Funeral Parlours & Burial Grounds: Life & Death in the City
Guided by Kory McGrath as part of Jane’s Walk Toronto (2010)
We meet at the Gates of Trinity-Bellwoods Park on Queen St. W. in Toronto. A portal from one world to another, a passage from an outer, profane space to an inner sacred space.
The gates are a memorial to a time past. The only remnants still standing of the original Trinity College buildings, built in 1851. The name: Johannes Strachan (John Strachan) inscripted upon them – the founder of the college and first Anglican Bishop of Toronto. Strachan Avenue, running from these gates to Lake Shore Blvd., are also named in his honour.
A symbolic place to start the walk – crossing through the gates, which memorialize the legacy of an early Toronto entrepreneur and also the fact that Reverend John Strachan was chaplain to the Garrison (Fort York), which means he would have presided over the dead and comforted the grieving.
Garrison is also the name of the first burial ground in Toronto.
WHY A WALK THROUGH THE PARK?
Parks are a symbol to “an island” – a place where we can contemplate an utopia, a fantasy, while briefly stepping away from the bustle of the street, or as Freud coined: “the encroachment of the reality principle.” It is also purposeful. To allow us to “think outside the box,” or walls of a funeral parlour or burial ground.
Though we will not be standing in front of the funeral providers I mention (with the exception of Bates & Dodds and Cardinal Funeral Home), will not walk the streets of a historical procession, will not visit a burial ground (per se) – I believe in the notion that you don’t necessarily have to be in front of something to talk about it. My family calls them ‘Walk and Talks’… so on we go.
FUNERAL PARLOURS
How did the business of funerals begin?
1700′s
Funerals were held at home by family and friends. Patterns for sewing a burial shroud were published in women’s magazines.
1830 – 1860
Furniture makers saw opportunity in crafting coffins and were often called upon to build them. These furniture makers became undertakers.
1850′s
Undertakers expanded their services to include rental of horse & carriage to transport coffin, mourning wreaths to adorn entranceways to houses of the grieving, etc.
1860 – 1890
Following the Civil War, soldiers were embalmed to repatriate them back to their homes for burial. Then, following Lincoln’s death, where he was embalmed and transported across the nation for Americans to view him and pay their respects, embalming became sought after to preserve the dead to a ‘lifelike appearance,’ just as Lincoln had appeared. And so, undertakers became morticians.
1901
Towards the end of the Victorian Era, morticians became funeral directors (and sometimes ambulance operators) – offering many services and for the most part, directing all aspects of the funeral service.
1905 – 1970 (& ’80′s)
This was the era of conglomerates buying up independent funeral homes and becoming full-service ‘funeral centres’ where families need not look anywhere else for any and every aspect of the funeral service.
Funeral homes generally survive on the following adaptations and principles:
- Interaction at local business & associations
- Serves an ethnic community
- “Service & Location” (move from smaller city funeral providers to full-service ‘Reception Centres’ on the fringes of town)
In the Queen West neighbourhood of Toronto, there are a few different kinds of funeral homes:
EARLY PROFESSIONALIZATION
Bates & Dodds, established in 1884, is a fine example of a funeral parlour that remains from the era of early professionalization – when funeral services started to become institutionalized. Andrew Bates & John Dodds must have seen the business potential as they apparently stood on the street corner out front of the building at the corner of Queen St. W and Strachan and flipped a coin to determine if they would go into the coal business or the funeral business.
In 1930, Bates & Dodds was acquired by W.J. Stewart (who would go on to become mayor of Toronto one year later). He expanded the facilities to include a small chapel and a preparation room where he also started the Toronto Embalming School.
Today, the firm is owned by Stanley Chung, and primarily serves the growing Asian community. My first introduction to him and Bates & Dodds was around 2003 when I took part in shooting a music video in the casket showroom upstairs. Of interest to note, the funeral home has never been passed from generations within family members but has always been privately owned – not very common. It is one of the earliest funeral providers in Toronto and the oldest establishment that still stands at 931 Queen St. West.
An evening glimpse of Bates & Dodds as it appears today.
Looking at Bates & Dodds, you might notice an obvious difference from a suburban funeral home – the proximity of the sidewalk to the building. Jane Jacobs wrote about sidewalk uses as contacts. Here, we observe the bereaved as they leave the funeral home and come in contact with passerby’s – city pedestrians en route to any number of different places. How does this contact affect the bereaved? How does it affect the passerby’s?
For the bereaved, the sidewalk here acts as a gentle transition from a place of death, mourning, and grief to a place of life and the living, allowing the bereaved to gradually assimilate back into the world. Symbolically, it is a place of light in contrast to the dark from which they’ve just departed.
For the passerby’s, the sidewalk here creates a sudden contact with death – the reminder of our own mortality, an awareness of reverence for the dead – as well as the intricate ballet between the passerby and the bereaved. Watching the two meet here on the sidewalk, we might observe any number of behaviours such as: Avoidance and disregard by the passerby (crossing the street rather than walking through the bereaved crowd exiting the funeral parlour); A fascination with primordial darkness, or “fascination of the abomination” as written in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (where a passerby might stop to watch as the casket is removed from the funeral home to the hearse, like how they might do the same at an accident scene); and Acts of respect that harkens back to days gone past (a passerby might remove one’s hat, bow their head, stop and wait), as a few examples.
GENERATIONAL
This type of funeral home is one of the most common – a family funeral business that has been passed from one generation to another, perhaps over several generations. A Toronto example is Cardinal Funeral Homes. Originally, the business started in Thunder Bay, founded by the late James Cardinal who arrived in Canada from the Ukraine in the later part of the 18th Century. The business was moved to Toronto in 1925 and has since been passed down from father to son over a span of 85 years and has grown into 3 locations. For the purposes of today’s walk, we’ll look at Cardinal’s Bathurst Street location.
Here again, the sidewalk connects the brick walls, entranceway, and parking lot of the funeral home with the street, and just up from a busy intersection of who’s four corners house a major city hospital, a library and community centre, a fast food restaurant, and a popular coffee shop. The sidewalk is occupied by all kinds of pedestrians, some waiting for streetcars, some on their way to or from work & school, hospital staff, nannies and children, and residents of the predominately Ukrainian and Portuguese neighbourhood.
This funeral has survived on a few principles. Naturally, a funeral business being passed from generation to generation builds a great amount of trust in a neighbourhood and within the families who have been served by them. The fact that the funeral home is situated amongst an old-World demographic who generally follow traditional funeral practices contributes to the firm’s ongoing success, as does the proximity and relationships with nearby Ukrainian Orthodox and Catholic churches. Add to this its high visibility from the busy traffic and a hospital right across the street.
Cardinal Funeral Home
The newly renovated architecture includes decorative frosted glass windows facing the street, providing a sense of transparency from the outside and a bright light-filled foyer within. In contrast to Victorian-era funeral homes, the look of Cardinal’s is a breath of fresh air and on some levels, appears more inviting to passerby’s.
More to come….Please check back in a few days! This is the first of several ‘chapters’