Cemetery is a place for the living
Nothing could prepare Robin Naiman for the emotions of working at the city’s graveyard
The discreet signs at the entrance give you some idea that Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery is different than many. No elephants. No camels. No dogs except on leashes. It’s a joke, obviously. And it’s part of an effort to change the perception that the 126- year- old graveyard is only for the dead and grieving. On the hot, summer morning when I passed through to meet Robin Naiman, dog- walkers, cyclists and a couple in search of a great- grandmother’s grave were already ahead of me.
Naiman is assistant manager of business operations for the city- owned cemetery. She helps sell plots and assists grieving families plan for burials. But part of the focus of her work is planning special events and renting out Celebration Hall for everything from business meetings to weddings. Yes, weddings. No, none of them has been a zombie wedding.
“We want to be judicious with our rentals. We don’t want people to think that this is a partyhardy place,” she says.
The cemetery’s website cheerily notes Mountain View’s Celebration Hall offers an “elegant and contemporary gathering place for other events such as corporate retreats, client appreciation events and employee incentive gatherings.”
It is a stunning building. Completed in 2008, it is an example of West Coast modernist architecture with lots of concrete, glass and beautiful views of the North Shore mountains and it’s fully equipped for catered lunches, dinners and receptions.
The main hall is named Caradoc. Caradoc Evans was the first person buried in the cemetery in February 1887; he was 10 months old.
( It was long believed Simon Hirschberg, who committed suicide on Jan. 28, 1887, at the Leland Hotel, was the first buried. But he wasn’t. His coffin was too heavy to carry over fallen trees and branches that had yet to be cleared from the cemetery site. There’s an urban myth that his body remains under the asphalt at Fraser Street and 33rd Avenue, but Naiman insists it’s not true. Hirschberg was reburied long ago near Caradoc Evans’s grave.)
The hall is beautiful and the cemetery peaceful. Still, I’m not certain I’d be comfortable going there for meetings or parties.
“There can be some resistance,” Naiman admits. “But with the public programs we have and the access the public has to the grounds, we hope to overcome those feelings.”
Of course, I also can’t imagine working at a cemetery.
It’s not something Naiman ever envisioned, either. She never imagined going to work every day in a graveyard. But, at least for now, Naiman says the job is a perfect fit for her.
“It’s fascinating working here. A lot goes on here that the general public isn’t aware of.
“I’m constantly learning. I have the opportunity to meet and be with people in an important transitional period of their lives. It’s rewarding. And, my favourite part? I have come to realize the importance of our role and the role cemeteries play in our lives.”
Like many city cemeteries in different parts of the world, Mountain View Cemetery is old, nearly full and takes up an enormous amount of highpriced real estate.
The challenge is to manage and maintain it as a relevant piece of the urban landscape in spite of redevelopment pressures.
For years, it was assumed Mountain View was full since all the gravesites had been sold. But recently, staff identified a significant number sold before 1940 that had never been used; some had been bought as far back as 1910. Letters were sent to the last known addresses; some went to addresses that no longer exist.
A few heirs came forward. But most of the sites are now available for sale as are a number of in- ground cremation lots and above- ground niches for cremation urns in the columbaria.
While intended as a place for the dead, Naiman says, “This really is a place for the living.”
Since starting work at Mountain View just over three years ago, Naiman has organized annual walking tours. They have a dual purpose. They encourage people to wander through the 106- acre site and provide an opportunity to learn about the city’s history.
Naiman is fortunate. She’s married to John Atkin, a civic historian, author and renaissance man who leads some of the tours.
The walks are themed and among the recent ones were: Unfortunate Deaths and a Wander in the Old Section; The Food Tour, which highlighted the graves of fishermen, farmers and others related to food production; and Janet Smith and a Wander in the Home Section, which included the burial place of Smith, a 22- year- old nursemaid who was murdered in Shaughnessy in 1929.
There’s a bike tour coming up on Sept. 15. In addition, on the nights before and after Oct. 27, there’s a Halloween/ All Souls celebration with wandering musicians, poets and artists that’s aimed at providing a safe way for people to visit graves and an opportunity for them to light candles and write messages at specially designed shrines.
Some days heart- rending
Robin Naiman was born and raised in Montreal by her mother, a photographer who is still busy snapping away in her 80s. Her father remarried when Naiman was still a toddler. A Freudian psychologist, he continues to practice in Montreal.
At Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., Naiman studied sociology and then — “because I’m not bilingual” — came west to Vancouver.
“I was in my early 20s and not that career- focused, so I wasn’t worried about moving to a city where I could grow my career.”
Vancouver in the early 1980s seemed like a small town to her after the energy, vitality, architecture and cultural events of Montreal.
Vancouver’s Robsonstrasse, as it was known then, had European- styled delis. But it was no match for Sherbrooke Street to which Naiman faithfully returns each summer.
Naiman’s first job was as a clerk at Employment and Immigration Canada before she moved to the employment centre at the University of B. C. She filled her need for culture by volunteering at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
A few years later, Naiman worked as an employment counsellor for a private company and then doing cold calls and door- knocking for an insurance company.
Her break came in 1991. The art gallery hired her on a 10- day contract to set up an opening. After her contract ended, Naiman was hired full- time. She worked there for 18 years before taking the job at Mountain View.
“The common thread is that it all involved working with the public, which I love.”
Death hadn’t been on Naiman’s mind much until she went to work at Mountain View.
There’s nothing in her training or background that provides her with an emotional flak jacket or prepared her for the grief that surrounds her almost every day, nor is she religious.
There are days she has gone home after work and wept.
“I respond to people on an emotional level. It’s just how I am. Sometimes when I’m talking to people [ making burial arrangements], the tears come to my eyes. I try not to show that to them. And sometimes, when it’s appropriate, I will give a person a hug.”
The area she finds particularly poignant is the mass grave where, until the late 1970s, hospitals — not families — would bring miscarried or stillborn babies to be buried.
“I’d never thought about that until I got here.”
The area is now landscaped. A dry creek bed runs through it with rocks, some of which are engraved with names and dates. Some lived only a day; some were never named and have only a surname.
Occasionally, mothers, fathers or a twin whose sibling died have come to Naiman and other staff members asking for help in choosing a stone and help in placing it near where their baby was buried. The cemetery’s detailed records of the 150,000 people buried there ensured even these babies weren’t lost.
“I do think about death more working here. … My emotions and thoughts of death are constantly evolving,” says Naiman.
If anything, the more she sees people both grieving the loss of loved ones and celebrating the lives they lived, the more Naiman realizes “we need to keep on living, enjoying and taking advantage of our lives.”
Unease, if not fear, of death is pervasive in society. Although it’s inevitable, few are comfortable talking about it or planning for it.
“I don’t know if working here takes away the unease of death,” Naiman says. “But it is a comfort knowing where you’re going to be.”
That said, Naiman ruefully admits to having made no plans of her own.
“That would be defined as scary. My husband and I have talked about it and we should be doing that, but we haven’t.”
Maybe, she says, it’s because they have no children. Most people who buy burial plots do it to relieve their children of that duty.
As she talks, a large crow lands behind her on a concrete wall in the enclosed courtyard behind Celebration Hall. I can’t help thinking of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, The Birds.
“Don’t worry,” Naiman says with a laugh. “He’s one of the good kind of crows.”