Episode 15 - Sustainable Endings with DeathCare BC

Have you ever considered the broader circles of life and how our deaths may be connected, or what the impact of a burial actually has on the environment? My guest today is Emily Bootley, funeral director, educator, and death care advocate in BC since 2016, and who supports the green burial and eco-conscious alternatives such as water cremation and human composting, as well as community-involved services. Curious to find out more? Well, stay tuned. Hello listeners and welcome to the Eco-ish Podcast. I'm Tracy Lydiatt, founder of Sustainable Living School and your host today. The purpose of Eco-ish Podcast is to illuminate the good work towards sustainability that companies are doing, honestly discuss trade-offs that they might wrestle with, and to create space to share their interesting stories to help listeners like you make informed choices. Eco-ish Podcast honors the imperfect journey towards creating an eco-friendly brand in an unsustainable society. Hi Emily, it's so great to have you here today with us. I am really excited to have this conversation. It's such an interesting topic. And to start out, could you tell us where you're calling in from today?

Yes, I am in, um, somewhat cloudy Burnaby, British Columbia. Um, and my apartment. That's specifically amazing.

Um, I'm so looking forward to having this conversation with you. Uh, death is something that touches all of us and has come across my life a lot more frequently recently. And so, um, I was very curious to get connected with you. And I don't think many of us really think about, uh, how to plan well for death, especially if you're an eco-conscious person or someone who's environmentally minded or or even just community-minded. So I would love to learn a little bit more about Death Care BC and hear that from your words. So would you like to share with us what you do and what role you play?

Yeah, so currently my role and the role for Death Care BC is really in awareness mode, I would say. Most people, just even the word death care would be something brand new to them. And so one, something we're a lot more familiar with is the term funeral and funeral provider. And so death care, what death care describes is actually basically the same components and actions of a funeral home, but it's more just those components and actions. It's not tied to a specific funeral business. So death care is a community movement, and death care is also something that professionals can do. So I'm a mortician by trade. I'm a licensed funeral director and embalmer. Um, and now with my role with Death Care BC is, as they say, it's awareness building. And so I'm particularly focused right now on bridging the gap for healthcare service providers, um, in helping them supporting families and patients who are going through the transition of dying, um, because in BC and in Canada more generally with our public healthcare system, we don't have an embedded system of transition to death care. So when someone is dying or has died, that family moves quite quickly into the private funeral system. And often, you know, healthcare providers might not have the resources to help them with that transition, to help them feel like they can make sort of empowered decisions, values-based decisions, which is what we're talking about today. So that's, that's what my work is right now, is really connecting with people who are working with folks who are either terminal diagnosis, end of life, or just curious. Although I'm happy to talk to individuals as well, anytime.

Wow, it's so fascinating. And, you know, I feel like you're one of those ideal people because of the background that you have. So how How did you go from becoming a mortician to the role that you're playing now? I think there's a story in there and a really cool link.

Yeah, I think what happens is that, and this is still a very, you know, I'm still in the earlier days of this transition. So I've worked over the last 7 years as a funeral director in the province. I've worked in corporate environments as an apprentice. I managed an extraordinarily busy funeral home during COVID at the beginning stages of COVID So I had 6 funeral directors I was managing. We were seeing, you know, 80 to 90 families a month. And operationally managing that, and I was quite young, you know, like quite big boots, taught me a lot. And eventually leaving that role in order to go and work with a community independent funeral provider who is very eco-focused and based, who's female-founded and very progressively led. So for the last 2 years I've been working in that environment, and, and I think what made me decide finally that I needed to make this transition to Death Care BC is that there's a, a really fundamental need for community knowledge and a community movement And the reason that I have always struggled within the funeral providers is that it's very hard for people to disconnect from that funeral, from what they understand a funeral to be. So whenever I found myself speaking, often people would sort of assume I'm trying to sell them a product, or they would become defensive because I'm triggering some of possibly their past experiences with funeral homes that maybe weren't so good. And so for me, at least for now, it was necessary for there to be a separation from that traditional kind of baggage that the funeral industry has in order to try and help a grassroots movement, which is, which is for sure, it's already underway. There's, there's a lot of people getting into death care, which has just been amazing. And I want to be a part of that and a part of some of the more progressive things that need to happen, especially legislatively in BC.

