Possible children's bodies in 'pigsty' cemetery from the Duplessis era halts Quebec liquor board excavation plans
CTV
Quebec's liquor board - the SAQ - has halted excavation work at a warehouse in Montreal after questions were raised about the presence of an informal 'pigsty' cemetery where children's bodies from the 'Duplessis Orphans' era may lay.
Quebec's liquor board - the SAQ - has halted excavation work at a warehouse in Montreal after questions were raised about the presence of an "informal" cemetery where children's bodies from the "Duplesis Orphans" era may lay.
A joint letter from the Comité des orphelins et orphelines institutionalisées de Duplessis and the Kanien'keha:ka Kahnistensera (Mohawk Mothers) advised the SAQ that its distribution at 1501 Futailles Street in Montreal's Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough is located on the former Saint-Jean de Dieu hospital which housed children in the middle of the 20th century, an era sometimes called "the Great Darkness (Le Grande Noirceur)."
"Despite a 'massive exhumation' of the cemetery in 1967 and the transport of the bodies to the Cimetière de l'Est, that became the Cimetière St-François d'Assise, further human remains were discovered during the construction of buildings for the Société des Alcools du Québec in 1975, revealing that not all the bones had been exhumed in 1967," the letter reads. "Further expansion work on the SAQ Distribution Centre parking lot in 1999 led to the accidental discovery of more human bones. The SAQ admitted at the time that 'its technicians and engineers had no particular expertise in forensic medicine.'"
SAQ media relations officer Clémence Beaulieu Gendron said that as soon as the SAQ received the letter, the excavation work was halted.
"One thing is certain: we want to do things right," said Gendron.
Named after former Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, the Duplessis Orphans were wrongly labelled "mentally retarded" by government doctors and transferred to a hospital for the mentally ill run by the Catholic Church from 1949 to 1956.
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