Taber Hill (also spelled Tabor Hill), could easily be overlooked but it is Scarborough’s most well know archeological site.
Wyandot (Huron) First Nation Burial Mound
The 800 year old ossuary, or cemetary, was inadvert unearthed when soil was being removed in preparation of an overpass for Highway 401 in 1956. When remains were found, work was stopped, and an investigation undertaken to determine how they came to be placed there.
It is belived that there are over 500 poeple buried at Taber Hill in what has been called the deepest ossuary that Walter Kenyon of the Royal Ontario Museum had ever heard of. He also acknowledged it to be the most significant ethnological discovery in Canada’s history. The important heritage site is now protected under the Protection of Archeological and Historic Sites Act. The land was purchased by the Canadian government.
Feast of the Dead Reburial Ceremony
Chief Joseph Logan of the Iroquois Six Nations supervised the three-day Feast of the Dead to rebury the remains that had been disturbed. Two hunderd indigenous people and several thousand outsiders watched as the bones were covered with wolf pelts and reinterred during the ceremony from October 19 to 21, 1956. For the next eleven years, Iroquois representatives held an annual Feast of the Dead in honour of those at Taber Hill. The monument was erected on the mound in 1961 and the area is a designated cemetary. Although signage referres to the land as Taber Hill Park, it is considered sacred ground