Wow, such a, um, you know, I feel so grateful first of all that you are doing this work. And it's, uh, what you brought forward around just the impact of death when we were talking offline and about how you're really in a trauma state, like let's say you're a family and you've just lost a parent, for example. And, um, and I've been through that with a couple of family members personally. And yeah, you do kind of feel like, like shuffled along because, you know, and rightly so, because the medical system has a job to do. They have to take care of people who are living. And now that your person isn't physically here anymore, like, they're like, okay, like, our job's kind of done. Um, but you're right about how people can just sort of get shuffled along into the private system, and it's really overwhelming. And you're often in a state of emotional trauma and, you know, despair in cases. And it's, it's really, really overwhelming. And as somebody who is valued, you know, wants to live values aligned and think about the environment as well, that process doesn't really create a lot of space for that. So I know that you've probably seen all kinds of family situations, and so again, are like a very good person positioned to talk about this. So I'm really grateful that you're making this transition and advocating for, for different systems and for families. And I'm— I was curious, reading your bio, if you could share a little bit about what, what you refer to as the community movement of death care, because I think it's, uh, that's something that isn't inherently like— that certainly doesn't pop in my head and be like, I know exactly what that means.

Yeah. And it's so funny because you, especially just the way that the internet is, you end up in these information silos. And so my echo chamber is like all death positivity and people who are starting businesses and this grassroots movement of reclaiming the practices of death, which by reclaiming, I just mean, you know, before the industrial funeral industry existed, death was very much a community activity and it was a community event. It occurred in the parlor at home. And the original funeral parlors use that language that people understood what they were trying to do. It was the parlor, but in a different building. And that was a new concept at one point. And so now we've got a returning to that concept of death occurring in the home with the family and in community. And this is something that a lot of cultural practices are doing naturally anyway, but I think in stats— StatsCan came out— I think BC is one of the more secular provinces in Canada, and we're overall, we're a very secular society, and What that means in practice is that we are kind of open to creating our own sort of ceremony and ritual and concepts around dying, that if you're not having something that's being sort of taught to you by a historical or cultural or family kind of tradition, then you get to create something. Which is a fabulous opportunity. The other side of that is you don't know what to do, right? If you haven't created the thing yet and you're in crisis, then you need to figure out what to do. So when I'm describing the community death movement, there's a program, there's a couple of programs now that have come up, but specifically there's one through Douglas College called The End of Life Doula— I think it's just End of Life Doula program. And I took that course, I think, in 2018 or so. And what the end of life doula movement is, and it's not exclusive to that course, is it's just a lot of people who are becoming informed about what dying looks like so that they can, if they want, they can start businesses. But very often I find that people are taking that course so that they're informed for their own communities. And so over the last few years, I've encountered a lot of people who have taken an end-of-life doula course or some type of end-of-life course, and they range from, you know, very, very practical, more health-based information all the way to quite spiritual-leaning stuff, and usually somewhere in between. But I'm finding more and more— I call them daughter doulas because very often it's daughters, okay, who have a parent who's dying or have an aunt or uncle or a family member, and they've taken this course that's maybe, you know, just a number of hours that they've spent on it, but their capability and their, I would say, their courage in it is totally transformed just by that little amount of information that they've taken in over maybe a week, or maybe it's over a 5-week course kind of thing. And so that to me right now is part of that groundswell. And I know that there's a lot of research out there on community movements, but I, I do believe that this one is— it's coming closer to a bit of a tipping point with our cultural awareness. And I would say you having me on this podcast is one example of that, where people, I think, generally are— there's a bit of an osmosis happening where people are opening to something that has been really difficult to be open to. And I credit, you know, the hundreds of people now who are doing these courses all the time, who are just— it's becoming something that's in the water. And so I think that it's, to me, that's very hopeful. Yeah.

