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This from The Canadian Press:
It looks like one of Canada’s most historic graveyards is about to get a little, um, spookier.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service wants to create a national burial site for its employees at Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery.
The intelligence service and a society representing many former spies have approached Beechwood about reserving part of the venerable resting place for CSIS members and their families.
The cemetery, a short drive east of Parliament Hill, already has dedicated sections for the RCMP, National Defence and Ottawa police.
These areas are “an impressive and touching tribute to the service and sacrifices of Canada’s men and women in uniform,” CSIS director Michel Coulombe said in a letter to James Patterson, Beechwood’s director of family services.
A CSIS-specific section would be a “welcome and appropriate addition” to the cemetery, Coulombe said in the July letter, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
“A preliminary survey indicated a significant amount of interest among employees in purchasing a plot,” Coulombe wrote following a May meeting between Patterson and backers of the plan.
“The success of the endeavour will rely on careful and detailed planning of the site and monument.”
Coulombe suggested further discussion of the cemetery’s offer of help in setting up a charitable fund to which people could donate money for the “development of and improvement to” the CSIS National Memorial Cemetery.
The project is “still at the initial stages,” said CSIS spokeswoman Tahera Mufti ....