November Meeting: Death and Burial in 19th Century Ontario

Death and Burial in 19th Century Ontario

The practices around death and burial have always been an integral part of life. Funeral rites today are very different from funeral rites even fifty years ago. How different then were the customs around death and burial a hundred and fifty years ago? What does history tell us about how our attitudes surrounding death have changed over time?

This talk focuses on the physical aftermath of death in a key time period in Ontario’s history — from the establishment of Upper Canada to the beginnings of the funeral industry in the early twentieth century. It explains how funeral rites evolved from the simple pioneer funeral to the elaborate rituals of the Victorian era, and how these historic practices still influence us today.

The speaker is Susan Smart, author of the book A Better Place: Death and Burial in Nineteenth Century Ontario.