N-D-des-Neiges: suspension and strike
Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery suspended a union leader for five days, so office workers there held a one‑day strike Tuesday. Meantime, the cemetery gets more overgrown, which looks wonderful and should be good for insects, birds and animal life.
Love Le Devoir’s line about families “envisageraient même de mettre fin à la présence de leurs ancêtres sur ce site.” A cemetery is not the kind of place where you can easily threaten to bring your business elsewhere, not if it means moving the bones of your ancestors.
The Sulpicians need to pay people properly.
Robert H 13:03 on 2022-07-20 Permalink
This labor conflict at Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges might be more complex than it would initially appear. The disputes are obvious enough: dissatisfied clientele vs. overburdened-underpaid workers vs. parsimonious management. But, given the venue, I believe there’s also the matter of people’s ambivalence toward death: how to honor the dead and the proper environment of a gravesite. I don’t exclude myself. I’ve always thought the cemeteries took up too much space on Mount Royal. The park could be even better than it is without all that land given over to the dead. But of course, it’s not all about the dead; cemeteries are for the living, and they are often beautiful places. The «plan vert» sounds like a good thing. I interpret it to be a loosening of the Jardin-Versailles-of-the-departed model for a more naturalistic landscape. Cemetery spokesman Daniel Granger suggests that people will be more receptive once it’s explained to them, but I’m struck by Éric Dufault’s riposte that it’s all just green-washing amid staff reductions and budget cuts. I do agree with you, Kate, that allowing some overgrowth and perhaps letting the grass grow wouldn’t be such a bad outcome. In my wildest imagination, if the disputants at Notre-Dame-de-Neiges can’t settle their arguments, I can see the whole place eventually going to seed. We’ll have our own version of London’s Highgate (in North London adjacent to Hampstead Heath), a cemetery that fell on hard times, filled with gravesites of families whose bloodlines dissipated, crumbling monuments, a sort of controlled mess run by a nonprofit, and an absolutely gorgeous ruin. Not so bad.