Remembering Huronia’s forgotten lives
Some 1,440 residents of notorious institution were buried in unmarked graves. A group of survivors wants to change that
In a small graveyard in Orillia, more than a thousand people lie buried in unmarked plots. Some graves are numbered; others have had their markers removed or were never marked at all.
The former residents of Huronia Regional Centre were largely forgotten in life, shut away in the institution, and about 1,440 were buried without a memorial, save for the new sign that now adorns the Huronia Regional Centre cemetery.
Paola Di Paolo wants to change that.
The notorious institution for people with developmental and intellectual disabilities was the subject of a class action lawsuit in 2013 over allegations of widespread physical and sexual abuse, which brought new information to the surface.
Its graveyard holds the remains of more than 2,000 former residents who died there. Before 1958, they were buried with numbers assigned simply on the order of death.
“They need to be honoured. I think that’s the biggest thing to me. They need to be honoured, and their friends and family need to know where they are,” said Di Paolo. “When we accept that people can be numbered like that, it’s dehumanizing.”
As part of the class action settlement, which promised $35 million in compensation for survivors, a new fence has been erected around the cemetery. But memorial markers weren’t included in the agreement.
Di Paolo is part of a group of survivors and concerned members of the public who call themselves Remember Every Name. The group has been working with the Ministry of Community and Social Services to assemble a proposal for memorialization of the graves.
Di Paolo’s uncle, John Haskie, entered Huronia in 1939 at the age of 12 and died there in 1944. She and her family became aware of Haskie’s life and death in the institution after a series of articles in the Star alerted her to the availability of records. She managed to retrieve information from the Archives of Ontario that allowed the family to locate John Haskie’s grave.
“I had the tenacity to research my uncle’s grave and his life, but a lot of people who walk in there don’t even know where to begin,” said Di Paolo.
Remember Every Name is considering two options: One would be to have each individual grave properly marked, but the quality of records may make this difficult. The other option proposes placing an obelisk at the end of each row, with the names of people buried in that row. Until one of the formal memorial options can be realized, Di Paolo has taken to helping people locate family members on request. She connected with Allyson Handley through Find a Grave, a website that catalogues graveyards and those buried there. Handley’s relative, Elmer Garrow, died at the institution in 1918.
Handley sent Di Paolo the details. The Orillia woman found Garrow’s name in the death registry and crossreferenced it with a map she has of the graveyard to pinpoint his likely burial spot.
She brought some flowers to the site, wrote his name on a card, took a photo and sent it to Handley, who lives in Missouri.
“When she sent me a picture she’d taken of the site, I was honestly overwhelmed by the fact that she’d placed some flowers and a name card on the site,” Handley wrote in an email to the Star.
“It was moving to see Elmer, someone who was clearly loved by his family (according to letters he received while at Orillia) but marginalized and likely ill treated by most, remembered in a way that finally included him in the ranks of mainstream society,” she said. “These earthly remains were human beings, and deserved to be treated as we would treat those not unfairly marginalized by society.” Di Paolo and Remember Every Name are still waiting for formal quotes from memorial companies, but she says the bill is likely to come in at about $300,000.
“The ministry is willing to explore options to preserve the memory of those interred at the cemetery, beyond the requirements of the Settlement Agreement, and we’ll continue to work with the group to determine the most appropriate way to do this,” ministry spokeswoman Kristen Tedesco said in an email.
Claims against the $35 million in the settlement fund are currently being processed.
If all of that money isn’t claimed, the settlement agreement specifies that up to $5 million may be reinvested in helping people with disabilities. The remainder would go back to the government, which may choose to use it for the memorial.
In Huronia’s early years, the graves were numbered purportedly to protect the privacy of those who died in the institution.
Di Paolo says properly memorializing those buried there is a basic step that can be taken.
“We live in a time where there’s so much technology and smart phones, things landing on comets and sending back information, and space programs wanting to go to Mars. This thing of where people are buried, how they’re memorialized and how they were treated, is so fundamental,” she said.