FUNERALS
Take a look at both old and emerging funeral practices in Canada, though it turns our what's "new" is really just a timeless ritual being reclaimed by modern Canadians...
Pierce Brown
Insight on Brantford funerals
contributer TAYLOR BERZINS
“We do have a funeral booked on Wednesday so don't fret, if you see other vehicles in the lot.”
The words rang out in my head.
I felt my hands shaking as I pulled into the McCleister Funeral Home parking lot, I had never really been to a funeral before, so I wasn’t sure how to act cool. Would people be upset if I came into the funeral home during their event? Was it going to be weird? Where would we do the interview?
Walking through the cleanly ploughed parking lot to the front of the building, the door swung open before I had the chance to ring the bell.
“Hello Taylor,” a voice called, ushering me into the funeral home.
Pierce Brown and I had been in touch for months trying to organize an interview. It was nice to be able to put a human form to the familiar Facebook account and email address I’d been contacting for months.
Pierce welcomed my project partner, Mia, and I downstairs to a room typically reserved for organizing funeral arrangements and then in an act of unabashed courtesy, he rushed away to grab us glasses of water.
The room we sat in had plush, pink hued carpets and grey-blue walls. A mahogany desk sat at the head of the room, and a large mahogany table adorned the center of the space, which is where we sat. A calming painting of a riverside at fall hung in an ornate gold frame on the wall across from us. The windowless room was lit by a collection of lamps.
A tall shelf on the left wall housed a fancy urn and a photo of sample floral arrangements, next to the shelf sat a short, matching bookshelf cluttered with massive three ringed binders and brochures.
The cigarette burn on the cushion of my chair seemed both entirely out place, yet right at home.
Mia Vamos-Yuhasz
Brown defies popular conception of what a funeral director should be. He is young and very sincere.
At 27, Pierce has been in the business professionally for four years. Roughly half of all funeral directors leave the industry within their first five years on the job.
Pierce believes that his particularly youthful appearance is both a blessing and a curse. At times families who seek his services at McCleister Funeral Home view his age as a symbol of freshness and innovation.
Others test the waters to see whether or not he’s up to par.
“Once they sort of get the idea that you know your stuff, or that you went to school and you’re properly trained, they sort of back off with it, and they understand, they actually trust you and they know that you’re going to do whatever it takes to help them out,” Pierce explains.
Pierce realized he wanted to be a funeral director around the age of 16, noting that he’s always had a curiosity about what happens when someone dies. The catalyst for Pierce however, was the death of his grandfather. Due to the funeral being in Germany, Pierce was unable to attend, and felt helpless as he watched his family go through the emotions surrounding loss. He understood that he wanted to help other people navigate their way through grief.
“Everyone kept asking me what I want to do, and I was sort of known as the funeral guy. So at all of my jobs, at school, I was the funeral guy,” Pierce explains.
Pierce’s job entails that he follow the dead from the point of picking them up at their place of passing all the way through to the closing of their grave.
"So at all of my jobs, at school, I was the funeral guy."
Pierce describes, “I make sure that nothing goes wrong from start to finish.”
According to Pierce, the average traditional funeral with the full casket, and full burial can run anywhere from $8,500 to $12,000 on average.
McCleister Funeral Home is an independent establishment, and unlike some other funeral homes, staff here does not make commission.
In Ontario, 75 per cent of people opt for cremation and 25 per cent pursue the traditional full-burial option.
Mia Vamos-Yuhasz
A lot of people assume that cremation is a more cost effective means of disposition, however Pierce notes that sometimes a cremation or memorial service can be more costly than a traditional full body burial, citing that it really depends on the casket you pick.
“I think it’s just because it’s the tradition today. Cremation allows for a little bit more of a delayed service,” says Pierce. “Sometimes there’s only things that embalming can do for temporary purposes.”
It is in fashion for families to have their loved ones cremated quickly, without seeing the body.
