MEDIA ALERT
CULTURE WARRIOR TAKES ON WALL STREET
Vancouver Author Launches Explosive New Book
IT’S YOUR FUNERAL
As a young man, THOMAS P.J. CREAN took over the Vancouver-based funeral business his grandfather had founded (Kearney Funeral Services) and quickly saw that major corporations were consolidating the industry by buying out countless funeral homes and keeping a “family business” façade while sacrificing integrity to shareholder profits.
Crean’s vision is to see grief-stricken treated fairly and given access to affordable funeral and cemetery services. His new book—It’s Your Funeral: How Grieving Families Are Being Exploited, and How We Can Stop — is more than an account of a tireless crusader’s battle for fairness and dignity. It’s a playbook for those who wish to join the fight to end the exploitation of people at the most vulnerable time of their lives.
This LIVE Media Event will connect you with:
– LIVE interview opportunity with author and activist Tom Crean
– LIVE interview opportunity with a family taken advantage of by the corporate funeral industry
– Moderated by Patrick Novecosky, NovaMedia.
Monday, November 25
12:30 PM*
The Anvil Centre
777 Columbia Street
New Westminster, B.C.
RSVP to attend in person OR to be on the live call: Reply to patrick@novamedia.us
Media participants unable to attend in person may ask questions via email in advance. Our moderator will use them during the LIVE call. All instructions will be provided by email upon submitting your RSVP.
MEDIA CONTACT
Patrick Novecosky
239-682-7749
patrick@novamedia.us
*Lunch begins at noon. Media are invited.
RESOURCES
Photo: Thomas Crean
Photo: Book Cover/Back Cover
Book Website
Article in Common Ground magazine, November 2019
Sample Chapter of It’s Your Funeral available upon request.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Crean is the grandson of Thomas James Kearney, who founded Kearney Funeral Services in Vancouver, B.C., in 1908. Seventy years later, Crean became president of the company. At the time, in the late 1970s, funeral and cemetery service was loosely regulated in B.C., and the two largest North American funeral conglomerates were buying out nearly all the family-owned funeral homes. Profitability was their sole objective, and the exploitation of grieving families became part of the playbook.
Crean, disturbed by the conglomerates’ tactics, became involved in consumer advocacy and public education. He has testified before funeral-industry regulators in Ottawa, New York, and Washington, D.C. He has also addressed numerous funeral associations and sustainable-business groups, including the American Sustainable Business Council and the American Independent Business Alliance.
By 1996, the chains were handling more than 80 percent of funeral arrangements in Greater Vancouver. That year, Crean led a successful movement to save the management of Mountain View Cemetery–Vancouver’s only cemetery-—from privatization. He then organized 4,000 independent funeral firms to prevent Service Corporation International, in both Canada and the U.S., from trademarking the phrase “family funeral care.”
In 2004, Crean joined the Surrey Hospice Society Board. Working with the dying and their caregivers also helped him further understand the ways in which corporate funeral chains manipulated people at their most vulnerable, especially by garnering all the influence possible with the “end-of-life” caregiver community.
The B.C. Funeral Service Association celebrated its centenary in 2012. The Kearney/Crean family was honored as the only founding member still in business. A few years later, Crean left the family business to devote himself to fighting the funeral conglomerates’ predatory and monopolistic practices.
Crean has served on the boards of many civic and professional organizations. A past-president of the Rotary Club of Vancouver, he is now president of the Surrey Hospice Society board and the Family Funeralhome Association. He also serves on the boards of the Partners In Care Alliance Society and Cooperative, the B.C. Association for Media Education, the Family Association for Media Education, and the Canadian Institute for Information and Privacy Studies.
In 2016, Crean acquired land in South Surrey, B.C., rezoning it into the Lower Mainland’s first new cemetery in 50 years. In 2018, along with family members and other investors, he opened Heritage Gardens Cemetery. It offers compassionate guidance and sustainable, reasonably priced alternatives to traditional burial and cremation.
In November 2019, Crean published a nonfiction book in Canada: It’s Your Funeral: How Grieving Families Are Being Exploited, and How We Can Stop It. The book is intended to educate consumers about the funeral business. Crean plans to publish it in the United States in 2020.