Respectable Burial: Montreal's Mount Royal Cemetery

Bruce Grainger is head of the Public Services Department, Macdonald
Library, McGill University.

Young, a professor of history at McGill University, describes how the
expansion of mid-19th-century Montreal and repeated epidemics that
killed hundreds with each outbreak necessitated the closure and
relocation of downtown Protestant burial sites to the rural slopes of
Mount Royal. The first burial in Mount Royal Cemetery in 1852 was that
of a Methodist minister, a victim of a cholera epidemic. Although
organized and controlled by representatives of Montreal’s Protestant
elite, Mount Royal Cemetery made provision for the burial of all,
regardless of their religious faith or race; the poor were buried in the
“Free Ground.”

Mount Royal Cemetery was designed as a “rural cemetery,” with great
emphasis placed on landscaping and nature. However, an expansion of
grave sites by the clear-cutting and levelling of a rocky slope in 1979
aroused the ire of both environmentalists and Quebec nationalists who
viewed the cemetery as symbolic of the English Protestant elite. Three
years earlier, groups attending nationalist celebrations sponsored by
the Societé Saint-Jean-Baptiste had toppled 350 monuments, damaging or
destroying dozens of them. Young recounts these and other controversial
events. He also describes how the rules governing monuments, statuary,
fences, and so forth changed over the years, and how successive
generations of one family managed the cemetery for a century.

Although a subsidiary cemetery was established at the eastern end of
Montreal early in the 20th century, the sale of monuments began only in
1975 and it was not until 1992 that Mount Royal Cemetery entered the
funeral home side of the “death care business.” Today, the cemetery
is noted for providing public access for the observation of birds,
flowers, shrubs, and trees. Organized walking tours draw attention to
the victims of the Titanic and to famous people buried there, including
John Abbott, Edwin Holgate, Mordecai Richler, David Thompson, and Howie
Morenz.

This lucidly written history is thoroughly documented and enhanced by
superb colour photographs as well as numerous historical photographs and
documentary reproductions. The book includes a chronology, a brief
index, and a series of maps that provide the location of the graves of
more than notable people.