York Region municipalities in urgent need of cemetery land

Yorkregion.com
May 5, 2016
By Lisa Queen

Back in 1867, the year of Confederation, when residents would take a horse and buggy to the outskirts of their small town to bury a loved one, it must have seemed like the 18 acres of the new Newmarket Cemetery would last forever.

But on this chilly spring day as a funeral procession arrives, cemetery board secretary Dave Evans wonders if there will be enough time to find land, get approvals in place and develop a new graveyard before the existing cemetery on Main Street North runs out of room.

The cemetery is 10 years or so away from not being able to service any more casket burials, although it would still be able to accept cremation interments, said Evans, a soft-spoken man with a quiet sense of humour.

“In terms of our planning, (it is a growing concern) because it takes 10 to 15 years to be able to buy a site and get all the approvals and open it…We’re very close if we can’t do something and get ourselves started,” he said.

“We’re infilling areas. By just leaving the ring road and taking out the smaller roads and taking out some old pathways where horse and buggies went through, if we maximize it, if we don’t get a plague, (we can extend the life of the cemetery as much as possible). More people are going to cremation, so that makes it longer.”

Newmarket tops the list of York Region municipalities in urgent need of new cemetery land, according to study by consultant LEES + Associates Architects and Planners.

The need will also soon reach a critical stage in Georgina, East Gwillimbury, Aurora and Richmond Hill, according to the report, which some in the cemetery industry are praising as the first comprehensive municipal cemetery needs analysis in Canada.

“In my mind, York Region is the first region to even recognize the problem and to reach out to the industry to understand the problem, so my hat’s off to York Region for doing this,” said Glen Timney, vice-president of corporate development for the Mount Pleasant Group, which owns a number of funeral homes, cemeteries and mausoleums, including Elgin Mills Cemetery in Richmond Hill.

In addition to a lack of cemetery land in certain areas of the region, there is also an impending need to provide more dedicated graveyard space for some religious and cultural groups, most notably Roman Catholics.  

Also, the industry is growing increasingly worried about the fact Toronto is running out of cemetery land and more of the city’s residents are looking to surrounding communities to bury their dead.

“In isolation, some areas of York Region have sufficient land. Other areas of York Region will be running out of cemetery land.

“But the major issue is the city of Toronto will be out of cemetery space in 20 to 30 years and there is no more land available in the city of Toronto for cemetery space,” Timney said.

“So, the regions around Toronto, and Mississauga will be in the same situation, and we have to be prepared to have sufficient cemetery space to accommodate Toronto and Mississauga. That’s the major issue. That bridge has never been crossed anywhere in Canada before. These are the first major centres in Canada that, all of a sudden, we’re running out.”

Evans has long family ties to the Newmarket Cemetery, a non-profit, non-denominational graveyard.

His grandfather, Arthur, was once president of the volunteer board, as was Evans’ father, Harold.

His son, Matt, is carrying on the family tradition as a director on the board.

Many of Evans’ family members are buried at the cemetery, including his nine-year-old son, Christopher, who died of leukemia, his stillborn daughter, Elizabeth, and his uncle, Stephen, who died fighting in the First World War.

Our society doesn’t like to think about death and the need for cemeteries, Evans said.

“It’s a cultural thing that has been foisted on us - because of Hollywood, youth, we’ll live forever, we’re all beautiful people - that sense that we don’t necessarily venerate the elderly like other cultures do,” Evans said.

Avoiding dealing with needs of the dead is often no different for government leaders, he believes.

Municipal planners and politicians appear more likely to address the housing, recreational and employment needs of growing communities than requirements for cemetery plots.

Besides, cemeteries don’t pay annual property taxes or development charges when they build new graveyards, meaning municipalities aren’t exactly rushing to welcome them, Evans said.

The average homeowner in York pays $2,223.19 in regional property taxes and that doesn’t include their local municipal or school board property taxes.

Regional development charges on a single-family home are $41,920, while on a multiple-unit dwelling, such as a townhouse, they are $36,673.

“They (municipalities) don’t want us because we represent no taxes. It’s something they don’t want to think about, but this document tells them they do (need to) and they need to remove obstacles,” Evans said.

Anticipating the future need for cemetery land in the 1950s, the Newmarket cemetery board bought 37 acres on Leslie Street, north of Mulock Drive.

But after realizing in 2010 that the site would not provide enough land for the next 100 years - cemeteries tend to plan for 50- to 100-year time frames - the cemetery sold all but 10 acres to developer Forest Green Homes.

The cemetery wanted to use the 10-acre wooded area for a “green burial site” while it looked for a larger plot of land for a new cemetery outside of town in East Gwillimbury, northern King or Whitchurch-Stouffville.

The town dismissed the green burial site idea, although Evans said the cemetery board would like to revisit the plan.

Overall, there are sufficient cemetery lands in the region to accommodate the 232,000 York residents who are expected to die between now and 2041, even as the region’s senior population increases by 148 per cent during that time.

But lack of graveyard space in Toronto will put significant pressure on York, the report said.

Toronto residents already account for 33 per cent of cemetery sales in the region. That could skyrocket to as much as 66 per cent as Toronto and other communities run out of cemetery space.

“York Region will not have enough cemetery land capacity for 25 years of resident demand and non-resident use if the proportion of non-resident use increases to 66 per cent in the future,” the report said.

Although Queensville Cemetery general manager Jeff McIntosh has enough land to service the community for decades to come, he said the region was prudent in studying the cemetery requirements in communities across York.

The cemetery has 15 acres of land left.

Last year, it used 1/10th of an acre.

“A hundred years from now, we’ll still have space, particularly with (more people turning to) cremation,” he said.

“We’ll be servicing the Queensville area for many years to come.”

The region has heard the concerns of the cemetery industry and is working to come up with policies to address them, Sandra Malcic, the region’s manager of planning and environment in long-range planning, said.

At the same time, jurisdiction on some issues, such as the ability to accommodate the industry’s longer planning horizons and allowing new cemetery space on low-quality agricultural lands, would rest with the province, although the region may make recommendations to Queen’s Park in those directions, she said.

“We’re going to have a lot of consultation with the industry and the province because they’re really key in the discussions. But the hope is that we can develop a pretty proactive policy,” she said.

“We don’t figure it will be perfect, but we’re hoping it will go a long way to showing the industry that we’re committed to meeting the need and hoping we can work together to get a policy framework that will allow us to do so.”