The Centre for Natural Burial

By Shannon C., Calgary Urbanite
Death, my Buddhist teacher likes to remind me, is a natural part of life. This is true until you get buried or cremated. At that point the multi-billion dollar funeral industry takes over, providing the deceased with satin-lined wood coffins festooned with brass accents (for the discriminating loved one), cement gravestones, […]

Environmentally friendly burials are popular in Europe and the U.S., but only one Canadian cemetery offers the chance to truly be one with the earth
By Nicholas Read, Special to the Vancouver Sun
Late last year, the Royal Oak Burial Park in Saanich held what is believed by cemetery and government officials to be the first green […]

Kerry Banks, Financial Post Magazine
Royal Oak’s Stephen Olson: “The funeral industry can’t afford to ignore this trend”
If you go to pay your respects to someone buried at Royal Oak Burial Park’s green cemetery in Victoria, you won’t see any tombstones. In the park-like glade bordered by pines, you’ll locate the grave with a GPS device. […]

By GreenMuze Staff
Canada now has its first green urban burial plot area in the entire country. The new green burial space is located at the Royal Oak Burial Park on Vancouver Island, in western Canada. The memorial park has allocated about one-eighth of an acre for green burials. Green burials have long been popular in […]

Royal Oak adds a biodegradable service that avoids the use of chemicals
By CARLA WILSONNovember 29, 2008
Green burial is a practice as old as humanity, but it’s new again at the Royal Oak Burial Park in Saanich and Stephen Olson says the phones are ringing steadily from people asking about the service.

Arthur Black, Seaway NewsI could never bear to be buried with people to whom I had not been introduced.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t get to choose all of our next-door neighbours in the Great Hereafter, but we do have some say in how we present ourselves to them. Which is why I found myself […]

Growing movement wants to take ecology sensitivity into the graveyard
One aspect of the green burial movement advocates being buried without chemicals in a biodegradable casket in the forest.
By LASHA MORNINGSTAR, CR News Editor Edmonton
As green ethics splash over more and more aspects of our lives, many Canadians want their last footprint on earth to be […]

By THE CANADIAN PRESS
Canada’s cemetery directors are learning this week about ways to catch up with a British trend that offers green burials for environmentally-conscious customers.

By TARINA WHITE, SUN MEDIA
Forget about striving to live greener, it’s time to focus on dying greener.
That was the topic yesterday at the Western Canadian Cemetery Association’s annual convention in Calgary.

A rising number of British Columbians are bequeathing property to organizations who promise to protect the areas forever
By Mark Hume, The Globe and Mail
VANCOUVER — As he makes his way through the tangled forest that surrounds his home in Coquitlam, Steve Vida points out where a black bear named the Young Punk broke down a […]