Sympathy flowers in Ontario

A sympathy order in Ontario is really a scheduling problem wearing flowers. The city has its own cemetery — Bellevue Memorial Park on West G Street, a few blocks off the Euclid Avenue corridor — and its own long-established funeral home in Draper Mortuary at 811 North Mountain Avenue, so a great many Ontario services run between two addresses less than three miles apart. That closeness is a gift when the timing is tight and a trap when it is not: a chapel arrangement that arrives an hour after the family has left for the graveside has technically been delivered and has functionally missed. Before anything else, find out two things — the name of the chapel or church, and the hour the service begins. Everything else on this page follows from those two facts.

Beyond Draper and Bellevue, Ontario families use a well-worn set of neighboring chapels and memorial parks, all inside or close to the ring. Todd Memorial Chapel has locations in Pomona on North Garey Avenue and in Claremont, roughly five to seven miles west. Pomona Cemetery and Mausoleum on East Franklin Avenue is one of the oldest burial grounds in the region and takes graveside services daily. Oak Park Cemetery sits in Claremont under the old pepper and oak trees. Forest Lawn Covina Hills, about fifteen miles west along the 10 and up Via Verde, draws families from the whole Pomona Valley. Two more sit outside the 18-mile ring and need a heads-up rather than a same-day order: Montecito Memorial Park in Colton, and Riverside National Cemetery on Van Buren Boulevard, the regional veterans cemetery, where committal services run on a fixed schedule at assigned shelters and the cemetery's own rules govern what may be left at a grave. For either of those, tell us early and we will confirm which shop in the ring is willing to make the drive.