Thank you for listening to Pictures Media Radio. Welcome to Policy and Rights,
the show about the government policy and human rights. Welcome back everybody. You're
listening to Policy and Rights and this is a special interview. And let me
start off by saying this. We're hearing a lot about corporate greed and how
certain elected officials keep going on and on about how we need to end the
corporate greed that exists in our society. Well, when is there're going to
be action towards that? When are we going to see something serious happen to
take a fight out of that corporate greed. The only way that's really going
to happen is if we all start speaking out against what is happening. How
limits are put to our lives because we accept a paycheck, How our dreams
are crushed because well, our boss doesn't want us to live a live a
dream. The large corporations want want to earn wealth from off of everything that
we do, and I do mean everything including die. As you're going to
hear in this next interview that profit is one thing, raping another person's pocket
and spirit is something else. And we hear all the time of we need
to get the corporations out of senior care. We need to get to keep
a social way of of of administering medicine. If you're listening from the US,
we keep hearing how we need to have a national health care system,
how we need to have better control over some of the expenses that are out
there, and yet our government, our elected officials, do nothing about it.
So I want to introduce you to the author of It's Your Funeral.
It is a book that is based on a very, very same story that
the movie The Burial has just released. That this story about the o'keefes against
a large corporate entity that was literally raping us as we were trying to bury
our love ones. We're gonna hear from Tom Creane, the author of It's
Your Funeral, talk about how he managed to push back against the corporations and
save a group of family owned funeral homes that'll simply want to serve the community
because that is their purpose, to help us honor our loved ones in a
loving way and an affordable way, and in some cases maybe even a heavenly
way. So why don't we bring Tom Creane on the show and let's hear
what really happened with the o'keefes, and what really is going on with corporate
greed in the funeral home industry? Okay, so Tom, why did you
write the book It's Your Funeral? Well? To be candid, Michael,
I arrived in funeral service quite suddenly when my uncle, who was only fifty
two, dropped dead, and there was nobody to carry on the family business,
and we were serving like the year he died nineteen seventy five, we
served sixty families, was barely enough to keep the doors open. So I
was in my fourth year of philosophy at UBC and just quit school cold Turkey
to take over the family business. And was astonished to find that all these
family businesses that my family had been competing with by that time almost seventy years,
were all being bought out by these nameless conglomerates. And these conglomerates would
charge way more money and cut back half their staff and provide half the service.
So all of a sudden I discovered that in order to survive, I
had to draw a distinction between publicly traded funeral companies and family funeral homes,
and so I wrote the book as an explanation of why there's really no place
in my mind for public companies in funeral service. Yeah, it just feeds
into that large cauldron of corporate greed that needs needs to find some limits.
Well, so why why why re release the book in this past month?
You just re released the book? So why did you? Why why did
the re release? Well? I think that the book is a very important
contextual support for the great film that Amazon is bringing out called The Burial.
The Amazon film shows the unlikely partnership between my buddy Jeremiah O'Keefe and the very
sassy, provocative but successful Afro American lawyer that he hired out of Florida to
take the Loewen Group to task for the way they were treating his Mississippi UH
clients, help mm hmm to where they were they doing the same thing and
in in Mississippi that that you described here in Vancouver, raise the prices and
and provide less service exactly right. Being a public company isn't cheap, No,
that is very true. But but being a public company can also bring
uh, especially to the the the chief executive officer and the boarder director's uh
large paychecks. Well, I went to the low and bankruptcy in Wilmington,
Delaware, and I'd get out of my taxi from the Holiday Inn and then
behind me the limousine would pull up and all the bankruptcy executives from the Loewen
Group would pour out of their limousines. They weren't taking much time to save
money for their shareholders. I like that. They they they they poured out
of their limousines. They It's not like they drove up and say a Toyota
cursel or something like that, right, Nope, no, Yeah, you're
kind of reminding me of the the auto industry with the when when all of
the the the big names in in in the auto industry showed up in Washington
to ask for bailout money and they all climbed out of their out of their
lear jets in Washington to ask for bailout money because they were going poor.
But they a flyer lear jet, right, yeah, no kidding. So
it is the same pattern of corporate greed, yeah, and disrespect for the
shareholders. Yeah. So with that, with that being said, UH,
you appeared in in Ottawa to UH and you successfully pushed back against some of
the corporate happenings in Canada with the home funeral UH with the family owned funeral
home industry. Right. Yeah. We opposed the biggest funeral conglomerate, Service
Corporation International out of Houston, Texas, trademarking in both Canada and the United
States the phrase family Funeral Care, and we were successful in defeating them.
