Surrey Mayor McCallum and team promises dedicated space for scattering ashes

SURREY, BC: Surrey’s Mayor Doug McCallum and his team have responded to the long standing demand of the South Asian community to have a dedicated place to scatter cremated remains of their loved ones.
The Safe Surrey Coalition and Mayor Doug McCallum have formally recognized Fraser Riverbank in Brownsville Bar Park, located at 11931 Old Yale Road in Surrey, as a dedicated place for communities to scatter cremated remains of their deceased loved ones.
In many South Asian cultures, cremated remains are customarily and religiously mandated to be scattered into a flowing river, where it is believed that this is the only way for the departed soul to find salvation. This ritual must be performed according to religious and cultural guidelines.
Due to the lack of a designated location for these ceremonies, in many cases people would secretly and dangerously scatter them in the ocean or other adjacent waterways. Various communities have been diligently searching for a suitable location to scatter ashes for many years.
“This has been a long-standing requirement of growing communities that practice cremation as the primary last rite ceremony and there has been no dedicated location set aside for this. With the rise in number of cremations conducted in Metro Vancouver, the demand for a designated location to scatter ashes is growing for the community at large” said Mayor McCallum.