St. John's Norway Cemetery & Crematorium

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St. John's Norway Cemetery and Crematorium is an historic cemetery in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located at the intersection of Kingston Road and Woodbine Avenue in the east end of the city just northwest of The Beaches neighbourhood.HistoryThe cemetery was founded alongside St. John the Baptist Norway Anglican Church in 1853. Despite the use of the name "Norway", neither the church nor the cemetery has any connection to the country of Norway or to Norwegian immigrants to Canada; both were established to serve the small community of Norway, Ontario, then a considerable distance from the city of Toronto. The town itself was named after the Norway pine trees native to the area, and was amalgamated into Toronto in 1908.The land for the cemetery was donated by landowner Charles Coxwell Small. Originally three acres, the cemetery now covers about 35. Over the decades there have been almost 80,000 interments, and over 50,000 gravestones now stand in the cemetery. While attached to an Anglican church, the cemetery is non- denominational.The cemetery is perched on a large sandy hill which was once one of the large dunes formed by Glacial Lake Iroquois. The sand from this hill was used extensively by the Toronto brickworks, and is thus found in many of the city's older buildings.