{"id":865542,"date":"2026-08-20T23:46:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T23:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865542\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T23:46:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T23:46:12","slug":"end-of-an-era-montreal-says-goodbye-to-oliver-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865542\/","title":{"rendered":"End of an era: Montreal says goodbye to Oliver Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The church where Oliver Jones first played piano as a five-year-old filled Thursday with the sounds that had followed him through his life: music, laughter and applause.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hundreds of mourners packed Union United Church in Little Burgundy for the public funeral of the Montreal jazz legend, who died July 22 at the age of 91. Through gospel music and deeply personal recollections, the service brought Jones back to the neighbourhood where his story began, celebrating not only the internationally renowned musician he became, but the humility, generosity and gratitude those closest to him said defined the man behind the piano.<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2375\" height=\"1583\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/0821-city-funeral-jones-4449_304788745.jpg\" alt=\"A widow touches the chin of a mourner at a funeral.\" class=\"wp-image-100268112\"  \/>The wife of the late jazz legend Oliver Jones, Monique Leclerc, greets Oliver White outside Union United Church for the funeral of Jones in Montreal on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026.  Evan Buhler \/ Montreal Gazette<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe first time that my dad and I actually spoke about his funeral was when he was 80,\u201d his son, Richard Jones, told the congregation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The church where Oliver Jones first played piano as a five-year-old filled Thursday with the sounds that had&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338,92296,11487],"class_list":["post-865542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal","tag-news-videos","tag-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}