Direct link to city’s history
Local woman’s ancestor was buried where the LRT is now being built
The Rideau Canal was just opening when Mary Hardy arrived in Bytown with her husband and children, including a daughter born at sea, to start a North American life that would only last three years.
As part of a wave of Irish immigrants, Hardy left Templemore in 1832 for a rugged life in what’s now Hintonburg. She died three years later and was buried in Barrack Hill Cemetery, now Elgin, Metcalfe, Queen and Sparks streets.
Almost two centuries later, skeletons were unearthed below Queen Street during water-main work last fall. The discovery sparked an investigation into who was buried in Bytown’s first cemetery, why at least 18 people weren’t moved, and how to respect the remaining skeletons.
Earlier this year, the province’s registrar of cemeteries, Michael D’Mello, set out to find related and religious representatives for those once buried at Barrack Hill, so they could oversee reburial. About a dozen people came forward claiming to be descendants, D’Mello said.
But only one had enough evidence — Ruth Grant, a descendant of Hardy.
“These people are going to give back to us a lot of knowledge about early Bytown, whoever they are,” Grant said. “I don’t think they’re probably happy under a roadway. So they will give to us and we will give back to them, with a kind and pleasant resting place.”
The Hardy family tree has been passed down for generations, Grant said, showing Hardy was her great-great-great-grandmother.
Hardy had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood, including Eliza, who was a toddler when the family moved to Bytown.
She later married Robert Grant, who was older than her parents. They had six children before he died in a fire that swept across Carleton County in 1870. One of their sons, also named Robert Grant, went on to be minister of education.
That MPP was Ruth Grant’s great-grandfather and Hardy’s grandson. “If her daughter hadn’t married the original Grant, none of us would be here,” said Grant, a 63-year-old retiree who lives in Ottawa and learned of the descendant search through a historical society.
Handwritten Anglican records state Hardy was buried on Nov. 19, 1835. No cause of death is given but childbirth and cholera are causes Grant has considered.
Another mystery is where Hardy’s remains are now. Grant knew Hardy and possibly other relatives were once buried near Queen Street, but questions what happened when the cemetery closed around 1845.
At some point, Hardy’s remains were supposed to move to a Sandy Hill cemetery. When that closed, the bones were supposed to be transferred again, to Beechwood Cemetery.
Markers for Hardy and her husband’s second wife are beside each other, fading in the grass, at Beechwood Cemetery. Records state Hardy’s second reburial happened there in 1889.
But Grant has doubts, partially because relatives were living on farms then, away from the cemetery. “Perhaps they ordered the stones to be moved,” Grant said. “Or maybe they just moved the markers in all these cases ... I don’t think they really enjoyed digging up bones.”
As part of the reburial process now, the Canadian Museum of History will examine the Queen Street remains. DNA testing will be completed where possible, and Grant hopes to find out if she’s related to anyone left there.
Regardless of the result, she said she’ll be interested in the anthropological analysis, expected to determine more about the diets, jobs and health of early settlers, including canal workers. “I think we’re going to learn a lot about the life struggles they had,” Grant said.
Archeological work will begin again Monday, as remains are carefully lifted from the ground, said senior archeologist Ben Mortimer from Patterson Group. The company was contracted by Rideau Transit group because replacement of the 1874 water main precedes lightrail-transit work.
The remains found so far — 13 burials and five commingled remains, each belonging to at least one person — are close to the wa-
These people are going to give back to us a lot of knowledge about early Bytown, whoever they are.
ter main. As the search expands, it’s expected more will be found in the area of the cemetery, where 508 people may have been buried after it opened around 1827, according to Mortimer’s analysis of records.
The discovered burials, disturbed by development, have varying amounts of bones missing, Mortimer said. They were found a metre or less below the road. “There’s always the possibility someone else was buried below, which was common practice at the time,” he said.
There’s no estimate on how many remains could still be found, in part because of possible stacking and cases like Hardy’s, where there’s some doubt she was moved.
“Historic cemeteries, for the most part in Ontario from that time period ... you’re looking at about probably a 50-per-cent removal rate,” Mortimer said. “So they usually left about half the people behind. They would have removed all the markers but left the bodies.”
Mortimer worked on a reburial agreement between the city, Grant and religious representatives from Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian churches, which are involved because of the denominations of the dead.
They will be reburied at Beechwood and there will be a re-interment ceremony in 2017, as part of the city’s sesquicentennial celebrations.
“This is an appropriate way to do two things,” said representative David Selzer, executive archdeacon of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa. “One is to honour those early ancestors of the city of Ottawa. Secondly, it’s a way to, I would say, celebrate that they are resting in peace.”