18 replies to this topic

[Mike K.]

 

McCall Gardens opens in Saanich as company nears 100 years of funeral services

http://victoria.citi...neral-services/

 

McCall Funeral and Cremation Service has announced the opening of its Saanich-based state-of-the-art funeral services and celebration of life facility.

 

The 15,000 square foot McCall Gardens and Sequoia Centre on Falaise Drive ushers in a new era for a company nearing a celebration of its own.

 

“After almost a century at Johnson and Vancouver streets and some 50 years in our 1960’s-era building, we knew that we needed a new facility, and the options were to invest a lot of money into our downtown space or look at redeveloping our Sequoia Gardens Memorial funeral home in Saanich,” said McCall’s Vice President, Trevor McCall. [Full article]

 

 

 

[VicHockeyFan]

When I saw the heading I was thinking someone was asking for a recommendation, like for aluminum gutters.

[VicHockeyFan]

 

 

 

It's great that I can keep one eye on the Blue Jays game during the service.

[Mr Cook Street]

They should open the back patio for drinks when they aren't booked. 

[AllseeingEye]

Well in that case VHF I could "recommend" McCall's unreservedly. First class operation and people who helped greatly in organizing our father's service back in 2012. Although in the old location the main theater had seating for 500 people, not sure based purely on that pic whether the new facility has that much capacity to offer. A very nice looking building though.....

[Victoria Watcher]

New York has become the sixth state in the United States to legalize natural organic reduction, popularly known as human composting, as a method of burial.

https://www.foxnews....-composting-law

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 01 January 2023 - 11:13 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

As costs rise, low-income funerals short on funding, province told

 

The B.C. Funeral Association said the province hasn’t increased funding to its burial program for low-income individuals since 2008

 

https://www.timescol...ce-told-8206946

 

 

The Provincial Burial Program, administered through the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, pays $1,285 to funeral providers for bringing the deceased person to the funeral home, registering the death and filling out paperwork. The cremation or burial is paid at cost.

 

Another $815 is provided for a small service if a family wants it, but that barely pays for a room or chapel rental, let alone a service with staff, said Tuck.

 

There is no money for markers or gravestones in cemeteries. The deceased’s remains are laid in a very basic casket or urn purchased at cost and the only record is online and on paper in registries.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 04 February 2024 - 04:33 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

A forestry company planted evergreen seedlings beside a cemetery in Port Alberni on Friday, weeks after its logging crew harvested a stand of mature trees up to the edge of the property — despite assurances that it would not do so.

 

Alberni Valley Memorial Gardens, a cemetery along Highway 4 near Port Alberni, had a reputation as a peaceful and tranquil place, with a mature forest serving as a backdrop to the headstones. That changed when Mosaic Forest Management exercised its right to harvest a plot adjacent to the cemetery in January.

 

The work caused an uproar in the community.

 

“Shame on you for timbering those trees near a cemetery, where my relatives and friends are buried,” Leslie Walerius, 72, wrote to Mosaic. “It’s difficult to believe that you couldn’t come up with an alternative way to manage/harvest the forest.”

 

Walerius said while she understands the safety risk of trees being toppled by high winds, she couldn’t understand why foresters employed by the company could not come up with an alternative.

 

“If they were concerned with blowdowns, arborists could have been called to spiral prune the trees. We know they could have done better,” she said.

 

 

 

https://www.timescol...emetery-8354335

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 25 February 2024 - 04:47 AM.

[Nparker]

The dead won't care one way or another.

[Tony]

Purpose & Characteristics of a CemeteryA cemetery is responsible for providing dignified care for those buried within its grounds, and to be a comforting place for visitors and mourners who attend the cemetery to remember, pay tribute, and honor departed individuals.

[Victoria Watcher]

When Philip Thompson’s 20-year-old son died, the Sidney resident found an unusual way to process his grief.

 

Thompson’s son, Nathan Paul Thompson, died in the United Kingdom in 2012, and by the time Thompson arrived there, the funeral arrangements were complete.

When he returned home from the funeral, Thompson felt a need to do something because he hadn’t been able to participate in the funeral planning, but he didn’t know exactly what.

 

It took some time before Thompson settled on exactly what he needed to do to let his grief out: “I thought: ‘I’m going to make a coffin.’ ”

 

Losing a loved one means you can no longer show your love in the ways you used to, such as by making them a meal, or supporting them through challenges, he said.

“There’s nowhere to apply that love now. That’s what grief is. It’s an absence of a place to apply the love that you have for the person that’s now gone,” he said.

 

So you have to do something else instead.

 

For the trained woodworker, that something else became making coffins. The work gave Thompson a ritual to acknowledge and work through his grief.

 

“In the making of the coffin, I acknowledged that I wanted to be part of saying goodbye and all the planning,” he said.

 

Thompson has made four in total. He sold two to a funeral director and one to a woman who wanted to use the coffin as a way to talk to her son, who has developmental and physical disabilities, about her eventual death.

 

Judy Hoffman, 72, is keeping the coffin in her Sooke home. As her son’s main carer, she wants to prepare him for what will happen when she dies one day and plans to use the coffin to spark conversations about her funeral.

 

 

 

https://www.timescol...s-grief-8527480

 

 

 

All very odd.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 31 March 2024 - 05:44 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

Lotta local advertising for this lately.

[phx]

gentle density

[LJ]

Burying people is a waste of space.

[Victoria Watcher]

Burying people is a waste of space.

 

We are not short of space.

 

We are #14 in world for low population density.   If you buried every one of us today, we'd only take up a square km for 4 of us.  The last guy would have to bury himself.

[LJ]

We are not short of space.

 

We are #14 in world for low population density.   If you buried every one of us today, we'd only take up a square km for 4 of us.  The last guy would have to bury himself.

Then start a cemetary 100 miles from anywhere and start filling it up, don't do it in the city.

[Bambam]

Then start a cemetary 100 miles from anywhere and start filling it up, don't do it in the city.

 

Royal Oak, where my grandparents and father are interred, was originally opened over a hundred years ago on E. Saanich Rd and was certainly not near the city in those days. Even after the burial park moved to its present location it is still largely in its wild state, by design.

 

While planning our dad's service in 2012 staff told me they had over 100 years' worth of space for future burials - probably more - due to the increasing preference today for cremation over internment. The park today is nearly 140 acres with barely half of that actually 'developed'. The intent is to leave at least a quarter of the land in its natural state in perpetuity, partially as an acknowledgment of the popularity today of "green" burials that involve no graves, no burials or headstones or markers of any kind.

 

Given its intentional park-like design and the intent to maintain as much as possible of the property that way, I wouldn't consider it a waste of space. Aside from the natural beauty of the place, not to mention the obvious fact it holds special memories for family members, it is a great place for other folks to simply go for a walk in a beautiful setting that doesn't require driving for hours to get there.

Edited by Bambam, 22 April 2025 - 08:44 PM.

[aastra]

That cemetery is a very pleasant place for a stroll.

[LJ]

I see the burial industry is now offering double dipping, burying one person on top of the other to save space. It's a start.