Court of Appeal reverses order on McGill excavation at former hospital

The Quebec Court of Appeal reversed a lower court decision on Friday that required McGill University to comply with an agreement reached with Indigenous women to continue excavation work at the site of the old Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal under certain conditions. 

In its decision, the Court of Appeal wrote that the judge "misapprehended the scope of his power to make safeguard orders."

"The order he issued is not enforceable," the Court of Appeal wrote. "Under the guise of a case-management measure, he decided the parties' rights under the Agreement and appropriated the power to supervise the application of the Agreement without a genuine debate on the merits." 

The conditions were part of a deal reached in November with the Mohawk Mothers — a group of Kanien'kehá:ka women — that outlined the search for possible unmarked graves at the site.

The agreement came after the Mohawk Mothers, also known as the Kanien'kehá:ka Kahnistensera, launched a civil suit in March 2023, seeking to halt the development. The group argued there may be unmarked Indigenous graves that risked being excavated at the site, as well as archeological remains from a pre-colonial Iroquoian settlement.

The site also includes the Allan Memorial Institute, where CIA-funded mind-control experiments were conducted in the 1950s and 1960s.

Prior to the deal, the Mohawk Mothers had argued that the university and the Société québécoise des infrastructures failed to properly involve a panel of archeologists appointed to oversee the search for possible unmarked graves at the former hospital — the site of a future downtown campus expansion.