"Someone oughta build some sensible caskets!”  

That's how my older brothers and I ended many late-night conversations over the years. Our concern was rooted in information about high prices and limited choices which we had learned from a family friend who worked in the funeral industry.

It helped that each of us was "into wood" in one way or another. Our father was a master woodworker in postwar Germany until he brought his lathe and young family to Canada in 1956. It was he who acted first on the casketmaking idea.…  (continue reading this story)