Thank you for sharing that. So much clearer for me and hopefully for the listeners too. And, you know, I don't know how many of us have heard of the story of the, like, uncle or the grandpa or the grandma or the mom or like Don't let me die in the hospital. Like, don't let me, you know, just take me out back and, you know, do away with me or something, which is, it sounds so extreme and silly. And also, you know, for those of us that have seen people in deep suffering at the end of their life, it makes, it made a huge impact on me. For example, my grandmother was in extended care for about 4 years and a lady in her room was in extended care for 9 years. And she couldn't speak. And, you know, and it just, to me, what you're speaking about, the community movement and dying at home and supporting people to help their loved ones do that, is just, it just brings like shivers to my body of excitement of like, what a beautiful way to honor that person's life. 'Cause that was the thing that struck me so strongly with this woman in my grandma's room was, you know, she probably lived a really vibrant life and had kids, and her husband would come in every couple days and visit her, and she couldn't speak. And, you know, it was just like a huge disservice, um, to that person's life. And I feel like it's quite dishonoring, you know, in a way. Like, and I know that might be upsetting, like people might be able to like, well, that's kind of rude, Tracy Lydiatt. Like, why would you say that? There's no other options. And so also glad that you're on the podcast talking about the emergent options to help those people and their communities process their passing. And I had never heard of a death doula before a couple of years ago. And to me, it just— it's such a beautiful concept. It makes so much sense that we have doulas to, like, have life come in with helping, you know, moms birth new babies and that we have death doulas that might help people transition out. Like, what a concept.

Yeah. And it's really— I think too, just on the— um, I think there's stats about how many Canadians want to die at home, and it's most. Um, but there's— I always want to give grace, and I know that you know this too, that it can be really scary at the end. And that's one of the things that death doulas help normalize is that dying is a labor. And much like coming into the world, it can take a lot of work. And sometimes for people transitioning at death, it takes a lot of work too. And the sounds and the sights and, and all of that can become really overwhelming. So I think that often people might have had this whole dying time at home, but then right at the end, they may get admitted to the hospital because it just becomes too much for their families. And I think that's totally valid.

Yeah, 100%.

And I think one of the great things is that part of what end-of-life doulas do is advanced care planning, which helps people know what interventions they do or do not want at the end of their life. So if they— even if they do go to the hospital, by doing the planning ahead of time, you're ensuring that they're not ending up with, you know, intubated with feeding tubes if that's not what their wish was. Yeah, so they may go to the hospital and get comfort, and their family will get the practical support that they need, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're prolonging their life more than they wanted. And it's possible to transition from that hospital time back into being helped by community in a lot of different ways. So it's, it's just really— it's so incredibly valuable to know those things ahead of time.

Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, sorry.

Yeah. Oh, I just can't, I just can't overstate it. It's just so valuable.

That makes a lot of sense. So thank you for sharing that. And you're right, there is— I never thought of death as a labor. That's a great way of putting it. And yeah, there are— it is scary for the family and for the people. So it's, it's just what I'm hearing is that it's the work you're focusing on is allowing a lot more flexibility and supportive options to try and help that person achieve what they want for the end of their life instead of, you know, giving them a voice instead of just one path, one way of doing it. And that's that kind of thing. So I was hoping we could transition a little bit and talk about the potential environmental impacts of the— I think you referred to it as the industrial a funeral complex.

Sounds so dramatic. Yeah.

So yeah, there is a very large business in the business of dying. And, um, you know, whether that's cremation and put me in a cardboard box all the way up to, you know, full funeral services and casket burials. And, um, yeah, I just would really love to hear your thoughts about that environmental impacts and what you've learned Yeah, yeah, I think that there's—

