The colourful Irish immigrants buried at St. Michael's Cemetery included Patrick Boyle, founder of the Irish Canadian, a predecessor of The Catholic Register. Boyle spent several months in jail in 1869 accused of playing some part in the political  murder of Thomas D'Arcy McGee by Fenian Irish nationalists.

Boyle always claimed he and his paper weren't Fenian. The wink that went with the claim must have looked like a seizure.

Just how divided Toronto was on sectarian lines comes through at the grave of Matthew Sheedy, a 23-year-old who was pitchforked to death in a St. Patrick's Day melee at the National Hotel in 1858. The cause of death listed in the cemetery register simply reads: "Killed by an Orangeman."

Hailing from County Clare, one of Canada's greatest sports heroes is buried under an impressive monument. William J. O'Connor was a world record holder in rowing and training partner to Ned Hanlan. Despite his success he died at 30 of typhoid fever in 1892.

Hanlon earned a living keeping a tavern. Eugene O'Keefe earned much more than a living running Canada's largest and most successful brewery.

There's a fair chunk of the archdiocese of Toronto that exists thanks to the generosity of O'Keefe. He bought an old Protestant church in response to the first wave of Polish immigrants to Toronto to establish St. Stanislaus Kostka parish. He and a few fellow Irish businessmen bought the land for Mount Hope Cemetery. He also bought the land where St. Augustine's Seminary sits. He was the first director of the Catholic Church Extension Society, which eventually became Catholic Missions In Canada.

Not all the Irish buried at St. Michael's were rich industrialists like O'Keefe and George Washington Kiely, whose Toronto Street Railway Company eventually became the Toronto Transit Commission.

A green swath of carefully tended grass at the west end of the cemetery appears empty but in fact contains thousands of the very people O'Keefe and others tried to help through the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Though there are no markers, Catholic Cemeteries Archdiocese of Toronto still maintains careful records of where everyone is buried in the potter's field.

The most prominent structure on the property is the Dead House, where the sexton kept bodies through the winter until the ground was soft enough to dig new graves. The elegant octagonal building was designed by the only architect ever elected mayor of Toronto, Joseph Sheard. When Sheard was foreman of public works for the city he refused to build gallows to hang Samuel Lount and Peter Matthew, two leaders of the 1837 Upper Canada Rebellion.

St. Michael's Cemetery, the third Catholic cemetery established in Toronto, has been closed since 2005. Group tours can be arranged in advance by calling Catholic Cemeteries at (416) 733-8544.