Respectable Burial: Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery

This is a social history of death, burial and a cherished public space in Montreal from the early 19th century to the present day. Brian Young shows how the history of the Mount Royal Cemetery, founded in 1852, mirrors the evolving social makeup, changing mores, and tragic events of what was long Canada’s largest city. We meet not only prominent members of the elite but ordinary Montrealers, natives, the poor and suicides. Young shows how epidemics, train-wrecks, and the deaths of soldiers or firemen challenged conventional notions of the family and reveals that the cemetery introduced new customs and sensibilities from Jewish, Chinese, Greek Orthodox, Buddhist, and other communities to English Montreal.