This is not your usual lost dog story. This one is very telling about our society, says a zooarchaeologist who studies such things.
Joanne Chrobot can’t find her dog Chico. The small black spaniel-type dog died in 1997 and was buried in the pet cemetery behind the Cormack Animal Clinic in Mississauga.
Chrobot did not attend the burial. “It was too emotional for me to go there. I’m bawling just driving by [the clinic],” she said.
But clinic staff told Chrobot that Chico was buried near the tree at the right-hand end of the cemetery, she says. She had purchased a large headstone and said she was assured by staff that it would be placed at Chico’s grave.
She happened to be in the area in 2021 and felt ready to visit Chico’s gravestone.
But she did not find the neat and tidy cemetery she remembered. Instead she found a No Trespassing sign, the ground churned up and gravestones turned over.
That’s when she began calling city councillors and learned the property had been sold. Later still, she learned pet cemeteries are not covered by any regulations.
Animal burial grounds are not regulated by city bylaw, according to information from Mississauga commissioner of community services Jodi Robillos. There isn’t any requirement to register an animal burial ground with the city or obtain permission to remove one.
In Ontario, only a property owner’s permission is required to bury animals. If animals are buried on a property and that property is sold, the new owner has no obligations with respect to the remains.
Cemeteries not protected
Zooarchaeologist Eric Tourigny, a senior lecturer in historical archeology at the University of Newcastle in the United Kingdom, studies pet cemeteries as a way of measuring how the human to animal relationship has evolved. He is not surprised that anyone would be upset that their pet’s final resting place is not protected.
“Losing that animal relationship can be just as difficult, if not more so, than losing a certain human relationship,” Tourigny said. “They become an important part of each other’s lives… and then when one dies, one feels incomplete.”
Maria Evans knows that feeling. Her toy poodle Mimi was buried in the Cormack pet cemetery in 1982.
The Cormack cemetery “was very beautiful, kept so nicely, very serene,” she recalls. “You could visit and feel at peace.”
But the cemetery was anything but the last time she visited. She couldn’t get into the cemetery and had to drive through the construction site beside it. When she realized the cemetery was no more, she asked a man working on the construction if she could come back with her husband and a shovel to retrieve Mimi, which they did.
“I managed to find it, but it was the most horrible thing… The smell is not nice,” Evans said. “I was ready to give up, and then I saw her little red blanket.”
Chrobot has not been able to retrieve Chico’s body despite returning with helpers. She has tried contacting former clinic staff to obtain records, or perhaps a map of the cemetery. She has spoken with a man she says is the owner who agreed to dates she could search again. But he canceled and rebooked and canceled again, she said.
Canadian Affairs could not independently confirm that man is the owner. He did not return phone calls and emails.
Exhuming 588 pets
Meanwhile, just down the road, the Oakville and Milton Humane Society is illustrating a very different way of managing a major change to its pet cemetery.
Since the 1950s, the humane society has been in the heart of Oakville at a site they have outgrown, said Jeff Valentin, the humane society’s executive director. In making plans for a move within the next two years, the society is exhuming the 588 pets — including a race horse — in its cemetery, which was in use from the early ’50s to the early ’90s.
“It’s wonderful, you know, our organization, our volunteers and staff… these are people who care about animals. And so our process in the project is, I think, the right one, one that people can be proud about,” Vallentin said.
The project started with letters mailed to each pet owner, explaining what the humane society is doing and why, Vallentin said. As the burials go back 70 years, many people have moved. Vallentin urges anyone concerned about a pet buried in their cemetery to contact the humane society.
It’s a big project being completed with the help of forensic science students in the anthropology department at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. One of those classes is an anthropology field work class led by Tracy Rogers, a professor in that department. The students learn and practice how to do an excavation, which they would normally learn by excavating, perhaps, fetal pigs, she said.
Tourigny will be joining Rogers in the excavation. Although he is a Canadian, this will be the first time he has worked on this research outside the United Kingdom.
“I’ll be incorporating the information from the gravestones there, but we’ll also be… carefully recording the skeletal remains… making sure they’re properly taken care of before reburial,” Tourigny said.
That’s all Chrobot, Chico’s owner, would like. “This is what we need here… show the compassion, just show compassion.”
If you have had your pet buried at the Cormack Animal Clinic, 1617 Cormack Court, Mississauga, Ontario, near Dixie Value Mall, please contact us at jchrobot@rogers.com 647-235-4986. Thank you so much, we need to move our pets so they can finally rest in peace.