New public art transforms 10 connected Toronto-area cemeteries into an outdoor museum exploring 200 years of Toronto history, memory and care
TORONTO, ON — Mount Pleasant Group and Space for Grief™ have created a free, outdoor museum across 10 cemeteries in the Greater Toronto Area, bringing together public art, nature and two centuries of Toronto history.
Created to commemorate Mount Pleasant Group’s bicentennial, Yesterday. Today. Forever. is a series of free, site-specific installations open to the public through 2027. Drawing on archives, architecture, landscapes and community histories, the project brings together sculptural installations made from reclaimed doors, projection, original soundscapes, participatory Memory Gardens and museum-style outdoor storytelling. Visitors can contribute remembrances, leave reflections in a public guestbook and discover how individual lives and changing communities have shaped Toronto and the surrounding region.
“Yesterday. Today. Forever. is not art simply placed in a cemetery; it grows from the histories, landscapes and memories already held there,” said Ziyan Hossain, co-founder and creative director of Method Collective and Space for Grief. “These sites hold two centuries of Toronto: its people, migrations, architecture, ecology and generations of care. At the centre of the bicentennial is a public question: what do we carry forward? We wanted visitors to experience history not as something fixed behind glass, but as something they can walk through, listen to, feel and help shape.”
Each installation responds to its location and surrounding communities, with researched interpretation informed by Indigenous consultation, spanning Indigenous histories and enduring relationships with the land, Toronto’s growth and successive migrations and contemporary diaspora traditions. Together, the works reveal cemeteries not only as places of mourning, but as civic landscapes where personal memory, public history, nature and collective storytelling meet.
Plan your visit
Yesterday. Today. Forever. is open across all 10 Mount Pleasant Group cemeteries, with locations in Toronto, North York, Scarborough, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Brampton, Pickering and Oshawa. Flagship installations can be experienced at Mount Pleasant Cemetery and Toronto Necropolis. The installations will remain in place throughout 2026, with select components continuing into 2027. Daily hours are: August 18 – October 31: 8:00am to 8:00pm; and November 1–March 31: 8:00am to 5:30 pm. Installation details, maps, and visitor information: mpg200.ca/installations.
10 landscapes, 5 ways to encounter memory
Across all 10 locations, Yesterday. Today. Forever. turns a cemetery visit into an encounter with art, nature and Toronto history. Visitors can walk through sculpture, enter an audiovisual installation, contribute a remembrance, watch an artwork change with the light and follow stories across the grounds.
- Cross a doorway from Toronto’s past, and reflect on transitions: Mount Pleasant and Prospect cemeteries
Doors reclaimed from buildings across the Greater Toronto Area now stand without walls as walk-through sculptures that evoke the transportative power of memory. Given a second life, they invite visitors to cross from one perspective to another and consider what we leave behind, what we carry forward and how everyday places hold memory. - Enter a memory in motion: We Remembered the Monoliths, Toronto Necropolis
Stacked white forms become a canvas for moving images of forests, oceans and cityscapes, accompanied by an original soundscape led by Ziyan Hossain. The sculptural projection incorporates footage by BBC Planet Earth IIIcontributor Justin Blake and music featuring collaborations with acclaimed guitarist Plini, engineer and producer Henry Reinach, and writer and activist Sandy Hudson. Together, image, sculpture, and sound explore what memory preserves, obscures and remakes. - Leave a message in the Memory Gardens: York, Meadowvale and Thornton cemeteries
Inside garden-like gazebos draped in greenery, visitors can write to someone, or something, they have lost. Their messages are displayed on translucent bird-shaped cards that gather into layered murmurations. Growing in many voices and languages, each garden becomes a collective artwork created by its visitors. - Watch perspective change: Murmuration, Pine Hills Cemetery
Translucent birds appear to change colour as daylight shifts and visitors move around them, meaning no two people see the work in exactly the same way. Flying together, they evoke the many communities connected through Mount Pleasant Group, and remind us that even shared experiences can look different depending on where we stand. - Discover 200 years of city history: all 10 locations
Museum-style outdoor signage transforms each site into a self-guided journey through Toronto and the surrounding region. Historical timelines, archival photographs and reflective prompts connect individual lives with migration, architecture, public health, ecology and the city’s continuing evolution.
About Method Collective and Space for Grief
Method Collective is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary studio founded by Ziyan Hossain, Fran Quintero Rawlings and Calla Lee. Working at the intersection of data, human behaviour and culture, the studio combines systems thinking, strategic foresight, life-centred design and art-based methods to help organizations improve products, services, while navigating complex social and institutional change.
Space for Grief™ is Method Collective’s public art and research lab exploring how cities and institutions make room for loss, memory and human connection. Through immersive environments, participatory storytelling and Grief-Informed Futures, Space for Grief brings grief and memory into public life through art, research and civic practice. Learn more at https://www.spaceforgrief.com/yesterday-today-foreverandhttps://mpg200.ca/installations.
About Mount Pleasant Group
Established in 1826, Mount Pleasant Group is a non-profit organization providing inclusive, compassionate and choice-driven cemetery, funeral and cremation services across the Greater Toronto Area. Its network includes ten non-denominational cemeteries, nine funeral centres and four cremation centres.
Mount Pleasant Group is committed to supporting families, preserving significant cemetery landscapes and histories, and honouring diverse traditions in perpetuity.
Media contacts
Method Collective / Space for Grief
hi@methodcollective.ca
methodcollective.ca
spaceforgrief.com
Mount Pleasant Group
media@mountpleasantgroup.com
mountpleasantgroup.com