Press review
An open-minded spirit and innovative services have been praised in complimentary articles about Memoria and its President.
Death by design
By Lisa Fitterman
Jocelyne Légaré remembers the foot. It looked frozen as a hairy Popsicle, and its toes were pointed straight up at the ceiling. "I was a child. 1have many memories like that ," she said. "The foot, the man who was cut up from an automobile accident. Others, many others. It was ... different."
No wonder, for Légaré is Alfred Dallaire’s granddaughter; the Alfred Dallaire of the funeral home complexes, embalmed corpses and ritualized, formal farewells.
When she grew up, she became a lawyer because she wanted nothing to do with death and dying. Who did, really, back then? Die? Baby boomers like her? Perish the thought.Then, she saw a former Bank of Montreal building on the Main and fell in love with the light that came in through windows as high as the stately poplars outside.
Now the Centre Culturel Alfred Dallaire heralds a new way of dying, one that doesn’t separate death from the rest of life but includes it among the borough meetings, concerts, openings and, yes, even baptisms that have taken place in the building.
Call it death by design.
This ain't your grandmother's funeral parlour: winner of the jury grand prize three years ago in the Commerce Design Montreal contest, it's sophisticated and streamlined, complete with a catwalk and bar, halogen lights, pivoting glass walls and a removable crucifix on the chapel wall that was designed by an architecture student. "I think the vision 1 had comes from the notion that dying is but part of life," said the 50-year-old Légaré.
"Why not have it all? We're going to experience it all, that's for sure. "
(…)
"All my life, ever since I was little, I've known that we must reflect on death. For me, it is a primordial question of childhood, and one shouldn’t have to explain it by saying the person has gone away to sleep, or ritualize it to hide it in some way. "It's there, it's unavoidable, so let’s that celebrate that life. We wanted to make this place a part of the community.
(…)
Finally, a man who asked to remain anonymous because he is still grieving the recent loss of his partner, haltingly described why he and his family chose the venue for the memorial service after she was cremated. "We were struck by the space and the design and the contemporary look which went a long way toward elevating our mood. There was none of that mausoleum effect. Instead, there was a lot of wood, light and windows. "This place would have matched her contemporary attitude about life. It's a place where even the chairs are comfortable, for heaven's sake. It’s like, we're not irreligious people by any means.
"It was just nice that we weren’t presented with religious iconography, that heavy-handed message that this was the final curtain." To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, they did it their way. That’s the way we die now.
Death be not obvious
'CELEBRATING LIFE'
Montreal funeral
parlour a lively mix
of gallery and grief
By Graeme Hamilton
The scene inside the stylishly renovated former bank on Boulevard St. Laurent looked like a gallery opening. People milled about with wine glasses as a slide show played in one corner and a videotaped interview in another. Glass display cases held sculpted angels. (…) The gathering was a memorial for Ms Beaulieu-Green, and as a venue her family chose an unusual funeral home that is trying to revolutionize the way people confront the death of a loved one.
''We think of funeral homes as places to look after the dead, but really they look after the survivors," said Michel Trozzo, a psychotherapist who works at the funeral parlour every Monday offering free counselling to the grieving.
Upstairs from the chapel where Ms. Beaulieu-Green's life was being celebrated, a handful of art lovers, oblivious to the funeral downstairs, sipped on espresso and admired an exhibition of paintings as opera played softly in the background.
The mix of art, coffee and death is the brainchild of Jocelyne Légaré, granddaughter of Alfred Dallaire, the founder of one of Quebec's biggest mortuary businesses. She sees no reason to shroud death in mystery and darkness, so she has created what is almost certainly the country's liveliest funeral parlour. (…)
Eduino Martins, a funeral planner at the salon, said he is convinced the open space, with light flooding in its two-storey windows, is the way of the future. He does a lot of business with the local Portuguese community, and he said the younger generation love the sunlight and tasteful decor when the time comes to bury their parents.
Ms. Legaré is a free spirit who split the business with her brother three years ago when they could not agree which direction to take it . She acknowledges there might not be a strong business case for such a spacious parlour, which could have been divided into three or four rooms to accommodate more funerals. Providing free counselling to anyone who walks off the street might also seem a questionable move to an accountant. "There's a business side: you have to earn a living, but you can also be generous," she said. "This is somewhere in between."
Motif and mortality
by Rhonda Mullins
Death and art have had a long-time love affair – from great works grappling with human mortality to funeral finery, monuments, death masks and mourning jewellery. But recent times have seen their share of bad white satin, lugubrious red velvet and drab grey stone, making death and its trappings seem rather grim. And a number of Montreal businesses are trying to spruce things up a bit, revitalizing death and its trimmings, you might say. (…)
Alfred Dallaire Memoria’s president Jocelyne Légaré would no doubt agree that death and aesthetics can mix. The renovated Alfred Dallaire Memoria funeral home on Laurier Ave. recently won an award as part of the Créativité Montréal 2007 competition for its light, natural interior design. (…)
Légaré has also launched services that more strictly relate to mourning. The funeral home offers complementary art therapy to customers in mourning. This penchant for integrating the world of the arts with the world of things funereal is probably down to Légaré’s own artistic pursuits, which include writing and filmmaking. But it is also telling of our times.
