Opened in 1852, Mount Royal Cemetery is a 165-acre (668 000 m²) terraced cemetery on the north slope of Mount Royal in the borough of Outremont, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The burial ground shares the mountain with the much larger Roman Catholic cemetery -- Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges. Mount Royal Cemetery contains more than 162,000 interments and is the final resting place for a number of notable Canadians. It includes a veterans section with several soldiers who were awarded the British Empire's highest military honour, the Victoria Cross. In 1901 the Mount Royal Cemetery Company established the first crematorium in Canada. Historically used by members of the English-speaking community and those of Protestant faiths, the cemetery is now non-sectarian and open to all. Several small Jewish cemeteries are also located in or nearby Mount Royal Cemetery: Congregation Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery, Spanish and Portuguese-Shearith Israel and Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom (Westmount, Quebec) . The cemetery was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1999 as an example of "Exceptional 19th-century cemetery design and aesthetics." A plaque indicating the cemetery's historic status was erected in 2002.