Editor:
The following is a letter addressed to SCRD Area E director Donna McMahon and shared with Coast Reporter.
I am very concerned about your attitude toward the expansion of Seaview Cemetery and your suggestion that the SCRD could stop offering cemetery services. Seaview Cemetery is not, as you are quoted in the Coast Reporter on page 7 of the Jan. 27 edition, a business: it is a public service.
A local cemetery is a basic community service. Many people would argue that it is preferable to spend money on a community cemetery than on many of the other community services which they never use, but they have to pay for them from their taxes.
Everyone is going to die. Everyone needs a place for their casket or their ashes. For-profit burial grounds are extremely expensive, which is why regional districts and municipalities provide low-cost cemetery services.
People who have spent most of their lives contributing to their community; working in their community; providing their community with services; volunteering in their community; and above all, helping to build up their community, deserve to have cemetery services provided by their community.
SCRD cemetery services are not free. They are affordable.
You will cause very great stress and pain to many local people if they are no longer able to have their loved ones buried locally.
Regards, Anna Edmondson
