LEES+Associates was commissioned by the Town of Okotoks to provide a full spectrum of design services for the expansion of a cremation garden at Okotoks Cemetery. The project included careful selection of materials and finishes to harmonize with existing aesthetic of the cemetery and its context.

The design includes a new community columbaria walk, in-ground cremation plots with winter interest and low maintenance plantings, a gathering space, seating areas, and a scattering garden. Sculptural weathering steel memorial walls mimic the meanders of the nearby Sheep River and the Okotoks glacial erratic, a well-known local landmark.

Video courtesy of Sunset Memorial & Stone

LEES+Associates provided comprehensive planning and design for six cemeteries within the regional municipality’s cemetery system, including a new cemetery in Fort McMurray. Our firm assisted with all phases of development from site selection and land acquisition through to concept design, construction drawings and contract administration. The new cemetery strives to meet the needs of the public and plan for future generations. Our team worked closely with stakeholders to meet the cultural, religious, and burial needs of the region’s residents including the design of custom grave alignments for Aboriginal and Muslim communities, and collaboration with local artists on the design of iconic statuary.

The Komagata Maru Memorial has transformed an underutilized area of a downtown waterfront park in to a unique and meaningful public space. We were instrumental in the selection of a location with historic relevance to the incident: a site with panoramic views towards the place where the steamship lay at anchor one kilometer off-shore from May to July 1914. LEES + Associates led the public engagement process and achieved consensus on a design for this highly controversial monument and its placement at a visually prominent location.

LEES+Associates was retained by Royal Oak Burial Park in Victoria BC to provide a concept plan and construction documents for a sloping, 5 acre site immediately north of the existing mausoleum building. The design was based on creating a series of water features to connect stepped terraces providing in-ground burial lots on the east side of a central pedestrian path, and cremation interment on the west.

Now known as “The Terraces”, this section added 600 casket burial lots and four new cremation gardens, each with capacity for approximately several hundred interments, to the range of interment options offered.

The redevelopment of the historic Masonic Section at Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery was based on respecting its original spatial relationships and materials while investing the site with a contemporary aesthetic. Natural stone, wood and metals were used to create forms that provide over 2,500 new interments. The area has also become the site of new community celebrations, returning the cemetery to its role as a vital part of the city’s public realm.

The Air India Memorial, situated in Vancouver’s Stanley Park, commemorates the 331 victims who lost their lives in the 1985 Air India bombings.  The project is comprised of a commemoration site and an adjacent playground that focuses on the positive qualities of play and cooperation amongst children. On opening day, July 27^th, 2007, Minister for Public Safety, The Honourable Stockwell Day remarked: “This memorial is setting the bar for memorials across Canada.” The main feature of the memorial is a crafted stone wall that rises from the ground in an arc, but ends abruptly to symbolize the trajectory of Flight 182.