i get on the chair every time i interview someone who are often working round the clock to make sure that we bring events as i currently as possible to the viewer that's what people expect of us and that's what i think we really do while. the russian orthodox church is deep pockets and the rapid expansion may bear its crucial role in putin's grip on power with some elevating the former k.g.b. officer to sainthood president putin is our leader that given to our good people in power investigates how often it's attempted elimination by the soviet union religion has returned to the hock to the russian state the orthodox connection this time on al-jazeera. al-jazeera. and.

i am is a product and the headlines on al-jazeera from human rights groups to the you went to washington d.c. there is growing pressure on myanmar to stop the violence against. across party group of u.s. politicians has written to the secretary of state is calling for meaningful steps to be taken against myanmar and the tree meanwhile the u.n. should invite surface threatening to seek the security council's intervention if the perpetrators are punished say that. al-jazeera is mike hanna on wednesday. the attacks by the american salvation army was met by a very methodical and well planned well organized response that did not seem to us

to be anything remotely like counterinsurgency but a wholesale displacement of people from northern iraq to cox bazaar and bangladesh and so it had all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing now what monitors had made clear as well is that it's not just the enforced removal of people it's also the destruction of their homes to prevent them from brittany i mean the confirmation of this will come in two forms one is harmony they're willing to accept back if it's only a trickle then this confirms the ethnic cleansing cleansing hypothesis and the second of course is that all of this would have to be confirmed when one day surely those who have committed or perpetrated these atrocities are holed up before a court and answer to a judge so that the victims can sense that to a certain extent justice will be served in particular for many years have asked

that we not just have an office in young gone but they will be given unfettered access to northern rakhine whenever we feel and deem it necessary and this second part was not forthcoming when we made it an explicit request of uncensored she in october last year to send in investigators at a time she was telling the international community that the military had completed its operation in the wake of that attack last year satellite imagery made very clear that they had not yes and today. they received further information that what we're seeing in northern rakhine is still continuing what we have. still continuing reports of extra judicial killings reports of sexual abuses of the most horrific kind of course including rape this is still

ongoing not withstanding the claim that the military operations have largely wound down this does not seem to be the case but the idea that this could be conducted with impunity i think must be put behind us and and then if the authorities in myanmar resistant. security council should consider other measures of course to be applied in other news of the world bank is promising billions of dollars to the philippines to help rebuild the southern city of our way the extent of the damage was visible on thursday two days after president of the you were there they declared it liberated after a five month battle against i select fighters the philippines will receive an estimated two point nine billion dollars to help with reconstruction. spain has warned also spend on years autonomy of the region's leader doesn't abandon his secession callus purge to more has just a few hours to clarify whether or not he is declaring independence from the rest of

the country the us president donald trump has been embroiled in another route this time of what he allegedly said to a widow of a soldier killed in a share trumps accused of being insensitive to her when she was on her way to her husband's casket tromped and i was telling her that her husband knew what he signed up for he says the stories fabricated. in venezuela five new governors from the only states won by the opposition have refused to be sworn in before president whether little's constitutional assembly the opposition claims the body is unconstitutional those are the headlines on al-jazeera but do stay with us al-jazeera correspondent that's coming up next thank you very much for watching. i have.

the few old. trunk thank you and huh. once you've taken over these businesses in these small towns you are locked in for your career however many decades i last. i want to know his motivations in getting into the business i would like to know the conversations he had with my grandpa how he felt he realized this trend in our family i want to know what it was like for him when he first began working earnestly in the business if it was hard for him to get over these more difficult parts of it that i feared growing up if there was times where he doubted what he was doing if you could do it all over again and again said thank god it's possible say yes but these are real questions i have for him of course because he had the same experience i had he grew up in the same

dynamics like. who else would be able to relate more to our feeling than him. i was so surprised the stooge you're seeing parents going through the series. he read it probably would have wanted to be a hockey player. that's funny because that's what dad says he would have wanted to do if he wasn't rector but lack of skills.

