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Well that was interesting?

Well that was interesting?
Hired a professional PR Team to send out 40 news releases announcing my book, and only one reporter called back, saying he wished he could report our release, but it wouldn’t suit his constituency, they were a funeral magazine!
Sadly, all I have ever done is championed family funeral homes, but because I won’t lie to reporters to defend the self-appointed ‘Zsars’ of our profession, the funeral conglomerates (people whom I think at least in some part belong in prison, but still buy most of the full page colour ads in the funeral press).
I gather I’ve been entirely discredited.  Old Harald Gunderson more than ten years ago coined a phrase for me, back when he was writing for Canadian Funeral News, but also editing the Loewen Group’s monthly bulletin.  He called me ‘Deep Throat’, pouring forth an orgasm for public journalists!
Truth is, most of the time, I loved Harald, he was irascible, and we had many spirited debates, but here’s a truth I invite all of Wall St. to confront.  In 1999, at the peak of funeral home consolidation, Service Corporation International had about 5,200 roofs (funeral homes and cemeteries), Loewen Group had about 1,400 roofs, and Stewart Enterprises had about 500, totaling 7,100 roofs.
Today, SCI owns Stewart and Alderwoods (what Loewen was renamed after emerging from bankruptcy), and today owns a trifle over 2,000 roofs.  Can any other profession out there lay claim to repossessing 70% of what consolidation stole from their profession?
You see, it’s pretty much only in Vancouver that these, the most predatory practices imaginable were institutionalized.  Pretty much everywhere else, these practices were and are illegal!
My peers in their cities across our entire continent just woke up every morning each day for 60 years, just doing the right thing.  They never even noticed that they were crucifying the newcomer impostors in their communities!?!
It’s only here in Vancouver, where the chains (in large part pretending to be non-profits) stole 80% of the market.
We had to develop a ‘family funeral home’ brand, to escape being labeled as the same as them.
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Oh yeah,it was launch day for this book!

Well that was an interesting week! Didn’t we just promise you there’d be no further interruptions? Our blog last week was actually done live, but to a real audience, a packed house. We would have posted it to our servers then as well, only they were under an all-out ‘Russian Mafia’ scale all-out assault! Oh yeah,  it was launch day for this book!
Well the launch went pretty well I understand. We had 50 people, many of whom were couples, and they still bought 33 books, thanks to every one who was there! Check out the fantastic video here.
As to the Russian Mafia, has anyone else out there experienced this?
Tom
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Seven days and counting to lift off!

In hearings from here to Tallahassee, we’ve tried to explain these simple but essential ethics.
November 25th, my story will finally be available (here at ‘ItsYourFuneral.ca‘), and it is my sincerest hope that every caregiver out there who knows that people grieving are uniquely vulnerable, which makes all of us uniquely responsible, finds a way to read this work!
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WhY VancouveR?

Why is Vancouver the only major ‘funeral market’ the chains have been able to capture?
When I speak to my peers of challenges we face with the practices of big businesses in this region, most of them most often are surprised. The reason is that the way business is done here is different than in many other cities. Here are some questions for you to think about:
1) Should people serving people grieving, be allowed to be paid on commission?
2) Should commissioned sales people be allowed to telephone solicit?
3) Should cemeteries be allowed to exclude competing funeral homes from booking services in their chapels?
4) Why should people have to buy a cement covering, or even a sarcophagus for their casket?
5) Should stock-market listed chain-owned funeral homes have to have their real owner’s names on their signs?
6) Should virtual funeral homes have to say where their real offices are located, if they even have any?
7) Should funeral homes be allowed to use hospitals as ‘cold-storage’ facilities, in lieu of being required to have these facilities themselves?
What do you all think?
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It’s Your Funeral isn’t just about bad corporations:

