The Ontario Registrar of Burial Sites is looking for anyone who might be related to early Bytown residents whose bones were recently discovered at a burial site uncovered during an excavation on Ottawa’s Sparks Street, between Metcalfe and Elgin streets.
The remains were discovered in December during the installation of a gas line.
According to a CTV report, “Archives show a cemetery in the area that was once the corner of Bytown’s Barrack Hill, where canal workers and their families were buried.
“Ontario’s Registrar of Burial Sites has declared the discovered burial site at 62 Sparks as a ‘burial ground’ and has asked anyone with connections to those buried here to contact the Registrar within two weeks.”
Those who think they might be related to someone who was buried in Barrack Hill Cemetery have until April 20 to contact Ontario’s Registrar of burial sites at 416-212-7499.
Read more in the Ottawa Citizen article, Connected to bones found under Sparks Street?, and in the CTV report, Digging up the past: what we are learning about those who helped build the Canal from their remains.
