Canada Lewis H. Mates DRAFT VERSION: The final version of this was published in Douglas Davies with Lewis H. Mates, The Encyclopedia of Cremation (Ashgate, 2005), pp.103-106 Modern cremation in Canada began in Montreal, with the Mount Royal Cemetery Company in 1901. Formerly known as the Montreal Cemetery Company, it had been in existence since 1847, when the city’s older burial grounds had been exhausted and a new cemetery was required. Accordingly, the cemetery trustees purchased land on the mountainous northern slopes of the city of Montreal, Mount Royal, to provide a rural backdrop for a cemetery to serve the city for many decades. The farmland there soon became one of the most beautiful and well-designed traditional cemeteries in North America (Roy 1981:85). In the 1880s, the idea of constructing a crematorium in Mount Royal Cemetery, supported by an anonymous financial backer, came before the cemetery’s trustees for the first time. However, the trustees did not support the idea, and it was forgotten for some years. Then, in 1897, John Henry Robinson Molson, a Montreal brewer and philanthropist, was cremated in nearby Boston (USA). Unable to be cremated in his home city, he left funds in his will to Mount Royal Cemetery for the building of a crematorium there. The trustee’s main preoccupation was to ensure that the cemetery’s funds, a good proportion of which were already allocated, were not wasted on what could well be a high-risk venture. As the Molson bequest was, by itself, far from sufficient to build and maintain a crematorium, the trustees decided to accept the donation in trust for the future, presumably aware that cremation would eventually arrive. However, the situation soon changed. Possibly inspired by Molson’s enthusiasm for cremation, a former friend of his approached the trustees in June 1900 with a formal proposal to build a crematorium. Sir William Christopher Macdonald, a Montreal entrepreneur and philanthropist, offered to finance the building of a crematorium entirely from his own funds, thereby assuming all the legal and financial risks. The trustees naturally accepted and Macdonald immediately started work, charging his architect, Sir Andrew Taylor, with the responsibility of planning the building. Part of the planning process was to send a study group to investigate the operation of cremation in the United States and Britain. As cremation was not provided for in the cemetery’s original charter, the trustees had to have an amended charter approved by the Quebec Parliament, which was, unfortunately, largely Roman Catholic. Predictably, it initially raised strong objections. Finally, though it approved the legislation, it also placed heavy restrictions on the crematorium. Still, this delay had not prevented Macdonald from beginning the crematorium’s construction before the legislation had passed. Macdonald also successfully overcame one of the main restrictions imposed by the Quebec Parliament, that of limiting cremation to Protestants, by getting the Canadian Federal Government in Ottawa to incorporate the crematorium separately from the cemetery thereby making it non-sectarian. When this occurred, in 1903, it changed from its 1901 name of ‘Mount Royal Crematorium’ to ‘The Crematorium Limited’. The building, which began working on 18 April 1902, was originally installed with two cremators, situated on one of the chapel walls. In 1981 Donald Roy thought that the cremators’ ‘very presence, readily available to view, undoubtedly must have left a fearful reminder in people’s minds of the cremation about to take place and possibly contributed little, by their goulish appearance, to promote the cremation movement’ (Roy 1981:87). However, he was more complimentary about a substantial and ‘impeccably maintained conservatory and greenhouses’ containing a selection 1 of flowering plants, which was built to greet mourners on their way into the chapel and ‘offered a welcome diversion to the bereaved’. By the time Canada got its first crematorium there were already twenty-six operating in the United States. Its opening did not appear instantly to tap into a latent market for cremation. Cremating six in its first full year (1903), numbers rose steadily to ninety-seven in 1910, then fluctuated between sixty-two and seventy-seven until 1918 when the 100 mark was broken for the first time (109). A steady upward trend began in 1922 (141 cremations) and ended in 1929 (with 354). After 1930, though the upward trend remained, cremations did not always increase year-on-year: the pre-war peak year was 1937 with 450 cremations. Given the relatively low cremation figures in these early years, it was no surprise that the establishment of Canada’s first crematorium did not immediately stimulate similar projects. The second Canadian crematorium did not come until 1913 in Vancouver, British Columbia and it was another twenty years until the third was built, in Toronto, Ontario, in 1933. An ‘urgent demand’ for cremation led the trustees to decide that the expense for a crematorium and columbarium was justified. Its first cremation was performed on 21 November 1933 and it had cremated sixteen corpses by February 1934. Canadian cremationists did not appear to be particularly involved in the Cremation Association of North America (CANA), apart from W. Ormiston Roy, a cemetery superintendent in Mount Royal cemetery, Montreal who was CANA president 1920-22. Many CANA conventions in the inter-war period did not have a single Canadian delegate, CANA seeming to be centred around California. Of Canada’s