Current trends on death and dying

Throughout Canada’s history, the experience of death and dying has changed
significantly for families and their communities. Across generations, evolving social,
cultural and medical trends have shaped family experiences with death, be they shifts in
the causes of death, progressive practices in medicine and care at the end of life
or social norms and customs surrounding death that are perpetually in transition.
Throughout all this, families have adapted and reacted, finding new ways of mourning
the loss of loved ones, and acknowledging and celebrating their lives and their legacies.

To explore developments in the experience of death and dying in Canada, the

Vanier Institute of the Family published Family Perspectives: Death and Dying in
Canada, authored by writer, speaker and retired Carleton University professor Dr.
Katherine Arnup. An update to the original 2013 edition, this conversation catalyst
explores diverse family experiences with death while encouraging families to have
conversations about death and end-of-life care planning. While these topics are
important to the well-being of dying people and their families, many find it difficult to
discuss end-of-life subjects with their loved ones and health care providers. However,
the topic has been brought to the forefront of public discourse, fuelled by population
aging and the legalization of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in June 2016.

With this silence broken, the ways that families across Canada recognize, accept
and react to death have changed. People are finding new ways to confront their
mortality, face death and celebrate the lives of those they care about, as new
opportunities for connection and communication are now possible thanks to social
media and online life. These changes are driven by individuals, families and
communities – all of which intersect, interact with and have an impact on an ever-
changing policy landscape. By exploring some of the new and emerging ways people
think about and manage death and end-of-life care planning, much can be learned
about how families in Canada are adapting and reacting to death in the current climate.

Death cafés

One new trend that provides an opportunity to confront death is the creation and
popularization of death cafés. In 2004, Swiss-born anthropologist Bernard Crettaz
hosted a small gathering called café mortel to talk about death. The concept was picked
up and popularized by Londoner Jon Underwood, who hosted his first death café in his
East Hackney home is 2011. Since then, more than 6,000 death cafés across 55
countries have been held. Though many informal death cafés exist, only those planned
by individuals associated with Underwood’s organization can use the title “Death Café.”

The idea [behind death cafes] is to “demystify” death and help people face their fears by
facilitating conversation, thus helping to mitigate people’s fears about death and erode
the taboo on the subject.
A death café is a gathering of strangers who connect online to come together over tea
and cake to discuss death. Participants are separated into tables of four or five with a
list of potential conversation starters. The ages of participants vary, ranging from youths
to seniors. Most people in attendance have some first-hand experience with death or
have had a serious illness themselves, but it isn’t a requirement. Death cafés have few
rules – no promotions of services or merchandise and no orthodoxy. These gatherings
provide an opportunity to confront and air out our fears regarding death and examine
our own desires for the end of our lives. The idea is to “demystify” death and help
people face their fears by facilitating conversation, thus helping to mitigate people’s
fears about death and erode the taboo on the subject.

Managing death in a digital age

With communications technology rapidly evolving and a growing share of Canadians

connecting and staying in touch online, it’s no surprise that this influences how people
respond to major life events such as death – a reality highlighted in Family
Perspectives: Death and Dying in Canada. As social media platforms such as Facebook
and Instagram have become ubiquitous only in recent years,
our norms, expectations and sense of propriety surrounding death in the “digital age”
are still in their infancy. For example, searching for the “#funeral” hashtag on Instagram
reveals people’s diverse ways of acknowledging and sometimes celebrating the lives of
recently passed family members. However, it also provides images that many people
might feel “cross the line” when it comes to respecting the feelings and privacy of the
deceased and their families. As part of our new conversation of death, discussing
boundaries and appropriate ways to intersect our grief with an increasingly public life on
social media is imperative.