The pleasant mount

I'm not a big fan of cemeteries.  My old home in New Brunswick was fairly close to the local cemetery, but I rarely visited it.  Even when the subway between St. Clair and Davisville stations carries me past Mount Pleasant Cemetery, I tend to avoid looking at it.  But I have visited that place several times with Meetup groups.

I've got to know some of the sights in Mount Pleasant cemetery:  the Massey and Thompson mausoleums, Mackenzie King's grave, the Stavros tomb (it's a little much), the Salvation Army's memorial to the EMPRESS OF IRELAND shipwreck, and the lane with a whole lot of millionaire mausoleums like the Eatons.  I've also discovered a few things for myself, like opera soprano Teresa Stratas' family plot (at least I think it's her--the epitath refers to music), and the graves of journalists Norman Depoe and Larry Zolf.  I'd like to find a grave I've heard of there where the eccentric deceased chose a completely unmarked boulder as his headstone.

Saturday I visited it again as part of the Urban Explorers Meetup organized by Vik. (We also went southeast to the Discovery Walk loop, which took us past the brick works.  On the way back, we took a wrong turn and had to take a precarious path, which was actually pretty fun.) Vik told us about some of the prominent trees there, and mourned a weeping willow that was a victim of a recent storm. I quipped, "They should have a cemetery for trees!"

In China they have something called "tree burial," where they cremate you and plant a tree over your ashes.  I think I'd like to have that done with my body:  I like the idea of having a living monument.  On the other hand, Zoroastrians in India put you on a high tower and feed you to the vultures:  a very eco-friendly method, for what it's worth.