A Night For All Souls, Mountain View Cemetery, Vancouver, B.C., October 2008

Mountain View Cemetery, 25 October, 2008, Vancouver, B.C.

Yesterday was a beautiful fall day in Vancouver, British Columbia, perfect weather for the 'A Night for All Souls' event at Mountain View Cemetery. I thought I'd post a few photographs to show something about it.

Mountain View Cemetery opened in 1887. It's not the oldest cemetery in this area, but it is certainly the largest. Today it's 105 acres with about 100,000 burials. In recent years, there have been many changes - the most obvious now the construction of new offices and columbaria, the Commonwealth War Grave Commission's upgrading of its areas and the City and the Last Post Fund's construction of 13 monuments to commemorate the almost 1,000 'known' unmarked veteran's graves at Mountain View. Perhaps more about these projects another time.

Perhaps the most successful addition is the new 'infants burial' stream bed - every rock symbolizing a burial. (These were all in common graves.) One of the 'All Souls' shrines was right beside this area.

Link:

'One Stone for Every Infant', Infant Area Project, Mountain View Cemetery, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/NONMARKETOPERATIONS/MOUNTAINVIEW/projects/childrensarea.htm

A Night For All Souls - October 25, 2008 -Mountain View Cemetery - Vancouver, BC, Canada

See my other post about this event: A Night for All Souls - Mountain View Cemetery, Vancouver, B.C., Canada

The 'Night for All Souls' event at Mountain View Cemetery in Vancouver, British Columbia is a newer tradition for the city - a special time to honour the dead with art and music, and with offerings of candles and lanterns, flowers, personal memorials and thought.

Paula Jardine is Mountain View's 'artist in residence' and she began 'A Night for All Souls' in 2005. She creates events like this which blend art, music and dance with community and purpose and she was the founding artistic director of the Public Dreams Society.

This year, A Night for All Souls at Mountain View in Vancouver is October 25, 2008 from 6 to 10 pm.

"It will be a family friendly sanctuary of beauty for tender feelings, with fires to warm us, music to uplift us, tea to refresh us and materials to create personal memorials for our dead." There are workshops during October so that people can fashion particular kinds of offerings or memorials, if they like.

After 'All Souls', from October 26 to November 2nd, artists will be at the cemetery each evening and there will be opportunities for smaller, more informal gatherings each night.

LINKS

A Night for All Souls, Mountain View Cemetery: http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/NONMARKETOPERATIONS/MOUNTAINVIEW/allsouls/index.htm

Paula Jardine, artist: http://islandsinstitute.com/gallery/Jardine/frontpage.htm

Wordless Monday - Lillie Hornkoist 1910 - Merritt, British Columbia

Nellie Hornkoist - 1910

Cemetery at Merritt, British Columbia, Canada

taken September 28, 2008