my family's own a funeral home in our small canadian town of st thomas for over ninety years it may seem strange to grow up around death but for us it was a part of everyday life. i'm the first son in four generations not to become a funeral director my decision has weighed heavily on i worry about what it means for the future of my family's funeral. do you think for the service today i don't know if we had to register but just down for the race that goes by you go you know you get here is this if you like to sign the register book and i'm like to going to visit with the family this is our son this is blake and so next generation going in the same no he's a producer with a new story so that's why the oh yes it's perfect yeah so different business yes yes he's mr smart fresher than

a here. my grandfather was brother paul petersen oh ok oh ok sure yeah we had to register but just on the right she mentioned it was the walls farm yeah that was one of the walls the sentence to life serve their family have also made it all go. by and asked if anyone could sing and then no one was able to know someone's going to and why not someone in the family and. she really meant on. the window that she was loving. them to sing sung to grandma. great grandma as the artist down her heard you. know your hair to bring their. own as you do every.

day you. are a loser to the. oh. nice. highly toxic got lucky because like i did maybe i have. already heard that that you know that you know i mean if you're really going to say . that you know. that it was very nice you know it was very nice and they're doing really well all right i'm going to change ok because it's ludicrous that in the city. i was in high school i would help with visitation so holding the door helping to show people where to go and then other than that around the business like helping with the lawns and washing the cars and putting on the suit being in the funeral it was kind of maybe a little glimpse of what it might have been like if i had if if i had done that job

i wouldn't say i did five years old and looked at the businesses that are doing that service i felt rather different things i was always very interested in history it was the idea of the power of witnessing moments well history is made of. this was my childhood bedroom this is where i would be asleep in the middle of the night when my dad would get a phone call to hear footsteps and see the light underneath the door he would walk . from his bedroom over here through this hallway to the bathroom to get ready get dressed and we were very aware that he was going to put a student that he was going to go outside in the cold and that he was going to go pick up a dead body i have very striking memories of our funeral of my aunt jennifer grew up around the funeral homes and also moved away from st thomas they called it the bassem one of the battling it was gallant we called it the funeral home phone but i think that you're right that it was the act and it had all these like intercom buttons and we call them the bow and you have to do and and whatever called

whatever hour the day whatever you're doing it when you have to and that's perfect actually we were maybe we were back to. that phone ringing it still sparks a little moment of the things i was everybody stopped everybody be quiet when i'm home briefly however briefly the phone rings i got up as vacillated it's a strange thing. i'd be interested to know how he prepared himself to do this work because i don't think he was actually built for it just like i don't feel like i was actually built for it. i'm going to talk to call and haskett a young funeral director in a neighboring community he's around my age and in a way i feel like he provides a glimpse of what my life might have been like if i decided to become a funeral director this is my great great grandfather charles haskett and then his son which is william haskett and then well you had two boys clarence and then my father bill so there are six funeral directors in five generations thankfully we're

all passionate about it and i think that's for family businesses get into trouble is when people feel obligated if you love what you do and it's easy to keep a clear direction and we're all on the same path so this is very very good fathers are family used to transport the deceased by horse and buggy i'm kind of allowed to say that i don't wear hats like that and i don't transport people by horse and buggy anymore when i was four years old i made the decision that i was going to be a funeral director and at that time it was because my dad had to separate riding lawn mower city used to cut the cut the grass of the funeral home and i thought what a cool thing to be able to drive two different lawn mowers it was for as well when i kind of realised for the first time there was this trend in our future home it was my great grandfather started a funeral home in one hundred twenty six and then my grandfather and my father and every generation there was one boy born in every generation they did it and i was four years old when i'm like wait a second great grandpa grampa dad do i have to do this and from the moment i first

asked that question my dad always said you don't have to do this you can whatever makes you happy you can do if you want to be if you're a doctor that's fantastic but if you want to take a different path that's that's fine too so i don't know maybe if you've had riding lawn mowers i would have i would have been i would have been a better selling point what do you think the stereotype of a funeral director is black suit dark tie and white shirt and you know maybe not very. personable and certainly not very comforting and you know just sort of this this creepy this creepy image of someone that deals with the dead every day and that's certainly not how i would describe myself at all i'm far more suited to dealing with the living than i am the dead and it's just the ability to do both which makes me go to a job i'm just the guy that lives down the street that doesn't know how to build decks but i do know what to do when your mom dies ok that would be great and if there's anything that comes down i will let you know and you have my telephone

