Jimmy Kickham took his backhoe to St Alexis church and dug while his family looked on – and it will be one less thing for them to worry about after he dies

When Jimmy Kickham dug his own grave over the summer, he remembered saying to himself, “I may be the first, maybe, in Canada that’s done this.”

The 89-year-old from Souris West, Prince Edward Island, took his backhoe to St Alexis church and dug while his family looked on. “Perhaps I’m the only one in Canada who has done that at my age with my own backhoe and my own family,” he added.

“I was kind of proud of what I was doing.”

Kickham, who owns a construction business, has been digging for about 60 years and had dug more than just graves in that time. “I love digging. Just one of those things that gets into your system. It’s just work. Money. No matter what they wanted dug, I could do it,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation of his work.

It was only natural, then, to someday dig his own grave.



“I thought about a couple years ago, if I live to be 90 I’ll dig my own grave,” Kickham told the Guardian on Monday. He will celebrate his 90th birthday later this week.

When he finally did the digging earlier this year, his seven children were all there to watch. It was important to him to have his family beside him. They left for the graveyard around 6pm and by about 7.45 the digging was done, Kickham said.

“It’s something they can carry around,” he said, meaning the knowledge that their father did this by himself. “It won’t cost them too much to carry that around with them for the rest of their life.”

Kickham wanted an old-fashioned burial, “Where a few days before the funeral, the grave would be dug and a pine box would be lowered into the hole and covered with the Island’s red clay,” the CBC wrote. Kickham dug the hole, lowered in the box himself, and covered it with soil. When needed, the thin layer of dirt will be removed and the pine box opened to lower in his casket. It will be one less thing for his family to worry about.

Kickham, who is still working, hoped he wouldn’t have to use the grave anytime soon. However, he knows that “time is unpredictable”, he said with a laugh.