Marie-Rose Benoît, who now lives in Quebec, never knew her father because she was only two years old in 1985, when he succumbed to a heart attack. Recently, she went to her grave, in Tracadie, and found a white cross on which he was written “mom”. She then learned that two ballot boxes had been buried there, without the knowledge of the family.
On his death, Albénie Benoît had a woman, Annette (Fournier), and two children: Marie-Rose and Patrice. Ms. Benoît organized the funeral and bought two lots in the cemetery of Tracadie to be a buried day alongside her husband.
Not long ago, their daughter, Marie-Rose, by doing research, discovered that the polls of two people who were perfectly foreign to her (Gilles Gaulin, who died in 2008, and Philomène Saint-Pierre, who died in 2010) were now based with her father.
The story is not commonplace. Ms. Saint-Pierre was the biological mother of Albénie, while Mr. Gaulin was his brother.
On the other hand, Albénie, adopted at a very young age, did not live with his mother, even less with his brother, who also grew up in another family.
“They are people he has never really known during her lifetime,” said Marie-Rose Benoît in the newspaper during a recent telephone interview.
Curiously, few clues suggested that two burials had been added to that of Mr. Benoît, apart from the little white cross, now disappeared.
He is another brother of Albénie Benoît, Claude Lebreton, of Montreal, who would have provoked in spite of himself the imbroglio.
In 2011, he brought the two Urns to Tracadie to give them a burial, and curiously, no one, whether in the parish Marie-Etoile-de-la-Mer or to the diocese of Bathurst, did not question his gesture.
However, Mr. Benoît’s nuclear family, that is to say his wife and children, has never approved the addition of these urns to the burial of their husband and father. Today, she would like the ashes of “strangers” to be buried elsewhere.
“The affair is that people who were not known too much made the decision to go and bury them there, without the consent of my mother, my brother and myself,” said Marie-Rose Benoît.
“I called the Presbytery of Tracadie,” she added, “then the diocese of Bathurst. They told me that it was the first time that they have heard a story like this, that the family had not been warned, and we could not find evidence that it was buried and that it was paid. “
Mr. Lebreton, she resumed, swears that he nevertheless informed himself with the parish.
“He asked the presbytery if everything was in order, if the family had been asked. He was told that everything was beautiful, correct. “
This was ultimately not the case, and Mr. Lebreton would have been the first surprised to learn that the Benoît family knew nothing about it. She would now like the error to be corrected, but the thing could be more complicated than we would be inclined to believe it.
“I try to find a solution, to find another place for these people,” said Marie-Rose Benoît. For us, the way it was done, it was really a big lack of respect for us, and for my father too. ”
“The diocese is checking what it can do with it, but as I have been told, it’s going to be really difficult to do something. We really don’t accept what happened there. ”
However, she will continue her efforts so that the situation is corrected.
“I was clear: I did not agree, either my brother, and even less my mother. She was really not happy with what they did. ”
The newspaper contacted the parish and the diocese to find out what it was, but no one recalled.
Marie-Rose Benoît, by going to the cemetery where her father was buried, found that a small white cross had been planted near the tombstone. She will later discover that two ballot boxes had been added to the burial without the family’s knowledge. – New Acadia: Bernard Haché
Who takes care of burials?
Who can approve or oppose the burial of urns on an existing burial? Sean Hatchard, communications officer at the Ministry of Health, could not answer this question, but he confirmed that the law did not prohibit the addition of urns to a burial.
“Although this is infrequent, the law authorizes the burial of ballot boxes in the same grave as an existing coffin,” he wrote. Article 7 of the General Regulation specifies the rules concerning the depth of the tombs intended for coffins as well as the quantity of land before covering the remains. These rules must also be respected when an urn is placed in the same grave as a coffin. ”
The law on the N.-B. cemetery companies (which includes Catholic cemeteries) establishes that the sale of a batch of burial is a transfer of land to a beneficiary, generally the person who will be buried there. The latter, as the case may be, should receive an act of transfer confirming that it, its heirs and its beneficiaries “have and hold perpetuity the designated lot.
On the other hand, when a lot did not accommodate an burial forty years after the sale, the cemetery company could resell it. Finally, the law concedes to this company a certain latitude in the management of the premises.
However, complex situations could occur in the case of older cemeteries, in particular when they go back to an era when the law which affects the places of burial was not very specific or did not yet exist.
