Mount Pleasant Group opens free art installations across 10 GTA cemeteries

Mount Pleasant Group and Space for Grief have created free outdoor displays across 10 cemeteries in the Greater Toronto Area, featuring public art, nature and elements of Toronto's history, according to Canadian Architect.

The project, Yesterday. Today. Forever., commemorates Mount Pleasant Group's bicentennial. It is a series of site-specific installations open to the public throughout 2026, with select components continuing into 2027.

It draws on archives, architecture, landscapes and community histories, and 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 learn 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. 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.Ziyan Hossain, co-founder and creative director of Method Collective and Space for Grief

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.

The installations address themes including personal memory, public history, nature and the changing communities connected to the sites.

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. For more information about the installations and locations, click here.