Paul Egan conveys contentment
By Tom Claridge

Paul Egan

Contentment.

That's the overwhelming sense Paul Egan conveys as he talks of his half-century involvement in a field some see as decidedly unattractive.

In the fall of 1958, when he was offered a football scholarship at United States university, he decided instead to spend another year at Albert College in Belleville so he would be old enough to commence an apprenticeship in funeral directing.

"At that time, to be licensed you had to have a Grade 12 education and be at least 17," he said in an interview.

He had Grade 12, all right, but was just 16 and so decided to stay at the church-run college and take Grade 13 before following his father and grandfather into undertaking.

"That's all I wanted to do," he said. "I never thought about doing anything else."

He attributes his determination in large part to the dedication he saw in his father, William Egan, whom he had helped in some aspects of the business when he was 14 or 15.

William Egan had been licensed since shortly after the premature death of his father, William Richard (W.R.), in 1932, and was still involved in the business until a few weeks before his death in 1997, the same year the family purchased the Baxter & Giles Funeral Home in Orangeville.

Now in a fourth generation, the family's involvement in funeral directing dates from 1913, when Paul's granddad purchased a Bolton-based funeral home and carriage manufacturing business from its founder, Albert Dodds.

Until then, W.R. had been a Vaughan Township farmer. Paul says he never was told why his grandfather decided on the purchase, apart from the fact Mr. Dodds had been a friend and was in poor health at the time.

The funeral home and Bolton Carriage Works were next door to one another on King Street East, but before long the business was expanded into furniture and hardware and a store was opened on Queen Street.

W.R. had two sons, William and his younger brother Harold. By the time Harold became old enough to take an active role in the family business, the carriage trade was becoming a thing of the past and the two brothers decided to specialize, with William concentrating on funerals and furniture and Harold, who never became a licensed mortician, managing the hardware and appliance sales. However, everything operated under the "Egan Bros." name.

The funeral home remained on King Street until 1957, when it moved into its current modern quarters on Bolton's South Hill.

Paul says that at the time there were a lot of objections from people who saw it as too far away. He recalls at least one old-timer asking his dad, "Why are you going up there? We can't walk to there!"

As for Paul, he took his father's advice and didn't do his apprenticeship in Bolton but rather spent the required two years with Turner & Porter Funeral Directors in Toronto. In 1961 he returned to Bolton to begin nearly 40 years of working in a fatherson relationship some saw as incredibly amicable.

Paul and his wife Lynne have three daughters, two of whom are deeply involved in the business.

A mother of two boys and a girl, Elaine Egan-Flanigan is herself a licensed funeral director and Kimberly Madill, mother of a baby girl, is the firm's office manager. Their eldest sister Heather teaches at a Brampton daycare school.

Asked about changes he had seen over the years, Paul said the biggest one was away from at-home visitations, which once were almost as common as visitations in funeral homes. Now a rarity, the last one for Egans was in about 2000 and actually included the elderly lady being embalmed in her west-end Toronto home.

Another big change has been the separation of funeral directing from other businesses. In the case of the Egans, the family sold the hardware and appliance business in 1980 and went out of furniture in 1995. An ambulance service once operated in connection with the funeral home ended in 1960.

Other trends he has noticed have included the increased popularity of cremation - now chosen by roughly half the families - and a de-emphasis on religion at funeral services, particularly when there is no church affiliation.

"Sometimes when we ask whether they have a church affiliation the answer is 'Protestant.'"

Today, most families want to have the services in the funeral home chapels, but active Roman Catholics invariably prefer a funeral mass in their churches.

Paul also sees a trend toward more personalized services and music. At one recent service a four-piece Dixieland band played in the lobby for their recentlydeparted bandsman.

On another occasion, there was a flypast by Harvard trainers as a salute to a departed pilot.

Recently, preparations were under way to host up to 60 members of the Achill Choral Society for the funeral of a chorister's mother.

His friendly manner has no doubt been a factor in Paul's selection for high office in the industry. Elected president of the Metro Toronto Funeral Service Association, he held office from 1978 to 1908, and he was appointed to the board of Guaranteed Funeral Deposits, an association that administers trust monies, serving there from 1991 to 2000.