June 2024 visit to Urgel Bourgie Cemetery, Montreal

This cemetery used to be called the Montreal Memorial Gardens, now it is owned and run by Urgel Bourgie Cimetiere Jardin & Complexe Funeraire and is located adjacent to Montreal in Ville St-Laurent. It is not hard to find but there is a lot of traffic, especially just before entering the cemetery. Planes landing at Trudeau International Airport can be seen overhead. All of the headstones lie flat on the ground; for assistance enter the main complexe building and the workers there are very hospitable and helpful. 

The grave of my great grandmother, my mother's grandmother, Bessie Richards Parker; 
born in the UK she died in Montreal in 1948

The grave of my mother's father, John Parker, born in Blackburn, England, died in Montreal; and his wife, Bessie Chew Parker, also born in Blackburn and died in Montreal

I think some people have their ashes left around or under a large rock, as this person has done;
a bit of humour, he writes "I crawled back under the rock I came from from"

A visit to the Urgel Bourgie cemetery in Ville St-Laurent

This cemetery is located in Ville St-Laurent, adjacent to Montreal, with the elevated Metropolitain Expressway just outside the front gates. A few years ago I tried to find this cemetery, no GPS back then, but I did find the Robert Mitchell Company which is where my great grandfather (Thomas Morrissey) worked for many years; after he retired in the early years of the 20th century, my Auntie Mable, who was still a child, would pick up his pension from them on Saturday mornings and deliver it to his home only a few blocks from where she and her family lived in St-Henri. As the English-speaking population has declined so have the number of English-speakers interred in this cemetery; it used to be an affordable place of burial; the English-speakers buried here are largely working class folk; of course, through legislation our numbers have declined everywhere in this province and the Federal government has completely sold out the remaining million English-speakers still here. The French language is thriving here but the excuse for some very fascistic and racist legislation is the on-going decline of French; it's an artificial crisis but politicians love a crisis, it's a great way to motivate people to do your biding and vote for their party. BTW, Urgel Bourgie is a chain of funeral parlours and they've extended their services to include this cemetery, it used to called Memorial Park Cemetery. 

Bessie Richards Parker is my great grandmother, born in Blackburn, Lancs

Grave of my mother's parents, John R. Parker (a fireman), and his 
wife, Bertha Chew Parker, both born in Blackburn, Lancs