In Ottawa. We pointed out that these companies were the opposite of fend funeral
care. And then when we won that trademark battle in April of two thousand
and three, I sent that news rely to eighteen independent groups in the United
States that I'd been working with, and none of them had supported my trademark
opposition to speak of in the US. But today they saw that Canada beat
SDI, they all joined. So we had thousands of funeral homes by the
time that went to court in Washington, DC, and we beat the We
beat Service Corporation in Washington as well in twenty oh seven. We Canadians embarrassed
are American peers into standing up for themselves. On a different note, though,
a lot of people are afraid to push back against the corporation. So
you think something bad is going to happen to them, don't they? Well,
exactly and that's I think why there's such a reign of terror pervaded upon
the people by Wall Street because they think that their economic force makes them more
right than we the people. But that fails to take into account what really
built these countries, which was we the people. Exactly right, that exactly
we the people. We have a voice, but we need to exercise that
voice. Well, I have to tell you, Michael, that I've prayed
a great deal in my struggles against Wall Street, and I've now had five
battles with the billionaires and I've beaten them five times. And in truth,
it was me praying my brains out and being told by my creator where to
step each day. All my partners gave up on me during the campaign,
saying, Thomas, only you'd told us what you were doing, we could
have supported you. But it was a journey of faith, Michael. I
had no idea what I was doing. How could I tell anybody. I
just prayed my brains out and every day was told where to step the next
day. And at the end of the day, five battles with the billionaires
and beatn them five times, and all of that was due to prayer.
Yeah, I'm not this smart. Yeah, sometimes we had to we had
to submit to the to to the higher power. Right well, and not
only that, a true journey of faith is incredibly exciting. It's really really
exciting to have no idea where it's going. Hmm. So what what do
you want to see for uh, for the funeral industry overall? Well,
first of all, I don't consider us an industry. Wall Street does,
but I consider us a profession and as such, I think it's vital that
people know whether they're dealing with a public company, conglomerate, or they're dealing
with a local family funeral home. We local family funeral homes don't have any
assets aside the credibility of our name. So if we don't serve our community,
we don't exist. Whereas the public companies, all they've got is a
stock average, and so if they're not making profit each day, they don't
exist. And that's what I'm saying, is that there's no place at all
for that kind of a business model and caring for grieving citizens who just couldn't
possibly be any more vulnerable. Well, the loss of a loved one.
It doesn't matter if it's if it's mom, dad, wife, husband,
child, it's a it's all all all emostally the same that you know,
you're cut down at your knees, right yep, and the last thing you
need is some funeral director who is money grubbing and just kicks you and just
kicks you in the gut on top of that, right yep. Yeah.
And these Wall Street conglomerates, you know, think that they've won the lottery
discovering that grieving clients are completely vulnerable. They go around buying these family funeral
homes because a lot of them are downtown properties where the humble families that operate
the funeral homes can never hope to make any kind of return in funeral service.
That justify the millions of dollars in land that they've got invested and tied
up. So really, these big funeral conglomerates are in the real estate business.
They're not in funeral service. That's my opinion. Well, what does
it mean to be in funeral service? What does it mean how you treat
your client? Well, what it means is that somebody has a deep personal
loss in their family and they come and they knock on your door and you
help escort them through that deeply painful process, that deeply painful transition. But
if all you're going to be judged by is an amount of sales you make
from that person, basically caring for them and caring for yourself are mutually exclusive.
Yeah. So I heard this as a story that a grieving son his
mother died and he wanted to honor her in in in the best way possible,
and he spent thousands of dollars for for for the casket and for her
to to to be laid out in a certain way and everything. And in
the end, the the the mother was was cremated and he spent like I
say, a couple of ten thousand dollars two for this particular funeral. Now,
grenn I know he wanted to honor his mother and expenses at that point,
you know, you're like, how can I put a limit to what
I'm willing to pay to honor my mother? Right? But at the same
time, isn't there if you're on the other side of the counter collecting the
money, you're the one taking the fees, didn't you put a limit to
what you're going to charge? Well to me, when I sit down with
a family to arrange a funeral, service. I view it like I'm an
artist, a painter, and my palette of paints is the emotions of the
family. So what I'm trying to do is to paint the most complete portrait
of the life of the deceased, and to me, a fundamental component of
that is to discover what resources the family have to put towards the funeral.
I've had people walk in the door of my funeral home telling me they want
the most expensive casket in the world. Okay, that's not a family that
I'm bending over backwards trying to save money for because they got more money then
they can send. But to me, the average family coming in has a
certain set of parameters which they can work within. So once I find out
what the kind of parameters they have to work with, then I can start
to make suggestions to get as close to achieving the most meaningful service as possible.
