All Souls Day MA solemn feast in the Roman Catholic Church By BILL EVERITT oin the living in remembering the dead Oct. 26 at the ninth-an- nual All Souls, a multi-faith event hosted by Mountain View Ceme- tery and dedicated to our ancestors. Created by Paula Jardine and Mari- na Szijarto, All Souls is an opportunity for people to remember the dead through quiet contemplation or by ex- pressing themselves with commemora- tive shrines, photos and candles. “We’ve lost our personal connection to that, because society has given [death] to industry and the profession- als,” Szijarto said. Halloween is a commercialized festi- val, but it is based on traditions that are really meaningful, she said. The event, inspired by All Souls Day, is about celebration not contemplation. “This event provides a space that’s more real for people to remember their dead,” Szijarto said. “It’s a service we are providing, it’s not meant to be a HA day to remember the dead and to pray for those in Purgatory to be cleansed of sin and released to heaven MMs Takes place on Nov. 2, the day after All Saints Day; was originally paired with Easter HE inthe 1920s, Pope Benedict XV grant- ed priests privilege to celebrate three masses on All Souls Day = aying tribute to ones lost Clockwise, from top: CLAIRE ALEXANDER, TIM MATHESON, YUN LUM LI photos Clockwise, from top: A man at the cemetery lights a candle in honour of a loved one who passed away. People enjoy a cup of tea indoors as part of honouring the dead. A child plays in front of a shrine with flames and decorative ornaments at the cemetery. spectacle.” Nine years ago, Jardine began the Parade of Lost Souls and invited Szi- jarto to make a shrine for people to honour their ancestors. Today, several thousand people gather every year on Oct. 26 to make their own shrines, write on memory boards or leave flowers and photo- graphs of loved ones lost. The Parade of Lost Souls still exists but Szijarto and Jardine are no longer involved with it and All Souls has taken a different direction, focusing on the shrines. Both women have had bad experi- ences with what they call “the death industry,” and the traditional funeral and crematorium experience. “People deserve better,” Jardine said. “It’s about beauty, it’s an expres- sion of love.” Currently All Souls uses less than 10 per cent of the 106-acre cemetery grounds, but Szijarto and Jardine are hopeful that more people will come. BILL EVERITT photo Marina Szijarto and Paula Jardine created an event to mourn the dead. Canadian zombies come alive Langara grad assembles collection of zombie short- stories using Canada as a backdrop to the horror By TYLER HOOPER Moreno-Garcia is cashing in on the popularity of zombies with the re- lease of Dead North, a collection of short stories that includes a tale about B.C. being invaded by marijuana grow- op zombies. The stories also encompass many different themes associated with Cana- dian issues. “It’s not your standard-fare zombie tale, “ said Michael Callaghan, presi- dent of Exile Editions and the publish- er of Dead North. “[There’s a] nice dy- namic going on within the anthology itself, in that you’re really taking all these different areas of Canada and us- ing people’s different backgrounds and heritages to have a perspective on zom- bies. I don’t think that’s really been done in that sense before, certainly not with Canadian literature.” Moreno-Garcia said the attraction to zombies was not because she was “par- ticularly interested in zombies,” but rather “we thought it had good market value and good potential for sales.” Moerno-Garcia said the recent rise in zombie popularity might have some- thing to do with the economy. “We like zombie stories because there’s a survivalist element and there’s also this notion of the collapse of society, so it expresses our fears of how we are afraid of government and the economy is going to go down the drain,” Moreno-Garcia said. “The zom- bie embodies that.” Kevin Cockle, who had one of his sto- ries bought for the anthology, said in an online post that zombies are a meta- phor for the free-market and decentral- ization. “They’re the perfect consumer — simply going after what they want, when they want it, with no need for a state, and no ability to form one.” Shimmer Magazine publisher Beth Wodzinski, who has worked with Moreno-Garcia in the past, told the Voice in an e-mail, “Part of the appeal [of zombies] is just juvenile: freedom to slaughter people once their humanity is removed.” The anthology was released Oct. 1 and features 20 different stories from various Canadian authors with differ- ing levels of experience. Piers: Langara graduate Silvia TYLER HOOPER photo Silvia Moreno-Garcia displays her new Canadian zombie-fiction book.