Ottawa has no shortage of talented creatives, but few have a portfolio as eclectic — or as quietly remarkable — as illustrator Alisha Giroux. Best known for her work with the Royal Canadian Mint and her illustrations for more than 20 published board games, Giroux has built a career on bringing history and imagination to life. Now, she's turning that same eye toward something far more personal: the small, overgrown cemetery sitting on her family's farm.
A Passion Project Rooted in Family History
For Giroux, the cemetery isn't just a patch of land with old headstones — it's a doorway into her family's past. She has taken on the work of restoring the site, clearing away years of neglect and carefully documenting what she finds. Each stone represents a person, a story, a thread connecting her to generations she never had the chance to meet.
The project is part preservation, part artistic practice. Giroux uses her illustration skills to record what she discovers — capturing the weathered carvings, the faded dates, the worn inscriptions that might otherwise be lost to time. In doing so, she's transforming grief and history into something lasting and beautiful.
A Career Built on Craft and Storytelling
Giroux's path to this project runs through some impressive creative milestones. Designing for the Royal Canadian Mint requires an almost architectural level of precision — every detail must read clearly at the scale of a coin. That discipline carries over into her board game work, where illustration must serve both function and narrative, guiding players through imagined worlds.
It's a career that demands versatility, and Giroux has consistently delivered. But the cemetery project signals something different: an artist moving inward, using her craft not just for clients or commissions, but for herself and her family's memory.
Why This Work Matters
Small rural cemeteries across Ontario are quietly disappearing. Families move away, farms change hands, and the responsibility for maintaining these sites can fall through the cracks. Giroux's effort to restore and document her family's burial ground is part of a broader tradition of community preservation that resonates well beyond Ottawa.
For Ottawa residents with roots in the region's rural past, the project is a reminder of how much local history lies just off the main roads — in old farmsteads, in church records, in the names carved into limestone markers that predate Confederation.
Art as an Act of Memory
What makes Giroux's project so compelling isn't just the restoration work itself — it's the way she's chosen to engage with it as an artist. Rather than simply clearing brush and photographing headstones, she's drawing what she finds. Her illustrations transform fragments of history into something that can be shared, discussed, and appreciated by people who never set foot on the farm.
In a city that's growing rapidly and often focused on what comes next, Giroux's work is a quiet argument for slowing down and looking back. Ottawa's creative community has long included artists who draw inspiration from the land and its layered histories, and Giroux's latest chapter fits squarely within that tradition.
Her project is ongoing — and if her track record is any indication, the results will be well worth watching.
Source: CBC Ottawa