It’s Your Funeral isn’t just about bad corporations, it’s about an absence of adequate regulation.  Most of my peers across North America can’t believe what we’ve seen done by ‘so-called’ professionals up herein B.C..
The reason is because in most places where they live and work, what we’ve seen here, has been made illegal.
In areas where abuse to some degree was allowed to become legal, it’s not unusual for the staff to come up to us at Presentations and Hearings (and after all their management has left), saying: “We professional staff are all with you! We didn’t go into funeral service to do this to people!”
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The undertaker’s nephew

Hi everyone, welcome to my site.  On Remembrance Day, 1978, my ‘iron-willed’ grandma called me up, a fourth year philosophy student (ya, I was getting a degree in ‘becoming unemployable’, all it taught me was how to argue), she told me she wanted me to come see her.
When I got there, she sat me down, handed me a cup and saucer of steaming tea and said: “Tommy, if you don’t quit school today, and take over the family business, it’s going to be sold to somebody named Ray Loewen, and I want you to go think about that!”
Wow!  I’d vowed I wasn’t going to be a funeral director, every time my Uncle Frank Kearney was seen in the neighbourhood, I get ribbed for weeks about being ‘the undertaker’s nephew’. In retrospect I have no idea why my class mates thought that was funny?
At the same time I felt my Uncle was a pretty kind and wonderful man, and I’d never heard a kind word said about Ray Loewen, so the  ext day, I went out to school and quit.
I thought I was surrendering to the quiet routine of the family business.  But when the company accountant and lawyer told me they were sorry I quit, because I was about to go bankrupt, I discovered I’d actually just married a ‘firestorm’, only this firestorm accidentally made me an activist, and taught me a few lessons I hope could empower others.  That’s the purpose of my story, it became the purpose of my life, so please stay tuned?
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Cheeky Canadians!

Updated: Oct 14, 2019

Saturday October 5th, 2019, Michael Moore told 700 people I’m a good looking guy, he was only kidding, but it’s what he said after that blew me away.  I am completely Canadian, but my mother was an American citizen when I was born, so I’ve always felt kind of ‘Bi’! What Michael went on to say was that to America, Canada was a true friend.  “You know why?” he asked us. “Because only a true friend, can tell you when you’re wrong!” (Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq, the War on Terror)

On November 25th, I’m publishing my book on how Wall St.’s invasion of my profession’s completely delicate ecosystem, funeral service, is equally wrong.  Sadly our American funeral friends have been a bit slower joining this fight.  We Canadians opposed the attempt of the biggest American Funeral Conglomerate, Service Corporation International of Houston Texas, to trademark ‘Family Funeral Care’, both in Canada and the US.  The day we Canadian family firms beat them, 4,000 US family funeral homes joined the fight, forming the ‘PST (Prevent SCI’s Trademark) Fund’.  Has any other sector of the economy taken back 70% of what Wall and Yonge Streets stole?

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Life’s Turns

Hi everyone, welcome to my site.  On Remembrance Day, 1978, my ‘iron-willed’ grandma called me up, a fourth year philosophy student (ya, I was getting a degree in ‘becoming unemployable’, all it taught me was how to argue), she told me she wanted me to come see her
When I got there, she sat me down, handed me a cup and saucer of steaming tea and said: “Tommy, if you don’t quit school today, and take over the family business, it’s going to be sold to somebody named Ray Loewen, and I want you to go think about that!”
Wow!  I’d vowed I wasn’t going to be a funeral director, every time my Uncle Frank Kearney was seen in the neighbourhood, I get ribbed for weeks about being ‘the undertaker’s nephew’.  In retrospect I have no idea why my class mates thought that was funny?
At the same time I felt my Uncle was a pretty kind and wonderful man, and I’d never heard a kind word said about Ray Loewen, so the  ext day, I went out to school and quit.
I thought I was surrendering to the quiet routine of the family business.  But when the company accountant and lawyer told me they were sorry I quit, because I was about to go bankrupt, I discovered I’d actually just married a ‘firestorm’, only this firestorm accidentally made me an activist, and taught me a few lessons I hope could empower others.  That’s the purpose of my story, it became the purpose of my life, so please stay tuned?