux says she\u2019d love to one day publish her own game, inspired by her work with graveyards, with local ghost stories and myths. \u201cI\u2019m hoping to finish it by the end of this year, maybe Halloween if I\u2019m lucky!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2021, Ottawa illustrator Alisha Giroux sent her mother a text that read: \u201cMeet me in the graveyard.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-699479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}