Wielding shears and carrying flowers, families return to Montreal cemetery after lengthy strike ends

The sound of Weed Wackers shattered the silence at the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery on Monday.

It was the first day the public had had access to the site after a simmering labour dispute kept it closed for months — and, during that time, nature had reclaimed it. 

Grass grew taller than some of the gravestones, tree branches lay where they had fallen after a spring ice storm, and flowers wilted on tombs. 

Grounds staff returned to work in July, but there was still much to do when the gates officially opened Monday — and families of those buried in the cemetery arrived ready to ensure their loved ones' graves were tidy.

"We knew it was going to be full of grass," Jimmy Stratigopoulos said as he wielded a pair of pruning shears at his father's grave. 

Using the secateurs and a grass trimmer he'd brought, Stratigopoulos cleaned the plot and put down flowers as his mother, Kaleroi Stratigopoulos, stood close to the gravestone. Before the shutdown, she used to come weekly to sit at her husband's grave, a plot in the Greek section of the cemetery where she will one day be buried, too. 

"She hasn't been here in over a year. None of us have," Stratigopoulos said. "It gives her peace to come here. This is the one thing that really keeps her going."

The families and loved ones who walked among the tombstones on Monday, many of them wielding gardening tools as well as flowers, spoke of the importance of cemeteries as a vital piece of public life, an innate part of the grieving process. 

To be deprived of access to a loved one's grave for so long was, to many of them, intolerable, family members said with tears in their eyes. They said the reopening was like a reunion with lost loved ones — not just their graves. 

"I love my parents," said Greg Trigonakis who wore gloves to clean the grave of his parents, Stavros and Maria.

"They helped me a lot in life. They did everything they could do for the family. We have a very close connection to our family members.

"People have to be able to access a cemetery." 

The scent of freshly cut grass lingered between the gravestones as grounds workers trimmed the lawns and tossed branches into industrial wood chippers. 

Gheorghe Miron removed a Christmas wreath from his wife's gravestone, a relic of the last visit he had made to the site in December 2022, before the cemetery staff went on strike.