And there's now like when it comes to cremation, there's a number of
areas that my profession has adapted itself to which help the families. For example,
our most popular casket for cremation families is a rental casket where they have
a wooden interior and then you put a beautiful wooden sort of a it's almost
like a it's a covering really, so that the public all sees this beautiful
wooden casket, but what goes to the crematorium is a very simple plane,
usually a particleboard box. But nobody sees that because the cast gets beautifully draped.
And so there are ways that the profession is figuring out how to honor
families wishes without spending more money than is necessary. Yeah, but to me,
the more complete that painting is, the more vital and the more value
what I provided has, then that makes sense. That makes sense rather than
oh how much can I so soak this family for well, from my point
of view, my family since nineteen oh eight, my family has focused on
getting the maximum amount of value out of the minimum amount of money, and
that's why we're the only family funeral home left in the city of Vancouver.
In fact, at the hundredth anniversary of the BC Funeral Association, it was
also the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Whoever, the bizarre
convention arranger was decided to serve us the same lunch at the hundredth anniversary funeral
convention as they served the family the passengers on the Titanic. I don't know
who the convention organizer was. Seemed to me it was more of a horror
production. And anyway, that evening at the dinner, all of these past
presidents of the Funeral Association, most of whom I've embarrassed in the media because
everybody knows I don't why to report reporters to protect people that I think belong
in prison, and all of these past presidencies don't like me very much,
had to make room because my family was the only founding member of the BC
Funeral Association still in business that's on creative sense of game. Uh that that
that is God sense of humor on that one. So that was a great
day for the National Funeral President. Yeah, and I know that that your
family has a property not too far away from from our studio office here in
Surrey, b C. Right. Yeah, uh in you it's it's instilled
in in in, in in everybody that works in uh uh in in that
family business. That value to to the client in honor, uh in honoring
the the loved one that is lost, rather than we got to make a
profit. Absolutely, to me, that portrait of the deceased, that's my
signature. How do I engineer for that family the most meaningful Fairwell, that's
physically possible. And I mean there there's times when we've done services for free
because the family had no resources. That's not that often in Canada because the
government has support for people that don't have resources. But we've still done them.
We don't turn anyone away. Yeah, what does it mean to you
to serve the community. It's it's why I was born my profession. Like,
I just consider myself so unbelievably privileged to be given this profession. And
I add to that that my profession for my entire working lifetime has been under
threat from these external forces that are only profit driven. And so I just
can't tell you how proud I am a fifty the years of standing up against
the monstrosity. I'm so proud of the contribution that I've been empowered to make.
And again I add, it's all a journey of faith, because I'm
not this smart. I've been gifted by prayer with exactly what to do to
deep these companies five times in a row. Yeah, that's that's an amazing
track record, because there's I'm sorry. That's an amazing track record. And
it can't be done with with without with without without some some other power getting
involved, right, no question. And the interesting thing about my past is
that today, as all our information systems are crumbling, like everybody and their
brother thinks they're an activist, whereas I really am. I've been an activist
because fifty years ago I learned that the people who ran big funeral service where
a bunch of mafia dooms. Yeah, and you wrote the book them for
that reason. It's your funeral. Yeah, How grieving families are exploited and
how to stop it? Well, in your opinion, what is what is
the best way that we can eliminate the shackles that that this corporate breed puts
on us. Well, the most important thing is that it's required by law
that these conglomerates admit which companies they own, because what they do is they
try to pretend they're the original owners. We call it stealth ownership. You
got to ask who owns your funeral home? Is it some foreign conglomerate or
is it your local family. It's the most important question you can ask.
