Mount Royal Cemetery
Limestone crematory chapel built to defy a century of religious taboo against burning the dead.
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.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.