PRIOR TO OPENING

Volunteer Orientation

This was for people who wanted to know more about the All Souls event or otherwise wanted to get involved.

Opportunities for volunteering included the flower brigade: creating garlands for the public shrines on the morning of the opening event, and evening help with memorials and tea during the week of All Souls.

Creating Personal Memorials

The orientation was followed by a presentation by Marina Szijarto, art and technical director of the project, on the creation of personal shrines and memorials.

Memorial Box Lantern Kits (post COVID)

These were made available outside the office beginning the week before the opening. People could take them home, personalize them, then bring them back to place on the public Shrines or personal graves.

OPENING NIGHT

Opening Ceremony

The first fires were lit at sundown, in the week prior to November 1st. Throughout the evening the cemetery came alive with music, poetry, and flickering candles. Inside the celebration hall there was tea, flowers, papers and candles for the creation of personal memorials to place on one of the artist made shrines or family graves.

The Cemetery office offered access to the grave registry that evening, inviting people to find their ancestors at Mountain View Cemetery.

Public Shrines Activated

Public shrines included: public altars, cradles in the infant area, a flower tree, The Red Dress Tree remembering MMIWG2S, a shrine to suicide loss, accidental overdose, pet loss and personal shrines to individuals. Other memorial opportunities included paper flags for messages, the Triptych that started it all, and a large Loom creating by Marina that invited people to weave their ancestors together with strips of colourful paper.

In the Chinese Benevolent Society’s Pavillion, Walter Quan shared Traditional Chinese Funeral Practices, inviting people to fold joss paper and make an offering. Accompanied by Beverly Dobrinsky’s Ukrainian Singing group, Zeelia.

As well as singing and music at the shrines, community choirs would often be encountered moving through the spaces.

DURING THE EVENT – DAYTIME

Historic Walking Tours

These were offered to showcase the graves of significant residents with Vancouver genealogist Lorraine Irving, Indigenous knowledge keeper Cease Wysse, and military historian Jo-jo MacEachern

Red Dress Tree Memorial

Singing and ceremony for the spirits of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Girls and Women with Elder Kelly White & Moonstone, Indigenous Women’s Singing and Drumming Group.

Mending/Tending Ecological grief Led by artist Keely O’Brien

A gentle hands-on workshop exploring themes of ecological grief. We will be working with natural materials and relaxing creative processes, such as stitching and binding, to create personal offerings. The workshop was intended as a supportive space to cope with the emotional impacts of the climate crisis, take solace in natural spaces, and connect with community.

Clay memorial vessels – Led by artist Jesse Orr

A simple and tactile way to spend time memorializing the beloved dead. Participants chose a handmade, unfired clay piece to carve and decorate with messages. The creations were then left outdoors to melt into the earth as an offering.

Book Reading and Creative Ceremony with Fiona Tinwei Lam

City of Vancouver’s Poet Laureate read from her book, The Rainbow Rocket, about a young boy and the death of his grandmother. The presentation was followed by hands-on opportunities for personal ceremony.

Fiona also curated Poems in the Windows and was part of the creation of a video.

DURING THE EVENT – EVENING

Quiet incidental music could be encountered throughout the evening in shrine areas

Mourners’ Tea

This was a community conversation about end-of-life care through personal experiences. This is a friendly opportunity to talk about our experiences and learn from others.

In 2020, the Mourners’ tea moved online.

Quiet Halloween

A quiet refuge from the chaos of Hallowe’en in the celebration hall, alternating with harpist Janelle Nadeau and Guzheng harpist Jessica Yee.

“Little Chamber Music Festival That Could” presentations (Artistic Director Mark Haney)

Highlights included:

>> World premiere of Canadian new music phenom Nicole Lizée‘s latest work: A piece based on death, written for mixed quartet and tape specifically for All Souls.

>> “11”, site-specific musical composition by Mark Haney commemorating the World Wars

>> Joelysa Pankanea’s “5 Stages” a cycle of songs without words based on the 5 stages of grief.

>> Premiere “Afterlife: poems of P.K. Page“
Heather Pawsey (soprano) and Mark Takeshi McGregor (flute) by Mountain View Cemetery’s Composer in Residence, Mark Haney, with an installation by Diane Park

>> Leah Abramson’s Songs for a Lost Pod: A song cycle for 8 voices exploring themes of inter-species communication, intergenerational trauma, and grief for a polluted planet.

>> “The First Stage” by Joelysa Pankanea: Music for seven voices, marimba and double bass

Films

Presentations of:

>> “Pina”: Directed by Wim Wenders. With Regina Advento, Malou Airaudo, Ruth Amarante, Jorge Puerta. A tribute to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch

>> “Forever” film about Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris/li>

>> Feature documentary screening of “For Dear Life“
“Bravely filmed over his final three years, For Dear Life is the intimate, irreverent and surprisingly humorous story of theatre producer James Pollard as he attempts to adapt his looming death into a lasting final project.”
fordearlife.ca

Storytelling

World stories and personal tales celebrating life in death with the Vancouver Society of Storytelling. Hosted by Abegael Fisher-Lang.

Threshold Choir

An all woman choir honouring the tradition of bedside singing. The evening was an annual tradition for many years at All Souls, bringing together women from many communities where they volunteer to sing bedside for the recovering as well as the dying.

CLOSING CEREMONY – NOVEMBER 1

The candles at the shrines were kept lit until the morning of November 2nd when the written messages were gathered up for the final ceremony, when every name would be read out loud before being added to the ceremonial fire.

The candles at the >In early years Closing Processions were led by musical groups including: El Mariachi, Orkestrar Slivovica, and Balkan Schmalkan.

A FEW SPECIAL EVENTS OF NOTE

Digital Shrine /Memorial Wall

Calgary Artist Sharon Stevens, invited people to write messages to the departed, words they wish they’d said, heartfelt thoughts they carry with them, or simply the names of the dead. Entered into a laptop, the messages were simultaneously projected on the outside wall of the courtyard and inside the celebration hall where people were creating their own memorials. People were all inspired by each others words, and the effect was in a sense an amplification of the presence of the dead in our thoughts and hearts.

An evening dedicated to remembering Victims of Hate

Through grief and devastation, to hope and a renewed commitment to each other: led by the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir to honour victims of hate crimes and repair our broken world.

An evening dedicated to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and their families

Songs and ceremony for healing and commemoration.