Cemetery Project - Toronto area

The Cemetery Project is one of the oldest JGS Toronto projects, beginning with the creation of the Society in 1985. Members of JGS Toronto undertook to document the burials in the earliest Jewish cemeteries in Toronto, beginning with the Pape Avenue (Jew’s) Cemetery, first by manually transcribing the information recorded on the headstones, and later by photographing the headstones. This information is made available via the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR), a database of names and other identifying information from Jewish cemeteries and burial records worldwide, from the earliest records to the present. JOWBR’s aim is to catalogue extant data about Jewish cemeteries and burial records worldwide.

The Cemetery Project now maintains and updates the burial records for the twelve Toronto-area Jewish cemeteries (over 85,000 records and corresponding photographs to-date), as well as Jewish cemetery sections in fifteen other cities in Ontario (over 4,000 records and photographs as of 2013). Volunteers document the burials in each cemetery section and photograph and transcribe the headstones for updates to JOWBR.

• The twelve Toronto Jewish cemeteries included in our project are:
• Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park
• Beth Tzedec Memorial Park
• Dawes Road Cemetery
• Holy Blossom Memorial Park
• Jones Avenue Cemetery
• Lambton Hills Cemetery
• McCowan Road Cemetery
• Mount Sinai Memorial Park
• Pape Avenue Cemetery
• Pardes Chaim Cemetery
• Pardes Shalom Cemetery
• Roselawn Avenue Cemetery

Cemeteries in other Ontario cities (does not include those maintained by JGS Hamilton or JGS Ottawa) are:

• Beth Jacob Congregation of Kitchener-Waterloo                       Kitchener
• B’nai Israel Cemetery                                                                      St. Catherines
• Duffin Meadows Cemetery – Sections 2, 10 & 12                      Pickering
• Elgin Mills Cemetery – Oraynu Congregation                              Richmond Hill
• Innisvale Cemetery – Am Shalom Congregation                         Innisfil
• Krugerdorf Hebrew Cemetery                                                        Krugerdorf
• Little Lake Cemetery – Beth Israel Synagogue                           Peterborough
• Lundy’s Lane Cemetery – Jewish Section                                   Niagara Falls
• Meadowvale Cemetery – Solel Congregation of Mississauga  Brampton
• Mount Hope Cemetery – Beth David                                            Brantford
• Or Shalom Cemetery                                                                      London
• Parkview Cemetery – Temple Shalom                                          Waterloo
• Restmount Temple Israel Cemetery                                             London
• Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery                                                      Windsor
• Sons of Jacob Memorial Park                                                        Belleville
• Temple Beth El Cemetery                                                              Windsor
• Woodlawn Memorial Park – Beth Isaiah Congregation              Guelph

As genealogists or family historians, we know just how valuable these records can be, particularly for future generations looking for clues to their family heritage. If you are interested in helping to crop and resize photos to meet JOWBR submission standards, or to take photographs of headstones at local cemeteries, please contact [email protected].

For information regarding a Toronto or Ontario Jewish burial, or to request a headstone photograph, please first consult JOWBR at https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Cemetery/ [free registration to the JewishGen website is required] to locate the burial information (if it exists). If so, please note the cemetery and section names, as well as the plot information, and e-mail your request to [email protected]. We will send you any existing photos in response, or if we do not have a photo in our files, we will try to fulfill your request in a future cemetery visit. There is no charge for this service, although donations at jgstoronto.ca/donate are appreciated. Permission is granted to add photos which we have provided – with attribution (e.g., “Courtesy of JGS Toronto”) – to your family tree and/or other relevant websites.