thank you very much but did you have a direct line from the funeral home to your home growing up you are standing in my bedroom this is where i grew up really yeah we were very much have a direct line i believe very strongly that my number one goal and my number one job is to stay in business we're increasing our reception facilities and we're having different types of receptions and we're selling alcohol and that's not necessarily because that's exactly what i want to do i just want to make sure that we remain profitable so that we can continue to do what it is that we love to see if i can pull something out here we've got all kinds of different options and now you can get rings you can get type pens you can do cough links this is actually d.n.a. keepsake so lots of different options. i have done some neat things with the cremated remains we have put people in their taco boxes in their recipe boxes actually we have someone here that was just placed in their cowboy boot as an urn i

had a gentleman the strangest one yet every night before you went to bed he had a bowl of ice cream with his granddaughter so he is in a nice cream tub people are tired of what we would refer to a cookie cutter funeral a lot of us in southwestern ontario are smaller operations family businesses we have some larger corporations coming after the independent funeral homes on our own us would survive in this business for certain. we decided is if we could do it collectively then we can all do a good job and that's exactly what we've done with. cremation is becoming increasingly popular but loved ones are rarely present i have never witnessed a commission myself.

i grew up around the funeral home i've been to the funeral home. constantly my whole life i've seen. more bodies than i could remember in the setting up in the in the main room of the funeral home with made up in suits with with flowers and framed photographs but maybe it's the volume maybe it's being here and within the last few minutes just seeing so many bodies coming in from from from the region. i think that i could have done it.

the men who tend to this long process tell me the last muscle is that. occasionally i would bring stress home from work. it didn't happen very often did it but it did happen and i'm the first to admit that it did happen and i can't believe there's not a few a director out there that it has and they haven't brought it home and so but there was a quote in and and blake said in the article my sister used to yell back at him if he would explode because maybe we were too loud when he just got off the phone

or and and i would just take it and but his quote was. we knew we were not the. source of his anger and anger that much and it didn't take much to know what was he knew i had brought home from the funeral home right. growing up i saw firsthand the toll funeral service took on my father many of his days were spent helping other people through the worst days of their lives we saw the side of it that wasn't always great and he dealt with it very well but there were times that it was stressful if you asked me at those moments you know you want to be found out i'd say hell no there are circumstances that happened here that i feel like walking out the back door when the family are walking in the front door the thing that's going to make me retire is families not agreeing and i mean absolutely not

talking to each other and probably after the service is over i never talking to each other again. so you're on the way to the hospital. oh ok. yeah. we'll do is all. i think since your way there and. you won't be released tonight i don't think from the hospital so all the phone can ring any time you can ring at nine fifteen i can with three o'clock one it's a release for your dad his you expressed what he. had wanted to so yeah well again my condolences to you and all i'll call them in the morning. you know people call because they're in the so. when i think about the connection of

brennan the funeral home i think about the fact that he had this cool parking lot where everyone just play i could play hockey and they they stored the nets in the garage. all right. so you can do old wooden sticks they don't make them like this anymore those gloves the whole big thing. for you if you do it are two of them. would. you walk in the house all right replace hockey ok over it when. i've been playing hockey sense i was probably seven eight years old i played travel hockey for many many years my dad missed yours were a few games of mine and he taught me how to play goal right between their house and the funeral home. after i wear is a tribute to my dad but i was also born in one nine hundred fifty eight this was my

playground this is this was where you know i grew up you know i learned to play tennis i assume that my parents always knew that i want to be a film director but we really never sat down i mean i heard about from my high school counselor that oh i guess parents going off to humber to take funeral service i never i guess assume that they knew but quite frankly i thought i was going to be a professional hockey player or a professional tennis player but i think lack of talent sort of got in the way we're going to go in the funeral right. and who was in there you know and. so here you. you know what my grandfather's name was. leonard. and you know what leo leo is short for leonard.

