Skip to content

Where different views on Israel and Judaism are welcome.

  • Home
  • Subscribe / donate
  • Events calendar
  • News
    • Local
    • National
    • Israel
    • World
    • עניין בחדשות
      A roundup of news in Canada and further afield, in Hebrew.
  • Opinion
    • From the JI
    • Op-Ed
  • Arts & Culture
    • Performing Arts
    • Music
    • Books
    • Visual Arts
    • TV & Film
  • Life
    • Celebrating the Holidays
    • Travel
    • The Daily Snooze
      Cartoons by Jacob Samuel
    • Mystery Photo
      Help the JI and JMABC fill in the gaps in our archives.
  • Community Links
    • Organizations, Etc.
    • Other News Sources & Blogs
    • Business Directory
  • FAQ
  • JI Chai Celebration
  • [email protected]! video

Search

Archives

Recent Posts

  • חמש שנים לעבודה מהבית
  • הקוביד תפס גם אותי
  • Thirteen calls for action
  • Immersive art experience
  • Games, fun and serious
  • Welcome back, TUTS!
  • Play tackles Israeli/Palestinian conflict
  • Averbach reaches Kamloops
  • Israel’s new Ethiopian airlift
  • Remembering the Great Roundup
  • Walking tours celebrate Pride
  • Living their values daily
  • Fighting racism, terrorism
  • Diverse allies critical
  • An afternoon of music
  • Community milestones … awards, honours, weddings, releases
  • STEAM-powered schooling
  • A composer for the Queen
  • Different horror, same hell
  • Never waste life’s many gifts
  • Reuse, recycle, make anew
  • נסיעה שנייה לישראל
  • Dreamy Midsummer’s Night
  • A story of two families
  • New era in U.S. politics
  • Folk festival returns to park
  • Standing up against hatred
  • Good reads, good talks
  • Tofino mustard maven
  • Journey from prison to power
  • Ben-Gurion goes global
  • The romance of good bagels
  • Hitting the high seas & citrus
  • Enjoy summer treats

Recent Tweets

Tweets by @JewishIndie

Cemeteries get an upgrade

0 Flares 0 Flares ×

The new black granite memorial wall at Schara Tzedeck Cemetery in New Westminster allows people to memorialize loved ones buried in other cities. (photo from Schara Tzedeck)

What’s new at the cemetery? Not a question one tends to ask, but the Schara Tzedeck cemeteries in New Westminster and Surrey have seen some significant upgrades and additions in recent months.

At the New Westminster cemetery, which saw its first burial in 1929, 50 graves that did not have headstones have received permanent markers. More than 100 others will ideally also see stone markers added in the coming years as the cemetery board’s Chesed Shel Emet Fund is replenished.

There are plenty of reasons why a grave might not have a permanent headstone, according to Howard Jampolsky, executive director of the Schara Tzedeck Cemetery Board.

“Sometimes, somebody had no family, maybe they were destitute, alone in the world,” he said. “Sometimes, the families just don’t have money; sometimes, one spouse dies and they get a headstone and the other spouse dies and there is no one to put the headstone.”

Whatever the reasons, the graves, some dating back to the 1950s, had temporary markers.

The Chesed Shel Emet Fund was set up primarily with donations from cemetery board members, Jampolsky said, and the first batch of 50 headstones was purchased for these unmarked graves and placed in the last few months.

photo - One of 50 headstones placed on graves that, until now, had only temporary markers
One of 50 headstones placed on graves that, until now, had only temporary markers. (photo from Schara Tzedeck)

“We were hoping to do a big unveiling ceremony, where all the graves would be unveiled and we would invite the community,” he said. But COVID intervened. He hopes such a ceremony will occur in the future.

The headstones cost about $525 each and the board is welcoming donations from the community to the fund so they can proceed with placing more stones.

Also at New Westminster, a new black granite memorial wall has been created to commemorate people who are buried in other places.

“Sometimes, someone lives in Vancouver their entire life and they die and get buried in another place, maybe they’re sent to Toronto or Israel or somewhere else,” Jampolsky said. “This is an opportunity to memorialize somebody who lived in the city and contributed to the city’s life and they don’t have a headstone here. The other possibility is people who have parents or family buried in other places where they live and don’t have the ability to go and visit. If you want to come on the yahrzeit, you can come and put a rock on top of that.”

The New Westminster cemetery also has seen a green irrigation initiative recently completed.

“We spend a lot of money irrigating our green grass here, a lot of water,” he said. “We used potable city water.”

They have now drilled a well and are also capturing rainwater, which is pumped through the irrigation system. Not only is this better for the environment, Jampolsky said, but the $150,000 cost will be recouped in about eight years at current water rates. He sees the greening initiative as in keeping with Jewish burial tradition, which is respectful of the land, rejects concrete casings and does not include embalming.

In other significant news, the Surrey cemetery, which had its first burial about a dozen years ago, now has a chapel. Until now, funerals at the Surrey site were graveside only. A sad irony is that the pandemic has meant that, after the first couple of funerals in the new chapel, services had to be again curtailed to graveside only, and with limited attendance.

The $500,000 structure was completed in late 2019 and reflects the philosophy of the board, Jampolsky said, that all members of the community be treated equally. Those being buried in New Westminster had funerals in a chapel, while those in Surrey did not. The new Surrey chapel was funded within the existing budget, but, if a community member wanted to contribute to the chapel, Jampolsky said, naming opportunities could be considered.

“The other thing we’re doing in Surrey is spending more time and effort and money to make Surrey look a lot nicer,” he said. “We are doing more landscaping work, we’re planting flowers and doing things that make it look very, very nice. We’re putting a lot of effort into that property.”

The Surrey cemetery contains about 2,000 plots while the much older New Westminster site has about 10,000. While approximately 5,000 of the New Westminster plots are filled, Jampolsky acknowledges that he can’t accurately predict how long the cemetery has before it is full.

“It really depends,” he said. There are about 80 burials annually in New Westminster. That would suggest about 60 years before it is full. But the community is growing quickly, so perhaps it would be only 50 years. At the same time, a plot may be purchased and not used for decades, he said. If a young family purchased plots today, it is reasonable to assume some burials might not occur until the 22nd century.

 

 

Print/Email
0 Flares Twitter 0 Facebook 0 Google+ 0 0 Flares ×
Format ImagePosted on September 11, 2020September 10, 2020Author Pat JohnsonCategories LocalTags burial, environment, headstones, Howard Jampolsky, Judaism, New Westminster, philanthropy, Schara Tzedeck Cemetery, Surrey, tikkun olam

Post navigation

Previous Previous post: Helping Israel’s lone soldiers
Next Next post: Autograph book resurfaces
Proudly powered by WordPress