two (and, after 1933, three) crematoria at the time, only Montreal was mentioned as in existence in CANA inter-war annual convention reports, implying a degree of ignorance of what was happening north of the border. Still, the US focus of CANA is understandable given that it had 109 crematoria to Canada’s two in 1931. And some United States cremationists did have a good grasp of the situation in Canada. For example, in 1934 Hugo Erichsen, noting that Canada had three crematoria, asserted that the country needed more and an ‘aggressive’ type of pro-cremation propaganda (CANA 1934:19). The 1930s saw the greatest advances so far for cremation in Canada. In CANA, Canadian cremationists had another vice-president in 1937 in the form of Fred D. Clark of Toronto crematorium. The same year Ormiston Roy represented the country at an international level, as he was a delegate at the London International Cremation Congress. Roy announced that cremation figures were rising, that cremation was ‘growing fast’ and that a ‘quiet propaganda’ was being conducted which had eliminated many prejudices. By that year, Canada had gained two more crematoria since 1933, both in British Colombia (one in Barnaby near Vancouver and one in Victoria). Two years later, in 1939, Canada had another two new crematoria, in Calgary, Alberta and St. John, New Brunswick taking the total to seven private crematoria. These developments were reflected in the cremation statistics. For the five year period 1934-8, Canada had cremated thirty-six percent more than in the period of 1929-1933. This was the fifth largest increase in CANA in that period (in CANA states in the USA were divided into geographical groups, there being ten groups in total, including ones for Canada, Panama and Hawaii). During the Second World War, James Draper, a funeral director, built New Denver crematorium in 1943 for the use of Japanese evacuees from the coastal areas of British Columbia. Between 1943 and 1948 it carried out about 300 cremations, almost none of which were of Caucasians. Though the war did not seem to have an adverse effect on cremation numbers (Montreal, Victoria and Toronto crematoria, for examples, all saw steady increases in cremations during the war years) it did appear that some of the momentum built up in the late 1930s had dissipated. The ninth Canadian crematorium was Toronto’s second, and opened on 2 21 January 1948. Despite the lack of new crematoria in the later 1940s, cremation figures still grew. There were few developments in the Canadian cremation movement in the 1950s, which ‘remained fairly inactive’ throughout the decade (Roy 1981:88). One occurrence was the refurbishment of the first Canadian crematorium in Montreal. Due to their high maintenance costs, its conservatory and green houses were demolished and three new oil-fired, ‘forced air ventilation’ cremators were installed out-of-sight of mourners. By 1959 Canada cremated just over three percent of its dead, slightly less than the United States’ 3.6 percent. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the growth of cremation in Canada was, according to Roy, ‘phenomenal’ (Roy 1981:87). By 1963, Canada had a total of eleven crematoria (compared to 247 in the States) and this figure was thirteen a year later and seventeen by 1967. By December 1975 there were ‘at least’ thirty-one crematoria throughout Canada, with most provinces having at least one. Ontario had the most crematoria with sixteen, including five in Toronto and two each in Ottawa and London. In 1974 there had been over 6,000 cremations in Ontario, more than sixty-five percent of which had been performed in Toronto’s crematoria. Next was Quebec with five crematoria; three in Montreal and two in Quebec City. British Colombia had three crematoria, one each in New Denver, Victoria and Vancouver and Alberta had two (in Calgary and Edmonton). Four other provinces, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, had one crematorium each (in St. John, Halifax, Winnipeg and Regina respectively). That year there were 20,694 cremations in Canada, which was twelve percent of deaths. There were thirty-nine crematoria in 1976, forty-two in 1977, forty-seven in 1978 and fifty-four in 1979. The cremation rate was fourteen percent in 1977 and nearly seventeen percent a year later. Roy attributed this rapid growth partly to the Roman Catholic Church’s change in attitude in 1963. The lifting of the ban gave cremation in Canada ‘a healthy impetus’, particularly in areas like the Province of Quebec (Roy 1981:87-8). For example, two cemeteries in Montreal’s largest Catholic parishes built crematoria to meet the increased demand in the 1970s. In less than a decade after 1970 the Province of Quebec gained thirteen new crematoria: before this time it only had the single crematorium in Montreal. Yet the picture was not quite as simple as this. In 1971, Nunzio Defoe, executive director of a cemetery in Surrey, British Colombia, conducted a survey of twelve Catholic dioceses in Canada and discovered that none of those responding had issued instructions to their priests on cremation in the eight years since the Vatican had changed its attitude. Moreover, none had a written policy on cremation available either, indicating a resistance to and discouragement of cremation on the part of the Catholic Church in Canada. Defoe claimed that the twelve percent Catholic population of British Colombia, regardless of their age, barely knew about the decrees of their Church (Macdonald 1975:4). Another indication of this resistance