Archeologists will spend the next several months removing the remains of dozens of people buried under Dorchester Square and Place du Canada.
The bones of 20 to 60 individuals will be removed in the next few months so that workers can perform underground electrical work and plumbing.
It turns out that the area was once the site of an old Roman Catholic cemetery where between 40,000 and 50,000 people were buried.
A number of bodies were moved to Notre-dame-des neiges cemetery when the downtown burial site closed in mid 1850s, but some of the bodies are still there.
Delicate work
City official Andre Lavallee tells CTV News that the remains will be handled with great care as they're excavated.
"We will have to carefully remove maybe some bones and we will take all the measures that are professionally recognized all around the world to do such things," he said.
The bones will be removed by September and re-buried at Notre-Dame des-Neiges cemetery.
The city will erect a monument to the deceased, whose names are not known.