so there's always— and I'm sure other people have different pillars, but I would say that there's kind of like the community social aspect. And I think there's like an individual psychological impact of holistic death care, and then there's a community impact, and then there is an environmental impact. And I think the beautiful thing about death work is that it intersects all of those things. So if I think about, like, for example, my own wishes for a natural burial, if I were to become ill and die, be dying 6 months from now, I've got a very clear plan for my family, which they may or may not follow. And that's, that's so key to understand with death caring and with what, what I value in in building awareness is that your dying is, is you, and it's your journey. After you have died, your family takes over this journey with your physical body, because people often will use the language, well, she's not there anymore. And you go, well, she might not be there, but there sure as heck is this body that needs to be dealt with. And so what are we going to do? And so to me, that's when that transition from that individual journey of being a dying person transitions to a community journey, what happens with their body and what do you do? And that is where the intersection with the environment then comes in, because how, how does my body go back to whatever components it's going to end up in? And so I want a natural burial, which essentially means just very little intervention on my physical body, just a bathing, shrouding in either linen or cotton shroud, and then just being placed directly in the earth and then allowing that process of just returning to the earth, just like every other living critter on the planet. So that's my wish, and it's pretty low impact. Right now, the spot where I would like to be buried is actually in Armstrong, so it's a bit of a drive. So I think it actually ends up being probably about the same CO2 emissions as cremation. Okay. But without the metals and whatnot going into the atmosphere, and it's— you can really split hairs on it. Yeah. But there is quite a lot of emissions with cremation, and in BC, I think we're like— the last data was about 87% cremation in BC. Okay. We are real heavy on the cremation here, which is incredible to me because we've got we do have a glut of land, and burying bodies isn't harmful for the land. It is something that can be done, and then just allow things to restore themselves. And so I do believe that we could have more burial. And in addition to that, there are alternatives. For example, Washington State has two it's called disposition, two disposition alternatives that we don't even have in BC. And it's just purely due to legislative apathy, I guess, that there's— it just hasn't been made available to British Columbians yet. And so those two, one is water cremation, aquamation, alkaline hydrolysis. It's a common way that they do disposal of of, uh, biotissue in hospital settings. Um, but it's basically uses alkali— or sorry, lye and water and heat and pressure and movement to reduce the body then down to bones, which are processed down into cremated remains. Yeah, so that's one option. And then the other option is human composting, and that's composting down on kind of more of an industrial level. Which is really quite a, a beautiful process from a ceremony perspective too. There's some facilities down in the States that are happy to have you come and do a tour and check them out. And, and so about 3 hours from Vancouver, you can go and see what they're doing there. And it's just this like fascinating evolution to the way that we manage bodies. So those two options are not legal in BC. And when you ask them why they haven't updated the legislation, they'll tell you because there's no consumer interest. And then that's when I climb on my soapbox and I go, we have incredibly uninformed consumers about every aspect of what we do. So why would we assume that any— who's, who's doing that, that advocating? Who's getting out on the streets and, and asking that we have the right to lay our people to rest by whatever means are available?. And in my view, we need to be mobilizing those options as soon as possible so that they're in place when we have to start managing the death of the baby boomer generation.

Right.

Because we're not gonna have enough cemetery space, we're not gonna have enough crematoriums to do that efficiently. So we need all the options on deck and that needs to happen in the next 10 years. So, um, that's a pretty big passion point for me, but that would be on the environmental side, again, that intersection of community and environment, where it's up to the living to do that, that sort of decision-making, and the dead are there to instruct us. And the dead say, you know, "These were what my values were in life, please carry them forward." And then it ends up being the community who goes, "Oh, well, they were really eco-conscious, they'd like a green burial." but then they're finding out way too late how much it costs to buy cemetery spaces, and then they're making this emotional and fraught decision to then do cremation instead because there are no other alternatives that are low emission. Mind you, there are alternatives, but not legally here in BC. So there's, um, there's actually a lot of interplay between all of those dynamics that could occur at any point in time. You don't have to be dying to consider with your family what all of those, uh, what are those dynamics will be. And, and honestly, like, when you've had even a small amount of conversation before the fact, the community experience is transformed, and therefore the environmental experience can be transformed by it. And we're— it's, it's such a gift and it's such an opportunity for people who step into it.

