Mount Royal Cemetery

Opened in 1852, Mount Royal Cemetery is a 165-acre (67 ha) terraced cemetery on the north slope of Mount Royal in the borough of Outremont in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Temple Emanu-El Cemetery, a Reform Judaism burial ground, is within the Mount Royal grounds. The burial ground shares the mountain with the much larger adjacent Roman Catholic cemetery, Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery, and the Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery, an Ashkenazi Jewish cemetery. Mount Royal Cemetery is bordered on the southeast by Mount Royal Park, on the west by Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, and on the north by Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery.

Mount Royal Cemetery
The cemetery's gate in November 2016
Details
Established1852
Location
Outremont, Montreal, Quebec
CountryCanada
Coordinates45.508°N 73.599°W / 45.508; -73.599
TypeNon-denominational
(originally Protestant)
Owned byThe Mount Royal Cemetery Company[1]
Size165 acres (67 ha)
No. of graves200,000
WebsiteOfficial website
Find a GraveMount Royal Cemetery
Designated1998

Although the cemetery is non-denominational today, it continues to be governed by its original charter, with a board of trustees representing the founding Protestant denominations. The cemetery is a private non-profit organization.

Burial rights have always been offered in perpetuity, with the commitment that no graves would ever be reused or abandoned. The founding charter stipulates that all profits should be entirely devoted to the embellishment and improvement of the property. Mount Royal Cemetery is still in operation, and even the old portion of the cemetery has some burial sites available.[2]

Design
A memorial laid in honour of veterans at the War Graves section of the cemetery.

Crematory

The first crematory in Canada was built by Sir Andrew Taylor in 1901 on the eastern side of the Mount Royal Cemetery property with funds donated by Sir William Christopher Macdonald, a well-known tobacco tycoon and great philanthropist. This building is the oldest of its kind in the country and it remained the only crematorium in Quebec until 1975. The first cremation took place on April 18, 1902.

Built with Montreal limestone, the original building had a chapel, a room for the cremation chambers, a large winter storage vault and a conservatory filled with exotic plants. In the 1950s, for maintenance reasons, the conservatory was demolished but the original chapel, on the left of the building, is still intact with a handmade mosaic floor.[2]

War Graves section

The cemetery contains 459 war graves of Commonwealth service personnel, 276 from World War I and 183 from World War II, most of which form two War Plots in Section G. A Cross of Sacrifice stands on the boundary with Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery.[3]

Military graves at Mount Royal did not take significance until World War I, when Canada lost over 60 000 soldiers. After this event, the population of the city started looking toward public memory more seriously, and gave an entire section to war veterans and fallen soldiers.[4]

Notable interments

A few of the prominent people interred in the cemetery are:

Gravestone for John Abbott, the third Prime Minister of Canada.
Gravestone of Alexander Tilloch Galt, a Canadian politician, and one of the Fathers of Confederation.
Gravestone for Anna Leonowens, founder of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

Colonel W. J. B. MacLeod Moore (Kildare (Ireland) Jan 14, 1810, died Prescott(Ont) on September 10, 1890. Founder of Masonic Knights Templar in Canada and Societas Roscruciana in Anglia (Canada)

Gravestone for Alexander Walker Ogilvie, along with his wife.

See also

References
  1. Governance, Mount Royal Cemetery.
  2. "History". www.mountroyalcem.com.
  3. "CWGC Cemetery Report".
  4. Young, Brian with photographs by Geoffrey James. Respectable Burial: Montreal’s Mount Royal Cemetery. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.
  5. "A historical stroll through Canada's prime ministerial grave sites". theglobeandmail.com. Retrieved 27 July 2020.
  6. "R. Norman Dawe Sportsman, Dead". The Gazette. Montreal, Quebec. January 5, 1948. p. 3.icon of an open green padlock
  7. "Former CAHA Head F. Greenleaf Dies". The Gazette. Montreal, Quebec. January 2, 1953. p. 14.icon of an open green padlock
  8. "Greenleaf". The Gazette. Montreal, Quebec. January 3, 1953. p. 11.icon of an open green padlock
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