Families launch suit over Quebec funeral lockout

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=16210301-1815-44ba-b646-7938f6a6dc7b&k=87984

Families launch suit over Quebec funeral lockout
'My Mother Cries Herself To Sleep'
Allison Hanes And Graeme Hamilton, National Post
Published: Thursday, July 12, 2007

MONTREAL -It was a sad event, though not completely unexpected, when Paul Caghassi's 90-year-old mother died on May 13 after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease.

The shocking blow came when the Montreal man and his brothers, who flew in from France for the funeral, found out they would not be able to bury their mother next to their father in the grave that bears her name.

The Caghassi clan is just one of hundreds of Montreal families who say their mourning has been prolonged indefinitely by a two-month-old labour dispute between workers and management at the landmark Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery on the western flank of Mount Royal.

As many as 400 bodies have been in cold storage, some for nearly two months, while weeds have sprouted and grass has grown waist-high in the cemetery plots. The once park-like setting now resembles a country field, with the grass reaching the tops of tombstones in some places. Some family members have taken matters into their own hands, bringing in lawn mowers, weed trimmers and pruning shears to restore a sense of order.

As demonstrating union members called this week for the intervention of Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte, Archbishop of the Diocese of Montreal, some families have pursued a class-action lawsuit against the cemetery.

The bodies have been accumulating since the May 16 lockout at a rate of 50 to 60 a week, according to the lawyer behind the lawsuit. Debora De Thomasis said her family learned at the end of a memorial service for her 90-year-old grandmother -- on the lockout's first day -- that a planned interment in one of the cemetery's mausoleums was off.

FULL story at link.