Yeah, we often refer to the social side of sustainability as the gas pedal. So when you talk about people being able to not— well, not being able to meet their needs on a daily basis, they're— they really are unable to consider anything else, whether, you know, they're damaging the air or the water or the land by their activities, because they're literally just trying to survive. Yeah, and it's interesting to kind of flip it inside out or on its head, or, you know, talk about it from a much different angle when somebody is leaving the planet Earth and how that process can have such an impact on the community as well. And yeah, have ripple effects really through their community for the positive. Yeah, it's such a beautiful concept to think about how, um, you know, a really heavy subject and sometimes a really traumatic subject for people could, with a little bit of pre-planning is what I'm hearing you say, could have a really positive impact on the social side of that person's life, but also help them stay in line with values that they might have. For myself, when we were talking about this originally, I was like, right, I should probably do that too because I would be pretty upset if my end of life wasn't in line with my values as well. It's interesting that we have to start thinking about the baby boomer generation as well. Thank you for bringing that forward. It's something that I've often thought about too. And what, you know, I always just go back to the dignity part. Like, these people have lived a really unique life, and how do we help them with dignity? And also, there is like the logistical side of the volume of people that exist right now in that generation and who are reaching a certain age. And so that has an impact too on the environment and What I'm hearing you say is if the government doesn't start sort of planning ahead a little bit and maybe considering some other alternatives that are proven and safe and effective in other countries like, like the U.S. or neighbors below, we might be facing some challenges.

Well, even within Canada, because like water cremation has been in Saskatchewan, I think, since 2013. Oh no way! In Ontario, Quebec, Northwest Territories, Yukon. Um, it's, it's about half the country and just not BC, which in BC just says that it's the, the green place, you know. And alkaline hydrolysis, it uses a lot more water, but from an emissions standpoint, it's like 95% less. It's, it's much, um, from a greenhouse gas side, it's like there's no comparison. Um, but I do think— oh, I had a thought. No, I think it's gone.

I know that, um, I would love, uh, also to just, um, you know, culturally, when you think about a burial, you think about, you know, walking into a funeral home and you're kind of given this menu and list of options and you know, here's a casket. And you and I were talking about this earlier as well, and I wanted to talk about different cultures. And so we were talking about Indigenous folks in BC, and you were talking about cedar boxes. And so I was just curious about what you've learned about other burial practices that are different from ours.

Yeah, I think, well, for our Indigenous communities, it's good to know that they have their own land land use kind of rules, essentially. So the way that they practice burial is very— it's very independent from the way that burials are managed by anybody else in the province, because the— we have the specific land use of for cemetery places of interment is very, very highly regulated and observed. Um, you know, the green burial that I described, basically any Islamic tradition burial, any Muslim or Jewish burials, those are all green burials, because they don't embalm, they don't use unnecessary materials in their burials. And very often, you'll find that communities, cultural communities, or, you know, very firmly entrenched community or religious community will have a, basically a committee of their death workers. And it's often volunteers, and it's often just sometimes depending on the tradition, there might be a men's group and a women's group, like it's not in a binary. But their role is to do the tending of the dead. And that's, you know, it creates a different experience for families. And I've seen that be a challenge too, because we've got a lot of families that are blended from a lot of different backgrounds. So you'll get a family that has a really embedded tradition, like a Muslim tradition, for example, where they've got their, the community does the bathing, and they've got very sort of stricter rules and processes around burial. And then you'll get, you know, someone else will come in and they'll go, well, I want to see them, and I want to do this or this around their body. And then they go, well, that's actually not allowed. And that can be hard. But I, I do believe that just the way that we have, um, sort of evolved to do we have quite a direct cremation culture right now, I would say, where people are looking for the lowest cost option, the least amount of interaction with the funeral home. And I think that's evolved because of the distrust of the funeral home industry. So we— what we have now, I think, is a situation where folks have almost no engagement at all with the body or even with the business that they're interacting with. Sort of direct-to-consumer online cremation providers are quite popular now and growing, where you kind of go online, you fill out forms, maybe have a phone call or two with someone, and then you, you receive ashes either in the mail or delivered to you by, by an employee. And that— I think sometimes when those those things occur sort of passively within a culture, we don't see them as a sort of a tradition. But I would say that we're in kind of a direct cremation tradition right now, and that has happened sort of accidentally. And just like so many things in our lives and in our kind of our contemporary way of living, it has really detached us from the organic nature of what death actually And I think it contributes to the fear, because what I've witnessed from years of spending time with the dead is that they're quite, um, low-key. They're not scary, you know. They don't really do a whole lot. They don't, you know, people don't just decay suddenly and become this like zombie Scary Movie, like thing. It's really, you know, it's— I, I often will say that like we all kind of at the end sort of look like we fell asleep on an airplane, like our mouths are open, our eyes are kind of open, and like that can be kind of scary to people.