outlined by Defoe was the problems that planners had when trying to obtain land to build a crematorium. Though there was a great deal of undeveloped land in British Columbia the only place where planners could build a crematorium was thirty-miles from the centre of the metropolitan area. Though there was a total population of over 1.5 million in an area with a thirty-mile radius from the centre, this was concentrated in the centre. Thus the crematorium had barely ten percent of this population within a twelve-mile radius. However, commensurate with Roy’s claims, Defoe also noted that in British Colombia the number of Catholics cremated had jumped by one thousand percent in the period 1966-71. Thus, even though there had been no encouragement from their Church, and despite ignorance of the Church’s stance, individual Catholics were still adopting cremation relatively rapidly (Macdonald 1975:7,12). The six crematoria in British Colombia in 3 1972 accounted for over fifty percent of the cremations in Canada as a whole and this included around three quarters of all Roman Catholics cremated in the country. Another factor aiding the growth of cremation was the increasing availability of the ‘packagetype pre-manufactured cremation unit’, which originated in the United States (Roy 1981:87-8). In 1972, Montreal crematorium availed itself of this technology as its 1950s cremators’ capacity was too limited and they did not comply with new air purification laws. It bought three ‘package-type’ units in the United States, transporting them as fully-constructed cremators. All they required on arrival in Montreal was to be connected to gas and electric supplies and the stacks to be put up, making them rapidly operable. The cheapness, availability and relative lack of technical knowledge required to install these units opened up the cremation market to smaller operators, and thus allowed cremation to spread more rapidly in both Canada and the United States. It was no surprise that the majority of cremators installed in Canada in the 1970s were of this ‘package-type’. By 1981, the trend of buying ‘package-type’ cremators was on the wane. Instead, Canadiandesigned cremators, generally of the ‘on-site construction’ type, were becoming more popular. That year there were a total of sixty-five crematoria in Canada, most of which were in the more populated regions. However, the west coast, as with the west coast of the United States, saw the highest proportion of cremations in Canada, at a little over fifty percent; and this was regardless of population density. According to Roy, some groups in more heavily populated areas did not favour cremation. Most notably were those with Italian origins, especially in Montreal and Toronto, who tended to favour burial in a mausoleum rather than cremation despite the extra expense this incurred. The most popular way of disposing of cremains in 1981 was earth burial in a cemetery. Most cemeteries provided a garden for this purpose, as well as normal graves. Alternatively, there were niches for urns provided in columbaria or walls, which were becoming more numerous. A third and increasingly common option was to deposit remains in niches in some of the newer mausoleums. However, the scattering of ashes remained prohibited, but there was an alternative in the form of a ‘common grave concept’ (Roy 1981:88). The strong progress cremation made in Canada from the late nineteen sixties was sustained in the last two decades of the twentieth century. In 1981 approximately seventy-one crematoria cremated just over twenty percent of Canada’s dead. Again indicative of new trends, in 1987 the Mount Royal Crematorium, Montreal, ordered fully computerised Newton cremators. Two of its American cremators were removed and a third was repositioned to allow for increased capacity. That year there were 100 crematoria and the cremation rate was twenty-seven percent. Growth continued throughout the 1990s and by 2001 Canada had 155 crematoria: ninety-eight in eastern Canada (the provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Quebec) and the remaining fifty-seven in western Canada (the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, North West Territory, Saskatchewan and Yukon Territory). The cremation rate was almost forty-nine percent. Once relatively ‘backward’ in terms of the development of cremation when compared to the United States, Canada’s cremation rate is now almost double that of its larger neighbour to the south. References ‘ALL’ Crematory Co., website: www.allcrem.com. Brochure, ‘Fernhill Cemetery and Crematorium’ (n.d.), CRE/F/CA. Brochure, ‘The Toronto Crematorium’ (n.d., 1934?), CRE/F/CA. CANA, 1924-1954, Reports of CANA Annual Conventions, CRE/A/US4. 4 Canadian Funeral Service (1964-66), CRE/AO/CA. Flacâra Sacra (newsletter of the Romanian ‘Censua’ Cremation Society) CRE/AO/RO. Laux, Edward C. (1991), ‘Evolution of Cremation in North America’, Pharos 57(2) 1991:503. Macdonald, Rev John F. (1975), ‘A Decade of cremation in the Roman Catholic Church’, paper presented at the Helsinki ICF Congress, CRE/D4/1975/5. Pharos, 1934- present day, CRE/A/UK/19. Report (1937), of the London International Cremation Congress, CRE/D4/1937/2. Report (1948), of the ICF Congress at The Hague, CRE/D4/1948/1. Roy, Donald, K. (1981), ‘Eighty Years of cremation in Canada’, address to the ICF Congress at Berlin, CRE/D4/1981/10, reproduced in Pharos 48(2) 1982:85-88. Roy, Donald K. (1991), ‘The Past, Present and Future of the International Cremation Federation’, Pharos 57(3) 1991:110-111, 115. 5