GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

16. In 1960 The Register got a lot of attention

THE REGISTER HAD FEWER CHOICES IN ITS MAKE-UP KIT than the Tely: only white space, two fonts in a few sizes, boldface or italics, thin or wide black borders, and a few graphics. Bill had to read all copy, not merely scan as editors usually do, because items came from both amateur and professional writers in seven dioceses of Ontario, from the news service of the Canadian Catholic Conference of Bishops, and other sources in Canada and the States. He often let American spellings through. Aside from all that, his minimal workforce did not include a proofreader.

Nevertheless, when I scanned issues from the previous two years to get a feel for the paper's style, I saw that he had already made The Register more attractive to look at and to read. I was delighted to help.

On the family page on December 10, 1960, my byline appeared on

"THE 'MONEY STANDARD' 

"Death, $$$ and dignity 

"Death is inevitable. That simple fact has led to the evolution of countless funeral customs since the first human died. And, as an article entitled 'The funeral business' in the November issue of Jubilee magazine* reports, it also provides a lucrative occupation for morticians (apparently 'undertaker' is no longer correct).

"The article, termed 'a report on the high cost of dying,' says that funeral expenses in the United States add up to more than $900 per death. Commenting on the article, TIME Magazine writes 'There is keen competition among embalming houses to help make the dead look healthier than their mourners.' Indeed if, as the Jubilee article states, 'at the base of the business still is embalming,' then there is something fundamentally wrong, for advertisements about embalming fluid claim 'Nature's own way to soft skin texture,' and a 'cosmetic effect to restore lifelike appearance, thus comforting the bereaved.'

"IT IS OBVIOUS THAT in our day 'it costs money to have death seem like fun,' as the Jubilee article notes, but the helplessness of survivors who must make arrangements for the burial of a loved one arises from the sad fact that the public is poorly informed regarding how to cope with high-pressure sales by morticians, and no one is in a position for comparative shopping when the need arises....

"The Toronto Memorial Society is a group of citizens who decided four years ago to encourage simplicity, dignity and moderate expense in funeral arrangements. It wishes to discourage 'money standard' thinking concerning funerals...".

And thus we launched a war in print, very frank yet remarkably polite by today's standards. Bill summed things up on the front page of January 21, 1961.

"DEPLORES 'PAGAN' FUNERALS

"Delegate decries high cost of dying

"By WILLIAM B. deMEZA  [He never cared about the size of that 'd' in his surname.]

"OTTAWA – Canada's funeral directors have been urged to make 'an agonizing reappraisal' of their profession, 'not only of price structures, but also of pagan customs and trappings that have crept into the industry.' The alternative, warns Archbishop Sebastiano Baggio, Apostolic Delegate to Canada, 'may well be that Christian communities, in their dissatisfaction, will set up cooperatives to operate according to the dictates of Christian conscience and to their means.'

"The Archbishop's comments were contained in a letter to James O'Hagan, Jr., executive secretary-treasurer of The Funeral Directors' Association of Canada and managing editor of the Association's national publication, Canadian Funeral Service. Mr. O'Hagan, himself a Catholic, had written to the Apostolic Delegate asking for his views on an editorial in the Dec. 10 issue of The Canadian Register [the same day as my article] because it 'seems to us to be contradictory to the policy of the Catholic Church as we understand it.'...