Yeah.

If you, if you're not, if you're not ready to prepare, if you're not prepared for it. Um, but like the actual physical body, it's not— it's, it's the, the grief of the loss of the person in who inhabited that, who gave that life. That's the scary part, that the enormity of loss is just such a thing to try and sit with. And in that way, I think that physical bodies can actually ease that, because what you're seeing is a physical form that brought you the same comfort as that person's presence. They're just not in it anymore. And that is that essential thing that departs at death. We have so much to learn about what that, what that looks like. And I think that if we can move into something that maybe we're still ordering the cremations online, but maybe we're spending, you know, an extra few hours with the body or an extra day with the body— people do that all the time Yeah, I think from a, from an individual kind of processing perspective, that's when we see that we are organic and we are made of the same stuff as everything else, and that we are in a process of transition always. And like, as, as David Whyte is a poet, and one of my favorite lines of his, that at the end of our lives we are compost for worlds that we cannot yet imagine. And when you're sitting with the dead, I think that that's one of the gifts that they provide us, is that we as the living have a responsibility and a stewardship to this organic body, to care for it and to place it somewhere, to do something with it, so that we're not just, you know, placing it behind a wall or a screen that become so comfortable doing, but to just be with that difficult reality that we all share. And so when you talk about cultures, and I realize I diverted a little bit from the original question, which is like Indigenous practices and all these practices, I think my reality and the thing that I believe is that any practice, anything done with intention, is creating a value in that space. And the intention requires a level of being informed that a lot of people don't necessarily have right now. In order to act in a way that's aligned with either your family values, cultural values, you have to know. And a lot of people don't know what they don't know. And, you know, the responsibility of the broader system is to make options available to people so that they can make values-aligned decisions.

No, such a good point. Um, I was just, uh, thinking about a friend of mine who, uh, her mom died at home. And, you know, in her words, she said, oh, Trace, we had like a weekend at Bernie's kind of like weekend where she just had an open door, um, an open door session where she just invited all of her mother's friends and her friends that had been part of her journey because her mom was quite sick with dementia. For a number of years. And, um, they literally— she said it was so magical because they literally had her mom in her bedroom and people were like laying flowers around her and like writing notes and going in and spending time with her. And then they were having like a beer and pizza party, like literally in the kitchen, having these other conversations about her mother's life and like telling funny stories. And she said it was such a trip that she was watching these two very different dynamic things happening, but all in the same place and in the same space. And one of my questions to her was like, wow, like, I didn't know you could do that. And she's like, oh yeah. And they worked— she worked with a funeral group in Victoria, BC. And, you know, they gave lots of time and they even, you know, invited her to come along as they transported her mom's body. And You know, it's just, there's so— you're exactly right about education. There's just so much variety of how we can manage these processes that are in line with that person's wishes, the environment, and that I think helps us socially, um, transition and grieve and come together as a community around and celebrate that person's life as well, which is really beautiful.

Yeah, and what you're describing, I've seen that provide so much catharsis to people. And because every person who walks through that door is engaging with death in a way that they very likely haven't had an opportunity to before. And there's a point that we reach in life where everybody that we know has been touched by this. And I believe that it's it's a social good to provide those spaces to allow people to also be processing the other experiences that they've had, to walk in and, and to allow, you know, every other loss that they have to follow them in through that door and to experience it in a different way that is so calm and very low drama. And it's so different from what we've been told death has to be, or what we've been sold it to be.

And loving and compassionate and fun. You know, my friend was like, we had a lot of fun.

Yeah.

And she's like, I wanted it. I wanted that energy in celebration. And I remember reading about Jim Henson's funeral service and how he, you know, banned anybody from wearing dark colors, and he wanted like only bright colors and yeah, it's just, it's so magical. So, um, if anyone's listening to the podcast right now and they're like, yeah, like, I need to get on this, I need to do this, this is resonating with me, um, can you share like a first few steps to point someone in the right direction that might get them on the right path?

