19 Risdon Gillis

Risdon Gillis lived until his death in the house in which he was born and from which he and hisfather operated their business. It was an essential service; they were Belfast’s only undertakers. And it was an intimate service; Risdon embalmed and buried people he’d known all his life, and attendedfunerals held either in thefamily’s home or in his own.

He never married. After nearly 60 years he hoped to pass the trade down to a nephew. But the young man told him he would only stay as long as Risdon lived. Risdon spoke with regret that the “calling” he and his father spent their lives answering has been taken from this community; its loss was, for him, like the loss ofan old friend.

were more thickly settled than they are [here] today. I took the last of the old people out of the old school districts. You see, in there, there’s

all hippies in those places now. All back there, yeah. I remember when there was 35 families in Garloch and about the same in The Valley. But there’s only three in there now. At that time there was a lot of people in the homes. Perhaps there’d be one of the family get married, and the rest’d all be single. Big families too. And they’d all live there till they were old. My father perhaps got nine or 10 funerals outa one house. I know in one winter he had nine funerals. In the cold. MacKenzies; old people.

Q uite a big territory. It was quite a big place, Belfast. You know, we

Family Trade

[My father’s father] just started the carpenter business. He was a carpenter by trade. He learned his trade through [William] Emery — old Emery was in construction at that time... . So he started at the carpenter work in repairing wagons and sleighs in the horse days. He didn’t [do the iron

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