Mount Royal Cemetery
Limestone crematory chapel built to defy a century of religious taboo against burning the dead.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal is about a low limestone building on its eastern slope that looks like a chapel but was built in 1899 for a very different purpose, at a moment when both the Catholic Church and Protestant opinion treated cremation as an act against God. It follows the trustees, funded by tobacco money and designed by architect Andrew Taylor, who chose to build Canada's first crematorium here anyway, disguised behind a proper chapel front. Listen for how long this squat building stood as the only crematorium in the entire province, and what its first use, in 1902, actually settled.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery
Sprawling hillside burial ground of winding lanes, grand mausoleums, and over a million interments.
Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History
Underground archaeological crypt over a governor's ruined mansion, a colonial fort, and the city's oldest burial ground.
Château Dufresne
Twin Beaux-Arts mansion of reinforced concrete beneath a stone facade modeled on the Petit Trianon.