good job. i was all here your life cascade here. you know life here you know and there's to understand when there's no ghosts here no ghosts here there's no ghosts here i remembered as a kid being so so afraid by that idea like are you afraid of the being around the dead people you forgive the bodies i guess i'd seen like you know zombie movies or monster movies or something and a member and just being again it was just like a lightbulb is just like well no because they're dead like to be more free of the mailman for example then you should be of the dead body in the in another room because the living people going are you dead people cannot hear you this is not a monster movie this is real life. oh oh oh oh you're on phone or that i can't help but wonder if perhaps one day when will develop

a passion for this profession where i didn't. do you. i did. my dad since i was you know is eleven or twelve years old he would send me on errands that would include sometimes going to doctors' offices to sit and wait in their office until a. certificate was signed and i see this was there that was a doctor's office at one time there were. doctors and corners there i think companies came through here movie stars came through here when they were on the trains and there's a platform as side. there's another film director this is mr this is this is mr allen is it. alan's dad actually the premise for my grandmother yes there's ago your father was best man at my father's wedding i think i did know that yes i read yeah winter. i mean it's funny you say but i think there was more of an expectation

that the son would take it over i never felt pressured but did i feel a sense of obligation i would i would say yeah having the family business and this is a provide such an impactful service to the community was kind of a badge of honor that people knew our business really good on a printing shop people might not know your business but sifton second funeral home you know took care of my grandmother's funeral that's a bond to people for the for life kind of thing i was proud to be a sifton i know grandpa he really felt that it was a calling and that's that's the way i've always liked upon it with me i i know this was something i was meant to do i mean i can't say right now for you died and how much it just was a relief to come in and know that we were amassed and he was so gentle and it was just like talking to a friend don't worry about that i got that look dr don't forget he felt like dr i don't know how many times i had people say to me your dad helped me through

a really tough time behind the doctors. they couldn't see your dad and grandpa walked in my dad sense of humor joke or that he was said oh yes here comes the two undertakers to take me home he was really my first hero and i guess i wanted to be like him and i tried that. here we are nine hundred twenty six the year we were founded my great grandfather founded our funeral home after serving in the first world war he served with this cousin who was killed in action and awarded the victoria cross for valor my family believes that my great grandfather's experience of witnessing mass death and seeing his cousin buried in mass graves still did him a desire to provide dignity for others when the time comes i definitely want this funeral home to. family and i want to continue with the same

values that. my father carried on and i carried on how important is the name the idea that that's have to remain the name in this community is well. it's very. also care about what our name stands for and that's one of the reasons i still struggle with my decision. i thought you know. i'm ready for a real force and that's your favorite. thanks for having. me i am. right or. you are. not hearing. my nephew i was wrong there is no reason. do you know what grampa thought about.

becoming a film director deciding to be a hero they don't think about who i think you realize that. everybody should make their own decisions and i think that i don't think it bothered lola never heard him say he was always so well he's got two books on you is very proud of you of all his grandchildren i think of my burgeoning drona with career you enjoy being a journalist i don't doubt my decisions i still felt like there was some kind of family responsibility that maybe i'm a grandfather an in your dad would say no you must you must do the what you'd like to do yourself and that your be happy and i come from a farm background i think those farms are all begun in i'd say they won't be long i don't feel badly i think that that's progress in other words we all we all make our own decisions i love you. you shouldn't feel guilty and that makes me feel sad

to think that you there's even an ounce of guilt what do you do when you're at a funeral you tell stories that's the thing you're continuing i don't know if you can think about it that way and frankly i think who knows what's going to happen right i mean everything's changed so fast maybe it'll be one of those industries that stays very much the same because we all want that close emotional connection or maybe if you know the future will be very different. i was pretty good as. she was a society hostess in beirut in one thousand nine hundred forty she was in touch

with a lot of people from the living news the requests to make this work. was the power and she spied for mossad in lebanon or for. what she was doing it was something brave as a woman algis you know well douses story of. the beirut spy at this time. as we embrace new technologies rarely do we stop to ask what is the price of this progress what happened was he was started getting sick but there was a small group of people that began to think that maybe this was related to the kind of exposure and the job and investigation reveals how even the smallest devices deadly environmental and health we think ok will center us to china but reactor remember that they're foolish travel around the globe death by design at this time on al-jazeera i really felt liberated as a journalist was. getting to the truth as if i were that's what his job.

