Death Cafes Encourage Canadians to Talk About Death

Death affects us all, yet in a 2012 Ipsos-Reid poll it was discovered that 86% of Canadians had never heard of advance care planning.

To take away the stigma around death and dying, Vancouver resident Ross Waddell recently organized a death café in a restaurant near Queen Elizabeth Park. In a CTV News interview, Waddell stated that, “it opens the door. It opens the conversation. And if people have felt that they hadn’t had a place to talk about it that can be enough to start with. The death cafe seemed like a simple event that could be held to open the conversation to the public.”

While still new to Canada, death cafes have been organized in the US and across Europe with great success. Based on the work of Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz, death cafes give people an opportunity to discuss death in “an accessible, respectful and confidential space, free of discrimination.”

It is important to encourage Canadians to start the discussion about death and dying. To start the conversation with your loved ones, please go to www.advancecareplanning.ca for conversation starters, workbooks, and more.

To read more on death cafes please see the following article from CTV News.