A Place at the RCMP National Memorial Cemetery
What it is, who qualifies, and what a place there actually involves — in plain language, from someone who arranges them.
The RCMP National Memorial Cemetery sits inside Beechwood, Canada's National Cemetery, on a rise in the east end of Ottawa. It is the resting place of the Force — and, unusually among national burial grounds, of the families of the Force as well.
Most of what people want to know about it is not written down anywhere in one place. Am I eligible? Is my spouse? What does a place actually cost, and what does that price include? Does the cemetery take care of everything, or is there more to arrange? This site is my attempt to answer those questions properly, without a brochure in the way.
I am a licensed funeral director at Beechwood, and I arrange these every week. That is a disclosure, not a pitch — you should know where the writer sits. Nothing here asks you to buy anything.
Do I qualify?
The cemetery is open to current RCMP employees, to members of the RCMP Veterans' Association, to those who may meet the Association's criteria, and to members of their families.
That last clause does a lot of quiet work, and it is where most uncertainty lives. Civilian members, retirees who never joined the Association, spouses, adult children — people in all of those situations ask, and the honest answer is that the question is not mine to settle.
Eligibility is determined by the RCMP Veterans' Association, not by the cemetery and not by me. If you want a definitive answer, write to them at contact@rcmpva.org or start at rcmpva.org. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
One thing worth saying plainly: membership in the Association does not reserve a plot. Eligibility and a purchase are two separate steps, and a good many people assume the first takes care of the second.
The thing most people get wrong
A cemetery and a funeral home are two different arrangements, and the cemetery price list covers only one of them.
The cemetery provides the resting place: the land or the niche, the monument or the plaque, the opening and closing of the grave, and the fund that maintains the ground afterwards. A funeral home must separately take charge of the person who has died — transfer, care, documentation, cremation or casketing — and that is true even when there is no service of any kind.
Almost every difficult conversation I have about money starts here. Someone has budgeted carefully against a cemetery price list and finds a second set of costs they did not know existed. It is entirely avoidable, and it is the first thing I would want a family to understand.
What stands on the ground
The section is worth walking before you think about anything else. At its head is the main monument, the RCMP badge carved in black stone with a bugler and a sentry either side and the horse and rider on its reverse. At the centre stands the Cenotaph and Honour Roll, a uniformed member saluting, the names of those who died in service inscribed in order of date around him.
Since 2017 the Veterans' Memorial Flame has burned here, lit after a torch relay from Parliament Hill. And since May 2025 the Veterans' Legacy Pathway has run through the section: eleven granite monoliths quarried from the same stone as the Parliament Buildings, each carrying a bronze plaque telling one chapter of the Force's history.
I photographed those plaques and wrote them up, era by era, with the history filled in around them.
If you want to talk it through
For eligibility, the RCMP Veterans' Association is the authority — contact@rcmpva.org.
For anything else — what is available, what a place involves, what the cemetery covers and what a funeral home handles separately, or simply where to park and how to find the section — call or write to me. I will give you a straight answer, and I will tell you when the answer is that you should wait.
Jamie Wells · Licensed Funeral Director and Family Service Counsellor
Beechwood Cemetery, Funeral and Cremation Services, Ottawa
613-696-0114 · jwells@beechwoodottawa.ca