We received another very unsatisfactory and frustrating reply on November 30 from Rupert Gordon, Interim ADM of Developmental Services, MCSS. 

When will the Premier realize that the people working for the ministry which perpetuated the neglect and abuse at Huronia Regional Centre – for which she apologized – have not learned from past mistakes?

MCSS should inform this ADM that his staff, Christine Kuepfer, did not “engage with” us. She sent a series of disrespectful messages, in which she argued with the facts, avoided addressing our concerns and accused us of making false claims. 

MCSS should know that this ADM’s predecessor, Karen Chan, chaired a July 6, 2016 meeting with us in an extremely disrespectful manner: making faces and rude gestures to survivors (in the form of eye-rolling as well as using the “time-out” hand sign to Astero Pastali while survivors were asking questions and expressing legitimate concerns and frustration); and denying important disability-related accommodations that had been repeatedly requested. In fact, when members of our group asked at that meeting: why documents had not been made available ahead of time; why we had not been consulted in advance about the agenda; and why our requests to meet at the cemetery had been refused (where they could have shown us concretely what they were referring to in the report), the reply from ministry staff was to defend the decision to not meet these access needs, because they knew better than we did what would be most helpful to us.  

What this ADM calls “consulting” has actually been insulting to survivors, which is re-traumatizing and only reinforces distrust of our government.



It is a complete misrepresentation for this ADM to say, “the government has strived to remain open and transparent” with us. If that were true, we would have had no reason to keep seeking answers – ever since July 2015.  Despite repeated reminders, the Premier has never responded to a letter of concern from one of the survivors, Cindy Scott, initially sent in July 2015. 

We want to know if the Premier really does care about the people to whom she apologized?

We see the MCSS facelift at the cemetery as a convoluted attempt to continue the government cover-up of the sewage system, which goes right through the middle of the burial area. 

MCSS has paid Timmins Martelle Heritage Consultants (TMHC) to conduct a series of investigations about the HRC cemetery. The MCSS contention that graves were not disturbed is contradicted by those reports. This unsubstantiated theory relies on cursory information in the TMHC Spring 2016 report which conflicts with the more thorough March and September 2015 TMHC report findings. 

TMHC’s overall evidence raises significant doubts that there ever was a western expansion or a road between rows 25 and 26; that the sewage system was installed in the 1930s; and that no graves were disturbed. TMHC did some initial "ground-truthing" because they said GPR did not clearly show graves. When cedar slabs and bone fragments were found where it appears the pipe would cross the edge of the burial area, it was too quickly dismissed as animal bone. Then in July 2016 when we asked the crucial question, “can you say with 100% certainty that no burials were disturbed by the septic infrastructure” – the answer from Holly Martelle was “no”. Why then, for such a serious matter, would TMHC recommend that no further ground truthing was necessary? 

TMHC included one page from a Dearden Stanton engineering study, while hiding what was most important to us - the actual "utility locate" done by Terra Discovery. When all 3 reports are considered, we see that the MCSS assumptions are unscientific and inconsistent. New evidence we have obtained from aerial photos raises further doubts.

This ADM has perpetuated deception, saying that MCSS “almost entirely” followed our recommendations about cemetery work. 

Has he not seen the long chain of messages in which we explained that MCSS is ignoring our MOST IMPORTANT recommendations?



1. MCSS has totally backed down on their 2015 promise to replace about 400 numbered stones with properly named and dated individual makers. 

• TMHC’s subsequent research shows that MCSS does know who is buried in those graves. 
  
• The government has allowed several families to put personal markers there.
  

Are those favoured families the ones the ADM now says MCSS consulted? 
Why was this important part of the plan omitted? We want MCSS to accord the same respect to all the other people’s graves in that area of the cemetery, as promised.


2. We have withdrawn our earlier suggestion about row end markers for the large unmarked section of burials. We shared this idea in February 2015 during a preliminary discussion of design concepts, but have had no further discussion with MCSS or input into any plans beyond that initial meeting. We asked that the plan for row end markers be stopped once we found out that MCSS knows that names cannot be accurately inscribed on them. 

TMHC’s September 2015 research (attached) told MCSS that the location of a great many people’s graves remains unknown:

• 21 people’s burial numbers appear in 2 or more rows (p. 90)
  
• burial numbers appear more than once on existing markers in the cemetery (p. 37)
  
• 43 people listed on page 93, and 32 people listed on page 99 of the report, are buried somewhere in the cemetery, but no one knows where.
  
• TMHC found many errors in the institution records (p. 111-112). 
  
• Since people said to be buried there were actually buried elsewhere, they would also expect to find that people said to be buried elsewhere were actually buried in the institution cemetery. However, MCSS did not ask TMHC to check for those errors.
  
• TMHC provided evidence that “page(s)” of names were missing from institutional lists of deaths (p. 59).
  
• TMHC said "there is good evidence of the use of the cemetery by 1899 but very little firm documentation of internments prior to that time". Thus "the date of the opening of the cemetery remains in question" (p. 112).
  

We were initially told that individual burial markers throughout the whole of the cemetery would be impossible because the existing drawings are not to scale, and GPR is not reliable enough for this purpose. Due to these reasons and the above listed uncertainties we no longer support the idea of end row markers and it is clear to us that the spacing MCSS proposes between row end markers has no basis in fact.

3. MCSS is ignoring our request that they consult with survivors about the wording on the cemetery plaques, and we still have no information about what is being considered.


We want the information provided to the public to be factual and truthful about people being disrespected in life and in death.  

Survivors who are still alive today also want an opportunity to create something permanent - to honour the memory of those who died, as well as to restore a sense of connection for lost relatives - for all future generations to come. It will be a small part towards healing from the damage done when people were separated from families and forced to live at HRC.

That is why we secured leftover class action funds so that survivors could collaborate with a trusted professional artist to design, fabricate and install a cemetery memorial: “Survivors Commemorate Lives Lived at Huronia Regional Centre”. 

We require government permission to install it at the cemetery and so we are asking for the Premier’s word that MCSS will not block that from happening, and that other ministries will be willing to work with us.



We must also note that rather than listening and responding to our request to fully stop the plan for row end markers, since we said we were horrified that they could disturb graves, MCSS has now apparently changed the design. The ADM’s recent letter says that row end markers will now be placed on top of the recently installed sidewalk, instead of beside it. However, MCSS specifications showed that the base of each row end marker was 650 mm from front to back. MCSS designed the sidewalks to be 1500 mm wide in some places and 1900 mm wide in others. It is confusing that the ADM just wrote that the pathways “provide increased accessibility to the cemetery,” when this would leave just 850 to 1250 mm for passage beside the row end markers, in contravention of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act which requires paths that are 1500 mm wide. 

Again, we ask that all work at the HRC cemetery stop and that real consultation with Remember Every Name begin.