Error angers Montreal families waiting to bury their dead

Families who have waited for months to bury loved ones at Montreal's famed Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery claim workers are making mistakes, including mixing up bodies.

Family members of Lucia Pannunzio were horrified this week when, at their mother's funeral, they discovered the cemetery had brought up the wrong casket from storage.

The cemetery is scrambling to catch up on a backlog of bodies after a bitter labour disputebetween management and maintenance workers shut down the grounds over the summer.

Management locked workers out when contract talks petered, prompting the unionizedemployees to go on strike.

If Pannunzio's family hadn't checked the name tag they could have buried the wrong person, said Paul Caghassi, a spokesman for families affected by thelockout.

"Burying is not an easy process. Having to wait and to be in a position that they don't know if it's the body of the mother...I think it's very surprising, and very difficult for the family," he told CBC News Friday.

"We're going to keep a good eye on what's happening there, because we've suffered enough."

The cemetery insists it was a one-time mistake, explained by human error, not lingering animosity from the protracted labour dispute.

"They looked at the name tag only after they put the casket onto the lowering device," explained Franois Campagna, a director at the cemetery.

Normally name tags are checked three times between the morgue and the burial, he added.