Jimmy Kickham, an 89-year-old business owner from Canada's Prince Edward Island, prompted a few raised eyebrows earlier this year with his decision to dig his own grave.

Mr Kickham used his own Massey Ferguson digger, which he bought 45 years ago, to excavate the hole at his local church while his seven children 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 told the Guardian, adding: “I was kind of proud of what I was doing.”