by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Not many broke people are as lucky as the Great Antonio was, in death at least if not in life. When the famed strongman died two Sundays ago, he left no family, no life insurance, no money and no plans for a final resting place. But thanks to the generosity of some Montrealers - including an anonymous donor who gave Sun Youth $3,000 and the Urgel Bourgie funeral directors, which donated an over-sized casket big enough to accommodate his massive 6-foot-4 frame - the city was able to say goodbye to one of our favourite characters. It beats the alternative: without money or relatives to claim him, he would have ended up in a numbered, anonymous grave in rural Laval, along with hundreds of other people forgotten and unmissed.

"Usually, we like to help the living," says Nicolas Carpentier, Sun Youth's coordinator of senior services, over the phone from Beaubien E. funeral home, where Antonio's body was on display before his cremation on Tuesday. "It's rare that donors are keen to pay for funeral services."

Carpentier, who was impressed by Tuesday's turnout of people paying their last respects, is glad that Antonio's remains will not be treated like those of other paupers. For those who didn't have the huge man's popularity, their end is much more quiet, unassuming and lonely.

Out of sight, out of mind

The Cimetière de Laval is tucked away on the Chemin Bas St-François, a bucolic, sober field far away from the traffic and noise of the city across the river. A short drive up its main pathway, to the right of the Notre-Dame d'Haiti section, lies a strip of grass maybe 30 yards wide and over 100 long that, at first glance, seems empty. But walking through it, a visitor notices hundreds of small, round, metal plaques in the ground, each with two letter-and-number markings. This is where the destitute are buried, and very few people come to visit.

The cemetery, run by the Magnus Poirier funeral directors, is the only one in the Montreal area that buries the city's paupers (another home collects bodies in Quebec City). In an arrangement that goes back a couple of decades and costs the coroner's office $350 a body, the cemetery collects bodies from the coroner's office and the provincial Ministry of Health and Social Services that are unclaimed after 30 days. They are taken from the morgue, placed in either a wooden or steel casket, and buried together in batches. No final words are spoken, no ceremony is performed, and the only witness is the gravedigger.

"There is no religious ceremony because we don't know what the person's belief was," says François Houle, communications representative at the Quebec Coroner's Office. "We don't know if the person was Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Hindu." It would be presumptuous, both he and the funeral directors agree, to perform any kind of ceremony.

The bodies are only buried. Cremation is out. "It's not against the law," says Magnus Poirier treasurer Mark Poirier, "but if someone from the person's family gets in touch with us searching for their relative, they might want to bring the body back to the family's cemetery. Or maybe their religion doesn't allow cremation. But no one is against burial."

Unclaimed bodies

The coroner's office supervised and paid for the burial of 45 bodies in Montreal last year and 38 the year before. They do try to contact the relatives of the dead through the media, and maybe 30 per cent of the bodies eventually end up claimed. "We're not required to do so by law, but we feel it is a humanitarian gesture," says Houle.

As for the Ministry of Health and Social Services, the procedure is similar: if someone dies a natural death, in a hospital or home, the institution contacts the police to track down any living relation. If the body is unclaimed after 30 days, it's sent to a funeral home of the institution's choice, which arranges for the burial. The home then bills the Ministry. A Ministry representative says there were 248 unclaimed bodies in 2002.

The deaths of homeless people are especially difficult to manage because they simply disappear, without anyone knowing where they are or how they are doing. More often than not they die alone, and even the people dedicated to helping them don't know what happened.

"There was one person who had been coming here for 18 years," says Mirabelle Ricard, the coordinator of the St. James United Church's drop-in centre for the homeless, "and, after we closed for the month of August, hasn't come back. I'm quite worried about him."

She says that when one of her familiar charges disappear, she calls around looking for them at detox clinics, hospitals or police stations. "But," she says, "because we're not family, they can't tell us anything."