City of Ottawa corrects ‘a dignity deficit’
They died sick, miserable and forsaken but they’ll be laid to rest in fall ceremony
The most profound 150th event in 2017 is one you’ve never heard of.
On the Sunday afternoon of Sept. 24 — if all goes according to plan — a dozen or more coffins will be lowered into fresh graves at Beechwood Cemetery, with prayers and soulful lament, at final rest after being ingloriously buried under a city street for well over a century.
A city-led committee has for months now been working on a one-of-a-kind service to re-inter human remains uncovered about a metre below Queen Street during LRT construction in 2013.
It was no stray bone or two. A subsequent investigation discovered 19 burial areas and remains from 23 individuals, including children and a stillborn infant. A team, led by anthropologist Janet Young of the Canadian Museum of History, spent years, on and off, examining the bones for clues about their demise.
Meanwhile, a question awaited answer: What, in the end, to do with them?
The city hasn’t made an announcement, but those familiar with the plan say it could involve vintage horse-drawn hearses bearing the coffins from a staging area near Rockcliffe to a specially prepared plot at Beechwood.
Clerics from at least three Christian denominations — Roman Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian — are to be involved, and the gravesite will be marked to honour the unnamed dead, possibly with a Celtic cross.
No identities have been attached to the skeletons. But we do know the bones were found on the site of a once-large cemetery south of Barracks Hill, roughly the footprint of today’s Parliament Hill. It contained about 500 graves and the bulk were moved in stages during the second half of the 1800s. But frequent construction — sewer, water mains, road building — periodically found more remains and sometimes they were tossed aside in a jumble.
Records indicate bones were accidentally uncovered 12 times between 1888 and 1971.
One day last week, city archivist Paul Henry pulled out several historic maps showing the original cemetery near present day Queen and Metcalfe, close to what was once a swamp. It wasn’t long before Centretown’s street grid was taking shape around it — and right over it.
“What the city is trying to do, with respect to souls buried in the Barracks Hill cemetery, is we’re trying to correct what I see as a dignity deficit.”
The 150th anniversary, he added, is an opportune time to pause and reflect on our history and to “set right” injustices committed during those early growth days.
The cemetery was active from 1827 — a year after construction of the Rideau Canal began — until 1845. And we know those early days were bustling but sometimes miserable.
“Within a few years, Bytown became known as the most lawless community in British North America,” writes Shirley Woods Jr., in Ottawa, The Capital of Canada.
In 1832 and 1834, there were terrible cholera outbreaks. Malaria also took a huge toll. Imagine, said Henry, what kind of ad hoc burial ensues when an entire family succumbs to cholera in the 1830s.
This was an era with no running water or sewage systems and iffy medical care. Some of the canal-building Irish were so poor and desperate for housing, they lived in crowded shanties or even crude huts dug out of hillsides.
Early death from disease, drowning, or construction calamity was common, claiming an estimated 1,000 lives during the six-year build from Ottawa to Kingston.
Kevin Dooley, a musician and author, was a grassroots organizer with the Canal Workers Commemorative Group, which successfully had a plaque installed by the Ottawa locks in 2013.
He’s pushing for the Sept. 24 event to have input from — not just politicians and clerics — but labour and grassroots organizations keen on the historic sacrifice of nameless, hard-working immigrants.
“In my opinion, this is going to be the most important, profound part of the whole 150.”
The early Irish, he noted, were not only poor but considered lower class, forced to live in ragged hovels and do the worst jobs.
“These people lived short, brutal lives.”
He said the examination of the bones was a revelation in social history: signs of premature death, disease, malnutrition, back-breaking labour and high infant mortality.
“C’mon man, we have (23) of our ancestors here,” said Dooley, his voice growing indignant. “We’re talking about the 150th anniversary of Canada. We’re talking about our heritage and history. This is a way to celebrate the blood, sweat and tears that went into building this country.”
In other words, the suffering. They crossed an ocean, perilously, to make real a sovereign’s audacious plan in a wilderness for which they weren’t prepared, only to die sick, miserable and forsaken, then buried and paved over — while generations reaped their labour.
Ottawa, it’s your mother’s grave. Rest, yes, but respect, finally.
We’re talking about our heritage and history. This is a way to celebrate the blood, sweat and tears that went into building this country.