Famous Canadian Graves & Burial Sites

Visit Willowbank Cemetery in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and discover the remarkable story of Mona Parsons, a Canadian who joined the Dutch resistance, helped Allied airmen escape during World War II, survived Nazi imprisonment, and returned home largely unrecognized.

Visit the memorial plaque for Carl and Margaret Atwood at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto and learn how their lives helped shape writer Margaret Atwood’s imagination.

On my walk at historic Necropolis Cemetery in Toronto, I visited the grave of Canadian actor, Tom Kneebone. Born in New Zealand, Kneebone received his theatrical training at the Bristol Old Vic. In 1959, he toured North America with the London Old Vic Company and left to immigrate to Canada where he joined both the […]

On my visit to York Cemetery in Toronto, I discovered the grave of corporate lawyer, partner, and great legal mind, Garry Hoy, who fell to his death on July 9, 1993, from the 24th floor of his office building trying to demonstrate the strength of his office windows. The 38-year-old lawyer with the law firm […]

While visiting the grave of Lester Pearson at beautiful McLaren Cemetery, in Wakefield, Quebec, I wandered around the grounds and found the grave of Canadian media legend and Senator, Betty Kennedy. Her grave was tucked away near the forested area of the cemetery overlooking the Gatineau Hills. Betty was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and started […]

On my bike ride from downtown Toronto, I arrived at Prospect Cemetery on St. Clair Avenue to visit the family graves of Canada’s fourteenth Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson. My first visit was to Lester’s immediate family plot where his father, The Reverend Edwin Arthur Pearson a Methodist minister and his mother Annie Sarah Bowles Pearson rest, along with […]

On my visit to Wakefield, Quebec, I brought along a lacrosse stick and baseball glove to visit the beautiful and quiet McLaren Cemetery, where former Prime Minister of Canada and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lester B. Pearson rests on a peaceful hillside overlooking the Gatineau Hills. But on this visit, my thoughts were less about […]

On a recent visit to historic Drummond Hill Cemetery in Niagara Falls, Ontario, I discovered the grave of Karel Soucek, the Czech-born daredevil who became the eighth person to successfully go over Niagara Falls and survive. His grave lies in the same historic cemetery as that of Laura Secord, the Canadian patriot whose name would […]

When I recently heard that Hockey Night in Canada (HNIC) on CBC was coming to an end, it felt like a death in the family. Saturday nights gathered around the television with family and friends will never be quite the same. Hockey Night in Canada began as a Saturday-night radio broadcast in 1931 and made […]

On my road trip to Digby, Nova Scotia, I visited the grave of one of Canada’s greatest folk painters, Maud Lewis. After a great deal of navigation, I arrived at a small cemetery along the roadside called North Range Cemetery, about 25 kilometres northeast of downtown Digby. Because of her small stature, Maud was buried […]

On a late winter walk at Mount Hope Cemetery in midtown Toronto, I visited the graves of two members of the infamous Canadian bank-robbing gang: Leonard (“Lennie”) Jackson and Valent Lesso (also known as Stephen Suchan) of the legendary Boyd Gang. Despite their crimes, the Boyd Gang gained a kind of Robin Hood–style reputation, admired […]

On my walk at Riverside Cemetery in Lindsay, Ontario, I visited the unique grave of modernist architect and visionary, John Cresswell Parkin, whose projects many Canadians continue to admire. John C. was born in Toronto and grew up in a city still shaped by Edwardian and late Victorian traditions, with Art Deco only beginning to […]