Cemeteries
Unlike other synagogues, Shaar Hashomayim did not really have a Chevra Kadisha. During the early years, it relied on a small Jewish cemetery in Massey, located about 70 kilometres from Sudbury. It was established in 1905 by Henry Sadowski. Surprisingly, there are only eight headstones in that small cemetery that date from 1899 to 1950. There were other individuals, mostly children, buried there without headstones, but the numbers buried there are still rather small. Most of Sudbury's Jewish residents were in fact laid to rest in Montreal and Toronto. Despite the Jewish law requiring the dead be buried within one day, many of the families in Sudbury decided to rely on cemeteries outside of the area, perhaps because the cemeteries in these cities were larger or because they wanted to bury their loved ones next to family members there. In later years, the congregation purchased a small plot of land next to the municipal cemetery, but only two individuals have been buried there.
