A vigil on Tabor Hill 2008
Linda and I spent the evening of the summer solstice on the Tabor Hill Ossuary, one of the largest Native Canadian Ossuaries in Ontario and located in the middle of a small suburban development here in West Hill. The plaque commemorating the event is encased in our of the largest granite rocks in the area.
The Tabor Hill Ossuary consists of two burial pits which were first excavated by Dr. Walter Kenyon of the Royal Ontario Museum in 1956. Both pits had the classic structure of ancestral Huron ossuaries, containing the largely disarticulated and commingled remains of 475 individuals who had been previously interred, and then moved and placed in these pits at a later date.
Such burial events were undertaken at the time of village relocation and were known as the Feast of the Dead. The bones have since been reinterred in a special ceremony under the auspices of the City of Scarborough and with the direction of First Nations representatives.