and i am a little problem in doha with the headlines on al-jazeera international concern of the treatment of me on mars or head to population is increasing the un human rights chief says myanmar's military must face charges and if they don't he want the security council to act meanwhile across party group of u.s. politicians has written to the secretary of state calling for meaningful steps to be taken against the military while bankers promising billions of dollars to the philippines to help rebuild the southern city of metal we the extent of the damage was visible on thursday two days after president. declared it liberated after a five month battle against iceland linked fighters spain has warned it will

suspend cotton on years autonomy of the region's leader doesn't advantage in his secession bid colace pledged amount has just a few hours to clarify whether or not he was declaring independence from the rest of the country u.s. president donald trump has been embroiled in another round this time over what he allegedly said to a widow of a soldier killed in the cher trumps accused of being insensitive to her when she was on her way to her husband's casket trump denies telling her that her husband knew what he signed up for us back forces fighting isis and syria have been clearing main roads and rocca the day after the commandos declared the city under their control the kurdish led syrian democratic forces raise their flag and rock a stadium after a four month battle to push isolate from itself declared capital the s.d.f. says that will redeploy fighters to the current frontline against eisel in the eastern province of their hours or in venezuela five new governors from the only

states won by the opposition have refused to be sworn in before president constitutional assembly the opposition claims the body is unconstitutional and wants a recount of the election new zealand has a new center left government and prime minister after. weeks of political uncertainty thirty seven year old labor leader just send a new zealand's our third female leader the new zealand first party held the balance of power following september the election has chosen to form a coalition with the labor party and the greens at that ends the conservative national party's line is in power. as are the headlines on al-jazeera correspondent continues next. the smallest sprout shows there is really no doubt. all goes

well right now the collapses we're committing poetry it's a reading of walt whitman's song of myself thomas lynch is both a writer and a funeral director he is considered the poet laureate of the funeral business i say read write resist and this is what we do i bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass i love if you want me again look for me under your boot soles oh. thank you my dad always said thomas lynch's bestselling book about funeral service the undertaking is the book he wished he could write like my father thomas lynch took over his father's funeral home in a small town in michigan he recently passed it on to his son morning how are you oh man how you do you good thank you. dr coffee will be lovely yeah yeah.

but he brought me a bill i feel very good right below his grave has been dug so slow you're going over he just refuses to go into it i declared hospice care for the last couple years so i feed him till as you know and see cheeses and now i think he thinks i'll go in the grave and he'll state that won't happen your attempted coup will work yeah. but it's graves out there filled with snow right now and someday i hope yacub eyes will this later it will be ok you know service is nothing except internet access to a lot of stories. so i've always been interested in characters and the stories that surround them the narratives being a funeral director in a small town gives you access that is not often shared by other people characters and does exist now in north america kind of take for granted that this is the way

things are done but it wasn't going to discuss maybe before the spread of funeral homes how death used to be treated up until that maybe the last fifty years probably even near term the only problem created by a death of the family apart from the ones you could catalogue as you know you know grief and mourning in religious fixations the real problem is the corpse on the floor what are we going to do about this you can't live with that guy something has to be done somebody has to get a shovel or build a fire or drag the corpse up where the birds will come and get pick the bones clean and it's around those activities whatever it was became by virtue of our you know curiosities holy it was looking into the open ground or the. fire where we would form the essential human questions which are is that all there is can this happen to me why is he cold are we all alone what comes next

we process death by processing the dead we move the dead from this station to that station in this. you know this little. community theater that goes on but the movement is important you know you can't stay here because we can't live with a corpse acting as a pall bearer and carrying the body of a loved one in most cases it is the only actor that remains it seems like in north america we've become quite a distance from death well even that we are entirely a strange from corpses. which to me has always seemed like the essential brief of a funeral is tend to the course people will say well it's really for the living yes but it's by tending to the dead to the living get better good feels one that by getting the dead where they need to go the living get where they need to be in the

way that we sort of replicate the movement of someone from the edge of this front here to the edge of the one we can't know that's what a funeral does it makes that we go with them as far as we can go and then we say. with the brutality of the living you stay i go thanks be to god or whoever's in charge or. thank you so i thank you very much we haven't had a sunday like this bill in the longest time. caring for one's own dad is common in much of the world but rare in the west in british columbia there is a small but growing home funeral movement that is reconnecting people to the process of tending to the dead like yes this is robert smith jones he has been our debt person multiple times including for our you tube videos one of those.