Taber Hill Ossuary Memorialized 2
by John Twynam
Title
Taber Hill Ossuary Memorialized 2
Artist
John Twynam
Medium
Photograph
Description
The Taber Hill Ossuary in Scarborough (Toronto), Ontario, is memorialized with numerous hand-painted orange maple leaves in honour of the country's Indigenous population.
In the heart of Scarborough, surrounded by curving residential streets, there rises Taber Hill, an unusual smooth mound, with a large granite boulder resting on top. It's not a natural feature - this mound contains the remains of nearly 500 Iroquois, buried sometime during the fourteenth century, well before the first Europeans landed on mainland Canada.
While digging up earth in 1956 for a 401 highway overpass and to make way for new housing, a steam shovel operator looked in surprise to see parts of human skeletons on his shovel. Archaeologists quickly descended onto the scene and recommended the province acquire the site and declare it a cemetery. Although Iroquois left their dead in trees, they would later collect the bodies for a mass burial.
These hand-painted maple leaves were temporarily placed on the field leading up to the large boulder and accompanying plaque, in honour of the recently-discovered remains from Ontario's residential schools, a dark chapter of our history.
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July 1st, 2021
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