Well, yeah, yeah, I see that, because you're choice you can
go it, yeah and be personally cared for by people that are the same
mindset as me, or you can be part of the funeral factory. Well
yeah, let's let's let's go to add it this way, right that maybe
in some cases, uh that you know, the guy comes it comes it
comes in or or woman doesn't matter, they come in, they come into
into your business and they say, hey, mom, dad, brother,
sister has passed away and I need to need I need help taking care of
this. Right, the odds are if if the funeral home is family owned
and exists in the community, that they know who the person is to begin
with, especially if it's the funeral home up the street from from from where
this person grew up all their life, right, right, doesn't that have
an have an effect on you have some sort of if you know, if
you if you've seen this person like go to the grocery store or something like
that, that you have somewhat of an emotional stake in that because you're part
of that community. Then the corporate guy who the corporate owned owned funeral home
doesn't have that same stake, does it. Well, A big part of
the corporate presence is to simulate the family presence. So when the corporation comes
in and buys the funeral home, they try really hard to keep the original
family working there, but the prices are still increase a great deal. I
think the last comparative price list I saw was Vanity Fair magazine, like twenty
years ago. On average, I think the average you know back then sold
for thirty five hundred and on average the change were thirteen hundred dollars more expensive,
So that's like fifty percent. Wow. So no matter who you're dealing
with, you got to understand what kind of system you're dealing with. You
maybe still be talking to the original family owners, but they've got very little
to do with how it's run anymore. But in support of my family funeral
homes, I need to say that at the peak of funeral consolidation, which
was about the year two thousand, Service Corps International had fifty two hundred funeral
homes and cemeteries. The Loewen Group had seventeen hundred, and Stewart Enterprises had
five hundred. Those were the big three chains. So of those seven thousand
and changed funeral homes. The last time I looked, Service Corp International had
bought Stuart and the Alderwoods Group, which was the name that Loan emerged from
bankruptcy with, and were down to twelve hundred funeral homes in cemeteries. So
of all of the funeral homes and cemetery that that the three chains had bought
from the family funeral homes, or in my lingo, of the all of
the funeral homes Wall Street stole from the family funeral homes, we independence had
clawed back seventy percent of them. And I defy any I defy any factor
of the economy to show me that kind of performance in defending their communities.
Now, most of my funeral home friends didn't do that by going out like
I did and starting a family funeral home movement to educate the public that the
difference. Most of them just woke up in the morning and did the right
thing. But when you show up in small town America or small town Canada
and all of a sudden the prices had doubled in half, the staff are
like, oh, the small towns figure it out, and they've sent those
funeral homes packing. So I'm incredibly proud of the way that we family funerals
of the defended our community even though you're hard put defined. You know,
a single family general home who knows that because they just kept doing what they'd
always done, which was the right thing. Yeah, so let me ask
you this. In your opinion, you know, you successfully pushed back against
five times against large corporate ownership and everything in our times they we're seeing right
now with the economy and the inflation being what it is. In your opinion,
do you think that that we can push back and successfully teach other corporations
and CEOs that hey, we're not going to stand for them just reaping our
pockets and and we're not gonna, We're not gonna. We're just not gonna
take it anymore. And either you service at a reasonable cost or we're going
somewhere else. Well, Michael, in truth, I've devoted my entire life
to trying to organize independent business. And you may be aware of a group
I started in Vancouver working with all of the different and the life care community
group that's called the Partners in Care Alliance Society. And that's what helped me
when all of these battles with the billionaires in my city. But sadly,
I just went on a tour of three funeral conventions, talking to independence at
each of these conventions about us standing up and trying to organize an independent business
front for family funeral homes. And I couldn't get any interest at all from
my peers because in each of their communities those groups have been successful, so
they don't see any need to organize against Wall Street, Whereas in my town,
I'm the only one left. We had to organize against Wall Street.
But you know, if the consensus of my profession is nobody gives the up,
well, then we probably can't continue the partners in Caroliance either. I'm
waiting to hear from the local hospices here whether they want to carry on with
what we've been doing in the last thirty years. Yeah, the public here
knows the differences there, but that's not the case in any other of the
cities in North America. Did generally to me the target cities or cities with
more than a million people, because that's where the cutoff is for big business
to become anonymous in small towns. Every real he figures it out. Yeah,
all right, Well, thank you for for joining us today, Tom
and and I hope everybody goes out you can find it on Amazon. It's
Your Funeral is the name of the book, and the official author is Thomas
P. J. Crean. Is that correct? Yeah, so available on
Amazon. Yeah, so go get your copy of the of the book.
And it actually, uh the book itself. From from what I've read so
far, it does kind of paint a picture of some of the reasons why
the cost of the cost of living is what it is right now, and
how we can actually maybe put an end to it, and and when some
of our are are herd earned dreams back again from large corporations. So again,
Tom, thanks for joining us. It's been quite honored to have you.
Thank you. Michael. I just run and really recommend to people that
they take the time to check out the movie The Burial being listed on Amazon
I think on the thirteenth of October, Is that correct, Michael, Yeah,
I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And the film begs a very
interesting question, and that is what is the power of the people. The
people were able to exercise a punitive vote in the Mississippi courts. That just
it was the most blinding flash of democracy I've ever seen in my entire life.
But to me, it was well earned. See Tommy Lee Jones and
Jamie Foxx in the burial. But if you want to know some background,
check out my book. All right, all right, thanks again, Tom
and thank everybody for listening, and we will see you next time with another
as special interview here on policy and rights. This show has been produced by
Depicts Media. Please contact us at depictions dot media for more information.