“A lot of people almost have that disconnect with their loved one almost immediately, where that if they do cremation and they don’t have to have an open casket, or they don’t do a private family gathering before cremation takes place, they automatically have that disconnect. They leave out that step where they have to say goodbye.”
Pierce believes that it is imperative to continue articulating to the community the value in funeral services.
“We get a lot of families that get this sort of disconnect almost, that even though it’s their loved one, they sort of have that disconnection sometimes. Some people don’t, which is great to see, but some people almost automatically disconnect,” Pierce explains. “Which is a little sad, because they call instead of saying, ‘has my mom been transferred over,’ or ‘can we do this for my mom,’ or ‘can we do this for dad’, they will refer them as the body or the deceased. Which, to me, doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, because that’s still your loved one, that’s still your parents.”
Working in the industry, Pierce has come to know that everyone handles grief and shock differently.
Pierce explains that it is his job to try to accommodate the family as much as possible, describing that every family is different and in turn every funeral is different in their own way.
“People are starting to realize they can do customizations. People have this belief that when they come to a funeral, it has to be very doom and gloom,” says Pierce. “The funerals where they’re not identical, but it’s the same thing day in and day out, we refer to them as cookie cutter funerals, because it’s literally the exact same sort of service that you’re doing, just with a different family.
“So we do tend to try and customize as much as possible.”
Funeral directors can help families learn about customizations, like balloon releases, casket dressings, or music requests. Funerals can be broadcast via Skype for distant loved ones, or filmed and distributed to those who could not attend in person.
Pierce explains that the modern casket has a lot of room to be individualized. Caskets can have ornate and customized corner pieces, customized lining interiors, or decals that you can place inside of your casket that go inside of the lining of the head panel.
In regards to cremation, funeral homes offer scatter urns (although they do not formally condone scattering ashes outside of designated cemetery scatter areas).
I ask Pierce about the music playing in the lobby of the funeral home.
“I changed the music today because we had Andrea Bocelli and it drives me nuts,” Pierce laughs.
The funeral home plays soft music throughout their open hours.
"I changed the music today because we had Andrea Bocelli and it drives me nuts,”
“We traditionally have some sort of piano serenade or instrumental soothing music to avoid that awkward silence.”
Pierce explains that the space supports iPods, and promotes any family that wishes to play custom music during their service to do so.
“It makes it personal for the family, but it also gives us a nice break in between.”
Single day services are becoming a new trend in the industry.
“We are seeing an up rise in same day funerals, where they do one to two hours of visitation and then the service and then graveside afterwards. It just seems to be the new protocol, or the new norm for a lot of families that find it a bit more practical,” says Pierce.
A traditional funeral has two days of visitation followed by a service on the third day.
Although it is common to purchase your casket directly from the funeral home, Pierce explains that families that are looking to save money sometimes order caskets from online vendors.
Wal-Mart and Costco both sell funeral wares. Unlike the United States where the products are often on display in stores, Canadians can still buy these discount wares directly online.
Pierce explains that the only hang-up with this plan is that because the funeral home does not have a direct contract with these suppliers (like they do with the casket manufactures they promote internally), the family must be present for the casket’s delivery or they will not unload it from the truck.
Pierce describes that this process ensures that the correct casket has in fact been delivered and that it is free from flaws or scrapes before they begin casketing a loved one.
Sometimes families do not claim the remains of their loved ones, and Pierce believes that it could be because it is sometimes too hard to return to the space when you are grieving. On occasion, remains also go unclaimed because their deceased’s loved ones have passed on or because their loved ones are now in nursing homes and suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s and are not fit to help with such processes.
Legislation dictates that a funeral home must hold onto cremated remains for a year, and then they can inter the remains in a common plot.
Every cemetery has a space for unclaimed remains.
Pierce invites us to view the room set up for families to select their caskets or urns. The room maintains the same blue-grey walls, but is much brighter due to overhead lighting. The room reminds me of something I’d imagine an ancient mummy’s tomb to resemble, the caskets are laid out in tiers and the urns stand on pillars and in glass cases.
