‘No record’: Saskatoon woman says Woodlawn Cemetery lost her brother’s remains

(Chad Hills / CTV News)

Although cemeteries provide a resting place for the dead, they’re really for the living. Cemeteries give us a place to grieve the loss of our loved ones — knowing their remains lie just below the surface.

Or so we hope.

For one Saskatoon woman, a simple call to the Woodlawn Cemetery about flowers at a family gravesite made her question everything she thought she knew about her brother’s final resting place.

The woman, whose name is redacted from internal emails obtained by CTV News, submitted a complaint to the parks superintendent on Nov. 10, 2023 detailing the experience.

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“The conversation began with me asking why every time I put flowers on my parents’ gravesite they are quickly snatched away. I gave her the gravesite number,” the woman wrote in an email obtained through an access to information request.

“As she was looking this information up on the computer she said to me, ‘and your brother [REDACTED] was also supposed to be buried with your mother.’ Then she said my brother is not registered with the Woodlawn Cemetery, and that I have to pay a fee to have this done. Then she said there was a note on a paper that said family has declined to inter my brother with my parents. This is not true.”

According to the aggrieved woman, the cemetery worker called the funeral home for clarification, Cherished Memories in Martensville, and the funeral director confirmed she already paid to have her brother interred — buried, in funeral speak — with their mother.

At this point, she has no idea where her brother’s remains ended up, or what happened to the hundreds of dollars she paid to have him buried at the family plot.

“The lady asked me where are my brother’s cremains, and do I have them. I said ‘no they are supposed to be with my mom.’ Again, she said she has no record of this,” the woman wrote.

The mystery was solved five days later.

Emails between a parks department clerk and Superintendent Chris Zerebeski on Nov. 15, 2023 indicate the confusion arose from an invoicing error. An internal memo confirmed the brother’s ashes were interred in his mother’s casket, but a previous booking to bury his cremated remains had been voided and rebooked, so it may have appeared as if the burial did not occur, at first glance.

In his email, Zerebeski said the funeral home took responsibility for the error, and offered to pay the outstanding fee and submit the required paperwork to register the brother with the cemetery.

“Can you imagine how I felt when I wasn’t sure where my brother was? … This is total incompetence at its worst,” the woman wrote to Zerebeski. “I have not been able to eat or sleep and have been very upset.”

This year, the City of Saskatoon amended its cemeteries bylaw to change the rules around accepting cremated remains.

Cemeteries now require a cremation certificate that confirms the remains “are those of the intended person,” including the name, birth and death dates, addresses of the crematorium and funeral home, and a statement from the crematorium certifying that details on the certificate match their own records.

The city denies there’s any connection between the amendments and the 2023 incident.

In a statement to CTV News Wednesday, the parks department said the amendment was approved to align with requirements set out in the Vital Statistics Act.

The City of Saskatoon operates two cemeteries, Woodlawn and the historic Nutana Cemetery, also known as the Pioneer Cemetery.