Families of loved ones buried at Montreal cemetery demand answers over state of grounds

I brought two shovels. Katrina Gulo didn't expect to have to bring gardening tools to her daddy's grave at Notre Dame, the next cemetery for Father's Day. The cemetery looks like it's been abandoned and it's been like this for a long time now. She and her mother spent hours Sunday clearing her father's resting place, arguing that it's disrespectful to allow the grass in the cemetery, which is Canada's largest, to be overgrown like this. This is just not right. It's, it's absolutely, it's really a disgrace. Severino Paulini, who went to visit his father-in-law and could barely find his way because of the tall grass, agrees. When we come, we can't even walk around because there's too much grass. You don't even see the tombstone. Jimmy Koliacadakis feels lucky. He says until recently, his parents gravesite looked like this months after his mom was buried. But two weeks ago when he was there, he asked some workers nearby to help him get rid of the dirt. Thank goodness for that because otherwise after eight months or nine months, it still would have been a mound of dirt and and rocks. This is a client's latest disappointment. A month long strike by workers, which ended last July caused a backlog of unburied bodies that took officials months to clear. The strike also forced the closure of the cemetery for several months. Clients who had to bear all of this last year say they're fed up. If you're short on manpower, you know it's it's not the family's fault. We're always stuck in the in the middle where we have to either cut the grass ourselves. Flatten or level the soil ourselves. There's a lot of there's a lot of people that don't work. They want, they want jobs. Make them cut the grass. It's not too hard. Gulo and her mom say they just want answers. I don't know any other cemetery that you come to that looks like this. It looks like it's been abandoned for years. And it's really it's, it's not for the fair, for the families who pay. In a statement, cemetery officials apologize for any inconvenience, saying in the past week more than 880 hours were spent maintaining the cemetery despite the challenges posed by this spring's extraordinary weather and the subsequent backlog. They also say they're doing their best but did not give a timeline for when things would be back to normal. Phil Carpenter, Global News, Quote Dinesh.