Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Take Your Picnic to the Graveyard | Eater

"At Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, my family’s monthly rounds ended at my po po’s grave where we’d lay out a lavish spread — steamed buns, boiled chicken, pan-fried dumplings, roast barbecue pork, mandarin oranges, sticky rice, and green tea — sit on the grass, and I’d tell her about my week; these visits were our more-frequent take on Qingming Festival rituals (cleaning graves, burning joss paper, and eating nostalgic foods like sangza and glutinous rice balls) and became a source of deep comfort that normalized death and kept our relationship alive even after she died. Now, before Halloween and colder weather, I plan to take my daughter there with a picnic basket of po po’s cherished foods and some of my little one’s picks — both of them love steamed barbecue pork buns." - Tiffany Leigh