Blake Fraser Hetherington

Blake Hetherington was born of Scottish ancestry on 13 July 1891 in Highgate, near Ridgetown, Kent County, Ontario. He was one of seven children of Richard and Jessie Hetherington. He received his early education in the nearby village of Turin and graduated from the Highgate High
School.

Ad for Hetherington & Deans Funeral Home in the City Directory of 1966

Hetherington began working on his father’s farm, but after completing high school he found work with a funeral director in Thamesville, Ontario for a year. From there he worked with Greene Brothers for a year. He came to Niagara Falls in 1914, where he worked for a local funeral director for eleven years. In 1925 he went into business for himself and in April the next year he moved to his own location at 1005 Victoria Avenue, the first of several locations on that street.

Hetherington was an active member of the community as a Mason, in the Lions Club and in the Drummond Hill Presbyterian church. In 1920 he had married Velma Evelyn Kerr, daughter of Thomas and Harriet Kerr and they had one daughter, Jean Harriet.

Hetherington was early into the use of the automobile for his business. He was the first to use the Studebaker funeral coach and the first in Niagara Falls to have a limousine hearse. By the nineteen thirties he was reputed to have the most up to date equipment and was the first to build a new modern funeral home in Niagara.

see A.E. Coombs History of the Niagara Peninsula p 204

Article by Fred Habermehl