A Quebec separatist group planted 101 wood crosses in the ground at the site in Notre Dame de Grâce of the yet-to-be built McGill University Health Centre in the night of Thursday to Friday, saying it was a symbolic graveyard of the Québécois people.



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By Max Harrold - MONTREAL -- A Quebec separatist group planted 101 wood crosses in the ground at the site in Notre Dame de Grâce of the yet-to-be built McGill University Health Centre in the night of Thursday to Friday, saying it was a symbolic graveyard of the Québécois people.
“This cemetery of crosses, in the image of cemeteries for soldiers fallen in the two Great Wars, represents the Québecois people who, after centuries of battle, are finally conceding to the English-speaking pressure on the continent,” read a statement emailed to The Gazette early Friday from the Comité d’action politique pour l’Indépendance nationale.
“(The mock cemetery) is accompanied by a banner claiming high and loud the death of a people, signalling that the MUHC represents nothing less than the death of the Québécois people, and it expresses the people’s rejection of an assimilation like that which they have always resisted until now in a continuous, and perhaps perpetual, struggle.”
The statement said there are several irrational motivations behind the construction of the $1.3 billion MUHC, including the high rate of medical students who train at the MUHC – which receives Quebec government funding -- and then go work outside of the province.
The MUHC is one of two new health centres to be built in the coming years. The other is Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, to be located near Hôpital St-Luc.
Ian Popple, a spokesperson for the MUHC, said the crosses were being removed by early afternoon.
He dismissed the protesters' central message about the use of English at the MUHC's existing hospitals, which include the Montreal General Hospital, the Royal Victoria Hospital and the Montreal Children's Hospital.
"We pride ourselves on being a bilingual institution," Popple said. "We provide care, teaching and research in both English and French." The MUHC also has translators on hand for people who speak "a multitude" of other languages, he said.
The MUHC is to be built by a public-private partnership venture headed by the McGill Health Infrastructure Group, a consortium headed by the Quebec-based engineering and construction giant SNC-Lavalin. The new 3.2-million-square-foot hospital will provide 154 single-patient rooms for children and 346 for adults, increased space for mobile equipment to allow many procedures in patients' rooms, separate elevators for patients, a fibre-optic network for test results, and facilities for co-operation between health care providers and researchers that is expected to foster innovations in patient care and cures.