Cemetery faces “neglect”

Notre-Dame-des-Neiges, the city’s largest cemetery, won’t be properly looked after this summer, according to the maintenance union. The irony here is that it will be far better for bird and insect life if the big graveyard returns to nature for a season. Some years ago the union held a lengthy strike, and I went in for a walk: it was overgrown with wildflowers, there were crickets chirping and many more birds than I’d seen previously. Wild, it was much more Gothic and haunting than it is normally. But this time, the public can’t go in.