Human remains unearthed by LRT work repeatedly 'disturbed' over the years
Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: February 19, 2015, Last Updated: February 19, 2015 6:04 PM EST
The human remains uncovered by LRT construction have been dug up, carted around and unceremoniously dumped as many as 12 times in the past, study is showing.
And examination of these bones is now showing that Bytown was a hard place to live.
The bones were uncovered by construction in 2013, and recognized as part of an old cemetery that was supposed to have been moved in the mid-1800s. But some bodies were left behind.
We asked anthropologist Janet Young of the Canadian Museum of History and archeologist Ben Mortimer of the Paterson Group to share what they are learning about these people.
Q: Who were they?
Young: “Right now I have processed 17 burials. There were 19 that were found,” Young told us. One is a fetus, one a stillborn infant. There are seven young children but no adolescents. (The archaeologists can’t tell boys from girls from the bones alone.)
There are 14 adults: four women, eight men, two undetermined.
There were also four “bundle burials,” bringing the total to 23 people.
Q: What’s a bundle, and what does it tell about these graves?
Young: “Over the years human remains have been encountered during various construction operations and in some of those circumstances the remains were gathered up and buried in a hole adjacent to where they had originally been. So it’s just a jumble of bones.”
Q: So the graves have been dug up before?
Young: “Oh my goodness, they have been coming across remains since the late 1800s. And they have been disturbed — Ben (Mortimer) mentions 12 times that we can find note of over the years. The cemetery was closed and the remains were supposed to be moved, but not all of the bodies were moved.”
The cemetery was used from about 1827 to 1845.
Q: What do you know about how these people lived?
Mortimer: “Some people spent a lot of time squatting or on their knees for their work. Another person has been doing a lot of heavy lifting. This is very preliminary stuff that she (Young) has noticed as she’s cleaning.”
“Some of them have been doing heavy work, like any job in the day.” Working as lumbermen or canal construction workers “is going to be strenuous on the body and leave its marks.”
More detailed analysis is expected to show what kind of diet people ate, which can give indication about what regions they lived in, especially as children. “So you can look at patterns of migration at the time.”
Q: How did they die?
Young: “There were about 500 burials in the cemetery and a large portion of them were cholera and malaria victims.” There were cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1834, and malaria was a constant enemy of workers on the Rideau Canal.
“Drowning is the next big thing. There are a few that had trees fall on them as well.” Generally this information comes from Catholic and Presbyterian burial records.
Q: And it was a more dangerous time, wasn’t it?
Mortimer: “That’s the way it was back in the early 1880s… Bytown would have been considered a very remote place. Child mortality rates were extremely high.” And even for those who survived childhood “life expectancy really wasn’t all that high. There would have been very few people who made it past 70.”
“These epidemics really wiped people out. Speaking to the cholera of 1832 and 1834, it really hit families hard. The records from Bytown talk about entire families succumbing and being buried within days of each other.”
In the end, the remains will be reburied at Beechwood Cemetery.
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