2023-09-25 04:00:00
In Montreal, journalist Louis-Philippe Messier travels mostly on the run, his desk in his backpack, on the lookout for fascinating subjects and people. He speaks to everyone and is interested in all walks of life in this urban chronicle.
Hundreds of coffins stacked seven stories high line up in front of me. I am in the “restoir” of the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery, a gigantic “fridge” where the deceased waiting to be buried are accumulated. It’s been like this since a partially resolved labor dispute delayed funerals, which inflicted the torture of waiting on thousands of bereaved relatives.
I am privileged to have been able to visit this inaccessible place during the entire year of the conflict.
It is very cold.
This rest is not a fridge, but rather a freezer: minus 16 degrees Celsius.
My neck tenses.
“Be careful of patches of ice on the ground,” warns Alain Dussault, the operations director of the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery.
Among the approximately 380 current residents of this morgue-turned-waiting room, some have been waiting here since last January.
These deaths move me less than the thought of the thousands of bereaved loved ones, those living who are waiting to be able to bury their dead.
In these wooden boxes there are mothers, fathers, children, lovers, etc.
The cemetery allowed me to visit this place on one condition: no photos.
Ironically, I am here because of photographs taken clandestinely.
A source sent them to me to show the reality of this refrigerated mass grave where the dead are piled up to the ceiling.
To say that there is a “congestion” of 400 coffins awaiting burial is abstract.
The image allows you to understand what it represents. And my visit too…
Cruelty
“Does that seem normal to you, hundreds of dead people accumulating like that in a warehouse? These are humans, dead, but humans… and there are humans still alive who are suffering, it’s absolutely odious,” says Paul Caghassi, the founder of the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Departed. and families from the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery.
“A burial that does not take place for months is a wound that cannot heal, it is cruel to impose that on families.”
According to Mr. Caghassi, this giant warehouse, built in the event of an epidemic, should strictly serve its original mission.
“This refrigerated mass grave must be used in the event of an epidemic, in winter, when it is impossible to dig or if the family prefers to wait until it is less cold. But there, it is used as a corporate and union weapon.”
“Both parties in this story are to blame and we have been held hostage by both!”
Mr. Caghassi did not provide me with the photos, and he was reluctant to endorse their publication.
“I hope at least that these images will make people, especially politicians, understand the full extent of the scandal of what is happening here! This has to end right away. And it must not happen once more.”
Paul Caghassi, the founder of the Association for the defense of the rights of the deceased and families of the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery. Louis-Philippe Messier
The conflict continues
The Cemetery reopened its gates to visitors last week. Burials had already resumed a few weeks earlier. The exceptional overcrowding of the rest center does not seem to be decreasing for the moment… One of the reasons: even if the blue-collar workers are back, the white-collar workers have remained on strike for a year… which is slowing down operations.
“It’s organizational chaos, burials are being done in a trickle, the accumulation situation is not going to improve regardless of what the cemetery says,” maintains Éric Dufault, president of the employees’ union of desk.
“We will reach full cruising speed in two weeks, when all our blue-collar workers have finished cleaning the site and can work on the burials,” retorts Michel Saint-Amour, the cemetery spokesperson.
“We will be able to bury up to 60 coffins per week,” adds Mr. Dussault.
Both parties maintain that by December, the delay will have been made up.
This quarrel between parties currently in vigorous negotiations exasperates Paul Caghassi:
“I know these people, and they are nice, but they are stuck in their doctrines. One defends the employees. The other defends the Church. And no one is making an effort.”
He demands that white-collar workers immediately return to work while negotiating.
Will this aberrant accumulation of deaths up to the ceiling last much longer? Will it happen once more in the future?
“The collective agreement for blue-collar workers will end in 2027 and there might be another pile-up,” fears Mr. Caghassi.
Photo of the main repository, taken clandestinely at the end of August. Anonymous source
A secondary repository began to be used at the end of August when the number of coffins exceeded 400. Anonymous source
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