Mount Royal Crematory
The first crematory in Canada was built by Sir Andrew Taylor (Architect) in 1901 on the eastern side of the Mount Royal Cemetery property with funds donated by Sir William Christopher Macdonald, a well-known tobacco tycoon and great philanthropist. This building is the oldest of its kind in the country and it remained the only crematorium in Quebec until 1975. The first cremation took place on April 18, 1902. Built with Montreal limestone, the original building had a chapel, a room for the cremation chambers, a large winter storage vault and a conservatory filled with exotic plants. In the 1950s, for maintenance reasons, the conservatory was demolished but the original chapel, on the left of the building, is still intact with a beautiful hand made mosaic floor.
Read more about this topic: Mount Royal Cemetery
Famous quotes containing the words mount and/or royal:
“Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
“These are not the artificial forests of an English king,—a royal preserve merely. Here prevail no forest laws but those of nature. The aborigines have never been dispossessed, nor nature disforested.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)