by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Something secret is happening in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery that’s upsetting Paul Aiello. “I drive around in there and it gets me sick to my stomach,” he says. The head of the three-generation east-end monument-making dynasty believes that the cemetery—the third largest in North America—is doing little to discourage grave robbers, the type who steal the bronze sculptures his family has created for people to commemorate loved ones. “My father made a non-religious sculpture, unique in the world,” he says. “It was of a woman. We built it here then shipped it to Italy, where they poured the bronze. Then somebody came with chains and a crowbar and took off with it in a truck.” The monuments, which cost between $10,000 to $50,000 new, are difficult to insure, and often turn up in antique stores or on the black market.

“Every time I drive by I see one missing,” says Aiello. “I was in the cemetery this morning, and noticed that a small, two-foot angel, a beautiful bronze we did, is gone,” says Aiello. He estimates that, “Three-quarters of the statues being stolen are monuments that we designed and installed for these families, and now they’re gone.”

A cursory check for bronze graveyard monuments yielded a pair in antique shops on Amherst, while cops nabbed bandits trying to peddle two stolen treasures on eBay last year.

Aiello says the ghoulish graveyard thefts would have been unthinkable in an earlier age. “About 40 years ago, we had about 30 full-size bronze statues outside our building on Sherbrooke,” he says. “They were there for the choosing and nobody ever touched them.”

He’s particularly miffed because he feels that the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery could install cameras and study the comings and goings of vehicles to prevent more thefts. “The situation is extremely grave and has been for the last couple of years, and nobody’s doing anything about it,” says Aiello.

Dead protection

Representatives from the cemetery failed to return calls over several weeks, but cops are skeptical that camera surveillance could adequately protect the graveyard from art thieves. “Hundreds of vehicles go in and out of there every day. We can never know who’s doing what in such a vast space,” says Sgt-Det Alain Lacoursière, who recently returned from a conference in Brazil where the global problem of the theft of publicly-placed bronze works was discussed. The art theft sleuth says that the actual number of officially investigated cases of monument theft from island-area graveyards only amounts to about eight to 10 a year. What often appears to be theft is actually just families repossessing the monuments, which they are legally entitled to do.

Religious works appear to have a better resale value than bronzed busts of loved ones, so one might consider honouring dead Uncle Jack with a likeness rather than a beautiful ensemble of angels. “If it’s an image of my grandfather, then the resale is impossible,” says Lacoursière. “And it’s even better because, for the family, in 50 to 100 years, they’ll know what he looked like.”

Cemetery monuments—regardless of heritage value—remain the official property of the families and descendents, which is the case in most other countries as well. According to our Civil Code, any stolen item that is in the possession of an individual for one year—presuming he’s not the thief— becomes the legal possession of that person. In some cases, Lacoursière says, when cemetery monuments are finally recovered, families decline their return, preferring to keep insurance money instead.

Alain Tremblay, the head of l’Écomusée de l’Au-Delà, an 11-year-old group aimed at protecting the local cemetery artworks, vigorously disagrees with the police version of relative peace in the graveyard. He says this past year proves that it’s panic time for our cemetery heritage.

“Hundreds of works have been stolen and hundreds have been vandalized at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges this summer alone,” Tremblay says. “Families don’t even want to repair or replace them anymore because they know they’ll be stolen as soon as they’re back in.” Tremblay wants to undertake a massive cataloguing of all the artwork in the graveyards of Quebec, one of many notions being explored at a major meeting of minds on the subject of cemetery art theft today, October 31, at 1212 Panet from 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m., $20, open to the public. :