Yeah, I think, well, if they want to talk to me, I'm always happy to talk to anybody. So my @deathcarebc is my @, but anybody from anywhere is welcome to talk to me. I've got just so many stories. I find that sometimes it's just the best way to convey some of these hard things is just through telling stories. But there's also, there's incredible, like, there's a community death care movement, Community Death Care Canada. I believe that currently their presence is primarily on Facebook, but there's a lot of people there. The Death Doula Network International, it used to be Death Doula Network of BC, but they had a growth, and so now it's DDNINT.com. Two women who have been leading just incredible conversations about this, and there's a directory on there of death doulas across the country and globally. Who are having these conversations and doing these things. I encourage everybody who's listening to start looking at who the funeral providers are in your area. In a society like ours that has become so incredibly separated from the process, funeral homes and funeral workers are the knowledge keepers for death in our communities. And they have tremendously valuable information to share. By getting, getting in there ahead of time, you can maybe familiarize yourself with the different business models of funeral care. There are independent providers. The one that I used to work at is doing incredible groundswell work in especially the environmental movement, as well as I can— I'm pretty I'm much certain of which funeral home your friend used in Victoria or on the island, um, but just Google them and give them a phone call. Like, funeral directors are really friendly, like, very service-driven people. Um, but I would say, yeah, if, if you are someone who works within healthcare, works within a system, even a system of government, and you want to talk to me about the way that the systems intersect, that's really where I'm, I'm quite passionately driven right now, is just to try and establish an improved system so that we're supporting our vulnerable grievers and bereaved people through these early days in a way that's, you know, trauma or trauma-informed. It's family-led and it's a community-based exchange because at the end of the day, death is and has always been a community affair. And that will not be changing. And we've, we've really got a lot to prepare for with our aging population and with the increasing severity of climate events.

Excellent points, thank you. Lots of resources that you just shared, so I will be certain to put—

especially every industry has its own acronyms as well, so I know I could It's all good.

I will put it in the show notes, um, when the podcast gets published, so anybody listening can just look below and see the show notes. Um, so that'll be there as a resource. And I'm curious, with your own business, you know, starting out, um, on your own in an entrepreneurial fashion, um, there as— and as an eco-conscious service, uh, for folks are there any trade-offs that you might struggle with? And trade-offs meaning less ideal choices that you have to make because of potentially the way business or the economy or even our social mindsets are working right now. I've heard a little bit about government, but that's, I think, a change area. So curious if you have others.

Well, I think the hard thing for me is that there is no role for a Deaf worker. Besides funeral homes. And so if I wanted to go and get a job that would consistently, you know, pay the bills in a way that's a bit more traditional, I am required to work within a funeral home. There's no space for death workers in, you know, in hospice and palliative sound like they would be a fit, but they're healthcare providers, and their services generally end at death. And so this gap that I exist in is not one that necessarily lends itself to a solid 9 to 5 with a salary. So I think that individually is a challenge. But I think as funeral homes, I think what I'm experiencing now is when I talk to funeral directors who are working in all types of different companies, is they have a desire to see this community movement move forward as well. And for the ones who are curious about it, they've gone in and they're like, man, I wish more families would ask for this. But we have a very corporatized system. The largest corporation that owns almost 50% of the funeral homes in Canada is Texas-based. They're not, they're not activated on a community level. And so funeral directors who are working in those businesses aren't necessarily encouraged to go and get involved on a grassroots level. And then the other large corporation is Toronto-based and is, you know, they're almost— they look very similar. It's very hard to tell the difference. One of them wears blue suits, one of them wears black suits. And so they're good people, good-hearted people, but they're all trained within a very hierarchical and traditional system. And all funeral directors in Canada are kind of trained been brought up in the system that doesn't necessarily encourage you to think outside the box. And so I guess circling back to people just getting to know who your funeral providers are, you know, that means also maybe getting to know what their, their business structure is and then seeing where there's limitations or maybe where there's opportunities and recognizing that just like a lot of organic things in our lives, you know, doing things the green way will not necessarily be cheaper, but it's important to you, then, then it might be worth the investment. Um, but again, you just have to know in order to be able to make those choices.