Mia Vamos-Yuhasz
All of the wares are arranged with their price tags visible. Pierce explains that there aren’t any oversized coffins on display, but that they are available through the funeral home.
The green casket sold at McCleister sits amongst the display of cremation containers. The casket is free from glues, dies, and metals. Pierce explains that the green casket is a vegan option because it does not contain any animal products.
Pierce explains that during cremation, everyone must go through the retort (the cremation device) in a container, because the operators are not licensed to touch the dead. In Canada only members of the immediate family and funeral directors are legally allowed to touch the deceased, outside of the medical field.
Cremated remains vary in weight based on bone density and the thickness of the container in which you pass go through the machine. Pierce explains that some families opt to send their loved ones through in full sized caskets with ornaments, however it is most common to select a basic cremation container.
If a family decides not to purchase an urn, the remains will be put into a bag and envelope for them to pick up.
According to Pierce, he big names in caskets are Batesville and Victoriaville.
McCleister Funeral Home is typically open from 9am to 9pm, and there is a director on call 24 hours each day, and Pierce explains that the hours a funeral director keeps are long.
“It can definitely wear you down because the hours are long, but at the end of the day, you sort of look at that, all I did was go to work. I didn’t lose a family member, the people that I’m dealing with here, their day is worse than mine,” says Pierce.
Pierce describes a “special ember,” in people who do well in the death industry. Be it hospice care, or funeral directing, Pierce believes that the people who succeed in the death industry are the ones who do it for ethical reasons.
“I like helping people at a time that is possibly one of the worst times that are in their life. There’s no better feeling in the world than knowing that you made a difference and that you helped that family out.”
As we leave the funeral home, the upstairs is abuzz with a crowd attending a service. Despite garnering insight into the reality of funerals, it still feels out of place to be there. We rush out with our camera gear and recorders, as a staff member politely holds the door open.
The cold March air nips at my nose as I scan the packed parking lot, hoping to avoid impeding any funeral goers. I am glad I am at McCleister under the terms I am, and hope that I do not have to return to a funeral home for a long time. Although now, I know I will be able to tread this waters much more certainly having spent an afternoon with Pierce Brown.
Graphic made by Taylor Berzins via Piktochart
Source: documents provided by Pierce Brown
The Home Funeral Movement
contributer MIA VAMOS-YUHASZ
Several of our more avant-garde sources, especially Rochelle Martin, turned us onto the fact of the home funeral movement, in which families are reclaiming the process of saying goodbye to their loved ones. Below we've documented what this movment is about, and how you too can hold a home funeral.
Natural Burial
An eco-friendly end to life
contributer MIA VAMOS-YUHASZ
It was a beautiful, blue morning when I hopped into my car for a long drive out to Meadowvale cemetery in Brampton, Ont. Meadowvale offers all your typical burial services: ground burial, cremation, and even mausoleum entombment, but it also offers something special–natural burial.
Natural burial is the truly eco-friendly option for your corpse. It’s all about returning your body to the earth so that it can decompose naturally, allowing the nutrients in your body go into the earth and feed the soil.
This burial process is chemical-free: your body will not be embalmed, and if you are buried in a coffin or shroud it must be made from all-natural, biodegradable materials. The natural burial space is also chemical-free, and left to be as wild as possible. At Meadowvale, the grass is never cut except to create pathways throughout the gravesites, and that’s the only amount of maintenance that goes into the space.
Natural burial is also a more cost-effective burial option. Though the eco-friendly coffin Meadowvale offers still costs a good $1,600, shrouds can cost only a few hundred dollars, depending on where they’re purchased.
Meadowvale is one of only four cemeteries in Canada to offer natural burial. There is a site at Duffin Meadows in Pickering, Ont, which is one of Meadowvale’s sister sites. There is also a site at Union Cemetery in Cobourg, Ont. The other site is at Royal Oak Burial Park in Victoria, BC.
