American fisherman also stopped, questioned by U.S. border agents

A New Brunswick university student researching environmentally conscious funerals says she hopes her research will help ease the discomfort some people feel when talking about death.

Hanna Longard, a fifth-year student at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., is visiting cemeteries in eastern Canada and consulting with community members, funeral directors and other people within the so-called “death-care” industry in an effort to figure out how people can give back to the Earth even after death.

“There is a fear that if you talk about death, it makes it real,” Longard said in a phone interview.

“The fear comes from different places for different people. But as soon as I start having these conversations with people, they realize how many thoughts and questions they have on this topic.”

It may seem like a morbid way to spend a summer vacation, but Longard said it’s important for people to know they have options when it comes to how they’re buried, aside from conventional Western practices, which often involve packaging and tidying up the body in ways that release toxic chemicals into the ground.

She noted that cremation, sometimes viewed as an ecofriendly alternative, is hardly better.

“People typically believe cremation can be environmentally Hanna Longard, a fifth-year student at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B., is researching ways that environmentally-conscious Canadians can give back to the environment even after death. Longard is seen in an undated handout photo.

friendly because you’re not taking up space in a cemetery plot on land,” she said. “But because of the emissions and toxins released, you actually are taking up space, but in the atmosphere instead.”

She said people can make their burials greener by refraining from embalming, forgoing concrete or metal vaults and using only compostable materials, like a pine box or a linen shroud.

Longard said it’s also important to be aware of where the burial materials are coming from: if you order a pine box that was made across the country, the energy it takes to transport it to your final resting place could cancel out any environmental benefits.

As part of her research, Longard visited Duffin-Meadows

Cemetery in Pickering, Ont., which she said is a great example of a green cemetery: it offers compostable caskets and communal monuments instead of individual grave markers.

She also went to Sunrise Park Inter-Faith Cemetery in Halifax, N.S., and said that while the facility isn’t strictly green, it does offer green burial options and is considering how to expand them.

Longard said the reasons for pursuing green death care are different for everyone.

“There’s many different motivators for green death care, and some people are motivated exclusively by the statistics of the environmental impact of the conventional practices,” she said.

“But for a lot of people, it does seem to have a more of a spiritual connection in that they are interested in a re-integration with the Earth, and that they feel that their body is part of the Earth.”

Originally from Nova Scotia, Longard grew up in an environmentally-conscious household and said that she’s always had an interest in giving back to the earth.

Yves Berthiaume, a funeral director in Hawkesbury, Ont., and the president of the Funeral Service Association of Canada, said most funeral homes have options for those interested in having an environmentally friendly funeral - the issue is that people don’t ask for them.

“We’ve been in business for 125 years here in Hawkesbury, and we’ve never had a request for a green funeral,” Berthiaume said. “The demand isn’t there.”

An American fishermen plying disputed lobster grounds off the East Coast says he too has been stopped and questioned by U.S. Border patrol agents, much like his Canadian counterparts who complained they were being targeted in the same area near Machias Seal Island.

John Drouin of Cutler, Maine, said Friday that he was out about two weeks ago when U.S. patrol agents came alongside his boat in the so-called Grey Zone to him to ask where he was from and to see his paperwork.

The veteran fisherman said he was slightly bemused by the encounter, having rarely seen patrol boats in the area over four decades of fishing the rich lobster grounds, something Canadian fishermen also said was a new and unusual phenomenon.

“They asked me for a driver’s licence and identification and I kind of chuckled — I said I’m not driving my vehicle, so I don’t have my licence,” he said in an interview from his home.

“We are in a different time and Border Patrol is patrolling...Their presence is a lot more visible.”

The 53-year-old fisherman, who has seen a patrol boat only once or twice over the last many years, said he asked the agents what they were doing and said he was told only that they were there to “document who was in the area.”

Drouin said his two sons were also recently stopped when they were fishing in the contentious area around Machias Seal Island, which is about 19 kilometres southwest of Grand Manan Island and east of Maine. It is in a disputed area known as the Grey Zone, where lobster fishermen from both Canada and the United States have long fished side by side. A Canadian fishermen’s group says that in the past two weeks, at least 10 fishing boats from New Brunswick have been intercepted by U.S. patrol agents while fishing around Machias Seal Island. Visitors head to Machias Seal Island in 2016.