Well, it's— yeah, thank you. And it's kind of, uh, I was gonna say oddly refreshing because I feel like we could pull out death care and insert another word like agriculture. You know, what you just talked about is the challenge that agriculture faces where we have industrialized food systems, and we could be really easily saying the same thing that we're talking about, but like, hey, go shop at the farmer's market and educate yourself about, you know, community-driven agriculture. And so I think it's— I'm finding it a little amusing because I've never personally thought about this with death. And also it's kind of I guess relieving to know that the challenge that we're all facing is so ubiquitous and broad as from a societal perspective of like, hey, we really need to start figuring out different systems of operating and doing business that don't just put the, the economy or the, you know, financial transactions of these services at the center of why those services exist.

So yeah, and hopefully we can copy and paste strategies a little bit. Like, I think this is just— as soon as people think about it, it's— it does open it up for them. And I hope that anybody listening finds this something that makes them feel capable and sort of empowered and curious, rather than, oh, here's another thing that I don't need to worry about, right? Like, you know, inevitable, and just like eating. So you just, you just gotta do it, and we're all in the same boat. So it's, you know, just talk about it with the people that you trust.

I appreciate that so much. Um, so I know you mentioned earlier about, uh, how you are very open to speaking to people, so super excited and grateful to hear that invitation. And also I was hoping that you share, uh, what your future outcome would be for Death Care BC and how people can— how listeners can find you.

Yeah, so I've got a website, and I do have individual sessions if people wanted to book and really formally sort of like sit down in a conversation. And I would— I— it's, again, it's a values thing, so I always begin by saying, what are the values? What are your your prior experiences, and how is that informing what you think that it is that you want? And essentially sort of auditing that, and then going through and talking about the different options, and then just allowing people to explore kind of their fears in conversation, um, in a way that's safe. And, and at the end of it, being able to provide them really specific resources. So that's something I love to do, and I'm happy to do with individuals. Um, right now my, my hope is that I'll be able to engage most meaningfully with the healthcare providers who are working with people because of our overburdened system. Um, I'm not seeking to add anything onto anybody's plate, but to support a review of the operating procedures that people have once a diagnosis is, is brought into play so that we can do a bit of a different job for survivors, giving them a tether to the world beyond after their person has died, so that we know who the key stakeholders are when a patient is going through the healthcare system, and just planting seeds for those folks so that by the time they're trying to make decisions in a funeral home or within a, within a group, that they've already thought about it's not the first time they're thinking of it. So that takes the form of seminar work with healthcare providers as well as those individual sessions with healthcare providers to unpack a bit of what they bring into the room with them, and also to provide the specific legal considerations and practical options that people have that they may not know about.

Hmm, beautiful. Well, I, uh, I'm so grateful that you're on the podcast and you're, uh, so calming to listen to. And so I feel like it's an extra bonus for anyone that's listening and maybe in some conflict or strife around this or emotional distress that hopefully this was a helpful podcast for you as well. And that, um, Emily and other others are a good resource. For listeners. So again, just as we wrap up, would you mind sharing how people can get in touch with you directly?

Yeah, so my website is deathcarebc.ca, and all of my apps on social media are the same. So it's death, D-E-A-T-H, although I know the deaf community is also very robust. But this is Death Care BC. Amazing.

Thank you so much, Emily, for your time and sharing all of this. And I do truly believe that the folks that you were talking about inside, you know, corporate business structures are also striving to make change, as well as people like you and I that are on the outside of those systems. And if we all just keep having these conversations and talking about the changes that we want to see and taking those actions on an individual level, I totally believe it will roll up into a massive shift change. So thank you very much for being here. Yeah, fingers crossed. That's what my intention is, is to create the spaces for these conversations so that, you know, our voices will carry across the waves and, you know, hopefully inspire others to start thinking about this and in a way that they might appreciate it.

I really appreciate it because it's not necessarily easy either. It takes— there's an element of bravery and even having this topic on your platform as well. So I really appreciate it, having the space.

You're so welcome. Hey listener, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Eco-ish Podcast.

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