“[L]ike a page from history”? A Half-Century of Death Notices in <i>The Globe and Mail</i>

The term obituary is commonly applied to death notices as well as to professionally written obituaries despite important differences in the two genres. Death notices, authored by bereaved families, who pay for their publication, appear to have received less, and sometimes less respectful, attention from journalists and scholars than obituaries of the noteworthy written by professionals. The focus of this article is the first of these commemorative forms. Based on a sampling of death notices in The Globe and Mail from 1970 to the near present, the article analyzes and accounts for changes in the genre. Barebones and sober in 1970, death notices evolved, albeit slowly, over the next several decades until, in the 21 st century, they have become a lengthy and fulsome celebration of a life, a determined attempt to vivify the deceased’s unique personality. Their content reflects both the era when their subjects were in their heyday and the narrative choices that their biographers make in presenting their life and values. It also reflects the growing influence of the funeral industry and the media. The article contends that, the obvious airbrushing notwithstanding, death notices are a valuable source for scholars, providing a wealth of information about such matters as the significance, and signifiers, of social class, gender, religion, and family values in the fashioning of the deceased’s identity. As the study of death notices is extended to other newspapers, including those in rural and small-town Canada, it will provide further opportunity for analyzing private commemorative practices and in doing so complement existing studies of public and monumental styles of commemoration.