grave post - Cutten

The two women on this most unusual monument in Mount Pleasant Cemetery (Toronto) represent Annie Rowena and her sister Gertrude Moncur who died within three months of each other.

It was carved in Laurentian pink granite in 1936 by German born sculptor Emanuel Hahn and features in a Graeme Gibson novel where the protagonist eats his lunch every day on a stone bench "before turning his amorous attentions to one or the other" (full disclosure: I have not actually read this book, I discovered this bit of trivia while researching. as a side note of interest, Graeme Gibson is the husband of Margaret Atwood)

Lionel Cutten, the husband of Annie Rowena, was born in 1871, the third of eight children of Walter Hoyt Cutten, a prominent barrister in Guelph Ontario. He was a year younger than second son Arthur (for whom his son on the far left of this bench was possibly named) who was a well known stock market speculator. He actually has a more interesting story, if less interesting gravesite where he is buried in Guelph, and I will have to visit that cemetery and tell of his life at a later date. (I am sure Delores is familiar with the name!)
But, back to Lionel. While still young and adventurous, he and Anthony Foster formed Cutten and Foster, importer of automobile parts, radios, and drapery manufacturers.

He married Annie Rowena Adams (born 1872) in 1902 and their one child Arthur was born in 1905. Arthur Forbes Cutten was the Chairman and CEO of Cutten Investments and died at home in 1992 at age 87. His second wife, Carolyn Beaver Wishart, died in October, 1998 at age 75. Neither one rests on or near this bench, but rather in the mausoleum.

The Arthur and Audrey Cutten Foundation is based in Toronto and some of the beneficiaries have been Sunnybrook and St Mike's Hospitals, as well as the CNIB, MS Society, War Amps Society, Kids Help Phone, among others.

In 1912, according to the Society section of The Toronto World, Mrs Lionel Cutton 135 Avenue Rd will receive the first Friday of every month during the season.

By the time Lionel Cutten died at his home of a heart attack he was living at 118 Forest Hill Rd.

See who else had died at Taphophile Tragics