Grieving families relieved to see workers at Canada’s largest cemetery back on site – Montreal | Globalnews.ca

Though the sound of woodchippers at Montreal’s Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery Monday was a positive sign for some families, many who haven’t been able to visit loved ones or bury relatives for months some have mixed feelings.

“I don’t know,” said Jimmy Koliakoudakis, who’s waiting to bury his mother.  “There’s a lot of different words.  Happy is maybe not the best choice.  I would maybe say, more relieved.”

Maintenance workers at the cemetery, Canada’s largest, had been on strike since January.  They returned to work Monday after reaching a deal with their employer last week.  Because of the work stoppage more than 300 bodies were left unburied, including Koliakoudakis’ mother who died February.

“We’ve been put on hold for so many months and now we can finally start dealing with this,” he told Global News at the cemetery’s entrance.

Now that work has resumed, families with loved ones buried at the site say they are also relieved that they can now look forward to visiting.

“I have my daughter here, Vanessa,” said Michael Musacchio. “She’s been here since May 2021.”

But the families will still have to wait a little longer.  The cemetery is vastly overgrown, tree and branches that fell during last winter’s ice storm still litter the grounds making some routes impassable, and they fear it could take a while before all the debris is cleared.

“I haven’t been contacted,” stated Koliakoudakis.  “I don’t know about other people but I don’t think anybody has been contacted by the cemetery that I know of, to proceed with burials.”

What angers him and Musacchio mostly is that the strike lasted so long.

“These past six, seven months, we’ve been tortured mentally,” said Musacchio. “We don’t sleep at night.”

Though the grounds workers are back on site, the families worry that there could eventually be another strike when workers’ contract is negotiated again in 2027.

“(A strike) cannot happen again,” Musacchio stressed.  “This (work) must be an essential service.”

Office workers are still on strike and don’t know when they’ll resume negotiations.  They were hoping to return to work at the same time as the blue collar employees but negotiations happened separately. They don’t know when negotiations will resume.

“Now that most of the employees are back, can we sit down at the table with the boss?” wondered union representative Karolyn Dubé.

Meanwhile, families just hope they won’t be caught in the middle of another labour conflict in the future.

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