‘That’s where he should have been’
Toronto woman relieved after brother’s body moved to right cemetery plot beside mother’s
Paul Wheeler can finally rest in peace. When Suzanne Wheeler called Humber River Hospital looking for her missing brother last fall, she was told Paul wasn’t a patient there even though he was lying dead in the morgue, the Star reported in October.
Five weeks passed before she found that the 48-year-old had died and been buried — not in the plot she had purchased for him years before beside their mother, but in a socialservices grave at a different cemetery.
All the while, her phone number was in his pocket. No one from the hospital called her, she said, but Humber River “is convinced that all appropriate steps were taken in our efforts to notify the appropriate people about Mr. Wheeler’s passing,” spokesman Gerard Power said in an email in October.
Wheeler wanted to move her brother to his proper resting place at Pine Hills Cemetery, but at $7,500, the service was too expensive.
After reading the story, social services decided to foot the bill to exhume her brother and transport him, Wheeler told the Star recently. The cemetery worked with social services to bring the costs down, said Mount Pleasant Group spokesman Rick Cowan. “It was just one of those heart-wrenching stories,” Cowan said. “We just wanted to try to do the right thing.” Paul was reburied at Pine Hills on Jan. 21, a few days short of their mother’s birthday. “I do feel relief that he is where he should be,” Wheeler said. “That’s where he should have been from the get-go.” But the ordeal has left her with emotional trauma. Humber did not apologize or pay to move her brother, she said. The hospital understands her brother’s passing was difficult for her, has reached out to her on a number of occasions and had many conversations with her about the situation, Humber’s Power said in an email.