When I first arrived at Meadowvale I was taken aback by its size and scope. Driving through the site I wasn’t surprised that there was a natural burial section, as there seemed to be a section for everything. Meadowvale is non-denominational, so it can cater to just about everyone and anyone.
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
Photos by Mia Vamos-Yuhasz
After taking a quick drive through the cemetery I parked at the main office and met with Hamees Hassan, assistant manager at Meadowvale, to get a guided tour of the natural burial site. Hassan was not comfortable with being recorded, so I fervently jotted down notes as we walked.
The natural burial section opened in 2012 after Meadowvale decided to proactively respond to “market needs,” says Hassan, alluding to the natural and eco-friendly mindset of the current generation of emerging and ageing adults. She also says that their company is beginning to shift to eco-friendly options on the whole. As we walk, Hassan points out a row of smart cars that staff use to get around the large cemetery. She also mentions that staff use bicycles in the summer.
As we approach the burial site Hassan says that she almost emailed me in the morning to ask if I would come on another day. I ask why, as it’s positively blue skies all around us, but as we turn a corner and come upon the burial site, the reason is evident.
The site is completely brown and dry, not a lick of green in site. But we are in the last days of winter, and it is an all-natural space, free from human intervention and artificial colour, so I tell her I’m glad I got to see the site in its natural glory. There’s also an interesting contrast in colour between the natural burial site and the traditional burial site across the path from it.
Hassan says there’s been a positive response to the site so far. Out of a possible 255 graves 30 have been sold, 12 of which are occupied. One of the 12 has just been filled.
The gravesite looks a tad unsightly, and Hassan is quick to explain why–its simply because the earth is wet right now, and wet earth sinks. A staff member will periodically come to top up the gravesite and level if off.
In the normal burial section two caskets can be buried on one gravesite, one on top of the other. In the natural burial section this is not permitted, as it makes decomposition more difficult.
A simple stone number on the ground marks each gravesite. Hassan shuffles her foot around in the brown grasses to unearth the one next to the fresh grave, and then points out on a printed map where all the graves are situated. There are some natural pathways between the graves, but visitors are encouraged to use the centralized lookout in front of the burial site to look at them.
There are four huge granite slabs on this lookout, on which the names of all those who have undergone natural burial are memorialized.
There’s a wildlife preservation area behind and beside the natural burial site, which has a picturesque lookout where families can scatter the remains of their loved ones– this is just one of several options Meadowvale has for cremated remains. Ashes can also be scattered in their Forest of Remembrance, or urns can be places in their Crematorium Chapel, Garden Wall or other niches, or buried in the ground. Eco-friendly urns can be buried in the natural burial site as well.
 |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
 |  |
Photos by Mia Vamos-Yuhasz
I ask about the ethics of that option, as cremation is known to take up a huge amount of energy per body and emits toxins back into the environment–of which mercury is a particular concern. It doesn’t exactly sound like a “green” option to me.
Hassan excitedly tells me that cremation can be eco-friendly. Mount Pleasant Group of Cemeteries, of which Meadowvale is a part, currently has two environmentally friendly cremators at their disposal, which are 99 per cent emissions free. The machines come from Europe, where environmental standards are stricter.
The two machines were installed in 2014, one at Elgin Mills in Richmond Hill, Ont, the other at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, Ont. The Mount Pleasant Group of Cemetaries 2013-2014 annual review states that the new cremators have “an emissions filtration system that virtually eliminates all smoke, odour and particulate matter. It also offers reduced fossil fuel consumption, and because it’s computerized, improves efficiency.”
Out of eight potential pollutants tested, six had levels that were virtually undetectable, including mercury. For the two detectable pollutants, carbon dioxide and odour, the emissions were still significantly lower than the Ontario Ministry of Environment safe health standards.
I was pleasantly surprised by this information, and glad to see that sustainability is a growing trend in the death industry, even if it is slow growing. The Mount Pleasant Group is the only company in Canada with these machines.