Bill Pechet, who designs cemeteries, says, “We are running out of space, especially in the Lower Mainland.
John Douglas Carnahan bought the rights to two burial plots in the northeast corner of a hilly cemetery in a dense part of Burnaby, B.C., a little more than 25 years ago.
Each one cost $750 back then.
As time went on and the cemetery filled up, the price of a single plot rose to more than $10,000.
Carnahan died when he was 91 years old, and his wife decided not to use the plots. Her fight for the right to sell the plots privately to anyone at market value has now reached the B.C. Supreme Court. Experts say the case shows again that the region’s housing shortage is also putting pressure on its graveyards.
“We are running out of space, especially in the Lower Mainland,” said Bill Pechet, an architect who has been designing cemeteries for about 30 years.
“Just like there is a housing shortage for people who want to live, there is also a housing shortage for people who want to die.”
Widow: Cemetery is stopping resale
In March 1998, Carnahan bought both plots at the Pacific Heritage Cemetery. At the time, the purchase agreement had a clause that said cemetery directors “may” buy back owner’s plots for the same price they were bought for.
Sheila Carnahan, who was married to Carnahan, called the cemetery after he died in 2021 to find out how she could sell the plots she no longer needed to a third party.
Staff told her in an email last October that, according to the cemetery’s rules, she could only sell her plots back to the cemetery for the original price she paid for each one, which was $750.
Sheila Carnahan has said that the cemetery “misread” its own rules because the rule said that cemetery directors “may buy” plots back, not that they “must buy.”
“The claimants say that the cemetery’s position, even though it is illegal, prevents a sale to third parties because the cemetery controls the ownership record and how the cemetery is run, including how the grave is made ready to be used,” the lawsuit said.
“The cemetery might make it impossible for the new owner to use the plot.”
The cemetery hasn’t answered her court claim yet.
In B.C., the right to intern people was sold for all time
In B.C., buying a plot is just buying the right to internment, meaning a buyer is paying for the right to be buried in the space but not purchasing the land itself. These rights are sold for life, so buyers can keep plots for as long as they want. However, if a plot has been empty for more than 50 years and the rightsholder is older than 90, a cemetery can start the complicated process of applying to get the space back.
Every cemetery has its own rules about selling a grave. Some bylaws let private sales happen, while others don’t.
In Metro Vancouver, most cemeteries are full or almost full. As the price of real estate has gone through the roof in the last ten years, so has the price of burial space, especially in cities. On Craigslist or Kijiji, private plots in Metro Vancouver have been listed for anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000.
Resales are common enough to warrant caution from Consumer Protection B.C., urging buyers to check online ads carefully to ensure whether cemeteries honour private sales.
Part of the problem is a lack of space and bad planning
In B.C., there isn’t enough room for traditional cemeteries for the same reason that there isn’t enough room for new homes: builders have nowhere else to go.
Pechet said, “The housing crisis we’re facing is because we can’t grow horizontally because we’re surrounded by mountains on one side and the ocean on the other.”
“There isn’t enough land to build houses, and cemetery plots are a kind of house.”
Planning for the city was also a problem.
“For some reason, the Metro Vancouver area seems to have much less space for cemeteries than most other cities and towns,” said Glen Hodges, who runs the only cemetery in Vancouver, Mountain View Cemetery.
“I don’t know why. It’s like a magical mystery.”
To make room for more graves, Switzerland, Sweden, Italy, France, and Germany limit cemetery leases to between three and thirty years.
In Spain and the UK, bones can be moved after a certain amount of time so that the plot can be used again to sell things. The City of London Cemetery, for instance, uses graves that have been empty for 75 years.
In 2019, the City of Vancouver passed a set of laws to save space at its only cemetery. Gravesites at Mountain View Cemetery can now be used by more than one family, and the cemetery can decide when more remains can be added to an existing spot.
Pechet said that B.C. might have to think about vertical cemeteries like the ones in Japan or find a way to include gravesites in public parks in a sensitive way. Recycling could be another choice.
“I think there will have to be a lot of new ideas because of it,” he said.