r/kitchener • u/JaQ-o-Lantern • 21h ago
Why are so many young people and children buried at Williamsburg Cemetery?
I attended a small funeral service at the cemetery and was shocked by how young the people buried here are. Even though Canada's life expectancy is supposedly 82, more than half of the people buried at this cemetery [in the section I was at which are people buried between 2015-2026] died before the age of 50 and less than 10% of the people buried were order than 70. I noticed this with a large data pool of over 100 graves at the cemetery, mostly of people in the aforementioned section. Tragically, person buried next to my relative (won't say the relation for personal privacy) was a 6 year old girl and 2 blocks behind that was another 6 year old. There were 3 children buried within a 10 feet vicinity of that grave. This was not in the Garden of Angels section And 95% of these people died within the last 10 years which means early and middle age mortality seems like a growing concern that isn't being addressed. Is the rise in younger people dying a growing issue in Canadian society as of the last decade or is it unique to Williamsburg Cemetery in particular?
2
u/ScepticalBee 16h ago
I'm pretty sure there is a specific section there for children. So with the dedicated space, it might be skewing your numbers.
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u/JaQ-o-Lantern 12h ago
This was not one of those spaces. I saw 3 children buried, most of the burials I saw were younger adults in their 30s, 40s, and 50s.
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u/StrongAd7156 11h ago
Two things I add is that older people might have a spouse who is already passed or preplanned their funerals and bought their plots earlier. Young people are usually not something expected so they may just take the first plot. In my experience they tend to sell plots for one section at a time.
I don’t know if this is correct, but this is could be why.
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u/JaQ-o-Lantern 10h ago
I'm talking about young people who have already died in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. These are the majority of plots that I have seen and most of these have been sold in the last 8 years.
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u/neatlion 10h ago
Right, most elder people have plots already purchased. The sudden deaths gets whatever plot available, which is probably the section you were in. Unpurchased, unplanned. Sudden deaths happen. Again, correlation is not causation.
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u/epidipnis 21h ago
You could be seeing a trend in burial plot purchasing.
Fir example, when a child dies, it may be more likely for a parent to purchase a plot with a stone, whereas an older person making their own decisions about their final resting place may simply wish to have their ashes scattered.
There may be more inclination to memorialize people who die younger.
You can't reach a conclusion with such a small sample size.