The Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ) will go ahead with the planned expansion of its distribution centre after it says no human remains were found on the site.
Two groups, the Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnistensera, a group of Indigenous women known as the Mohawk Mothers, and the Committee of Duplessis Orphans Victims of Abuse, had called for an archaeological search of the site because part of the land was once a cemetery for a nearby asylum.
But, in a statement Thursday, the SAQ said the search did turn up bones, but they were all animal bones and a team of experts had concluded that the area where the SAQ plans to build had been used for agricultural purposes.
The SAQ said it hired the archaeological firm Arkéos to conduct the search and that it was done according to an established protocol set by the Ministry of Culture and Communications.
Observers from both Kanien’kehá:ka Kahnistensera and the Committee of Duplessis Orphans Victims of Abuse were present during the archaeological excavations, according to the SAQ.
The land on which the SAQ’s distribution centre sits was once used by the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Hospital, an asylum where the Quebec government institutionalized children declared mentally ill in the 1940s and 50s.
Many Indigenous children stayed in Quebec hospitals without being sent back to their families.
Part of the land owned by the SAQ was once used as a cemetery for the asylum. The graveyard was closed in 1958, according to an article in the Journal de Montréal. At the time, journalists looked into the likelihood that several victims of abuse had been buried without investigation.
As a result, the cemetery was exhumed in the late 1960s.
The SAQ announced in January 2021 that it wanted to expand its Montreal distribution centre by investing $48.5 million. The warehouse is located in the island’s east end on des Futailles Street.
Despite the lack of human remains, the SAQ said it would place a plaque at the distribution centre acknowledging the area’s “painful history.”