When Morningstar Woman attended her first sweat lodge ceremony, it was within the Lemay Forest in the Saint Norbert area of Winnipeg.

“That’s where I found myself, I got my spiritual healing through this area,” the Anishinaabe woman said, explaining how much the area means to her. 

She was in the adjacent Behavioural Health Foundation (BHF) facility for two years, recovering from an addiction to crystal meth. During an interview on the grounds, she pointed towards the Lemay Forest, which houses four different sweat lodges. 

Now, the forest is at risk from development. Inside the forest is a cemetery — known to hold more than 3,000 bodies of babies, children and their moms — and it houses protected species such as the pileated woodpecker. 

On December 26, a video from a Facebook friend alerted Morningstar Woman to a housing developer beginning to clear-cut Lemay Forest behind the BHF. 

It sent Saint Norbert residents into high alert. They have listened for the chainsaws, walked out their doors to investigate, and have shared videos to social media of contractors cutting trees. For five years, the residents have been organizing to prevent development.

Diane Bousquet, a Métis woman who grew up in St. Norbert and has attended sweat lodge ceremonies at the Lemay Forest and the BHF, was in the video that Morningstar Woman watched in late 2024.

“We started drumming and singing and explaining to the workers what was going… the one gentleman put down his saw… and that’s when the cutting stopped that day,” Bousquet recalled.

A day later, Morningstar Woman and Bousquet joined one of their Elders to light a sacred fire just outside the forest, on public lands owned by the City of Winnipeg.

Beyond a gate where the developer posted “No Trespassing” signs, into the forest, is where the community had been running Sweat Lodge ceremonies for the last 20 years.

It was on December 30 when the Court of King’s Bench Justice Inness issued an interim injunction, on behalf of the developer, to restrict people from interfering with pre-development at the forest. 

Despite an active injunction, with no arrests, the fire has been burning 24/7, for the last three months, tended to by land defenders and the Coalition to Save Lemay Forest. 

‘They’ll be cutting away’

Long before Francophone settlers populated Saint Norbert, Indigenous people used to hunt buffalo in the area, about 8,000 years ago.  By the mid 1700s, fur traders from Montreal observed that Assiniboine, Cree and Anishinaabe people were living at the confluence of the La Salle and Red River. 

Later came the Red River Métis, who began living in Saint Norbert in 1822. Many of them fled for Alberta and Saskatchewan during the “Reign of Terror” after the 1869 to 1870 Red River Resistance.

Joseph Lemay, from Montreal, became the first landowner of Lemay Forest in 1877, where he built a house and operated a mill. After he died in 1892, his home and land was donated to the Catholic Church. Father Noël-Joseph Ritchot then gave Lemay’s house to the Sisters of Misericordia in 1903, who opened the L’Asile Ritchot Orphanage a year later, and later expanded the building. 

When the orphanage closed, it was transferred to the Oblates of Mary Immaculate who ran it as a seminary. Then, about 50 years ago, the X-Kalay Foundation opened a treatment centre, which later changed its name to the Behavioural Health Foundation. 

The current landowner of the 22 acres where the Lemay Forest sits is Toronto-based Mazyar Yahyapour II. His company Memaz Inc., also known as Tochal Developments Inc., has been vying to build a 5,000 bed assisted-living facility, complete with a 5,000 stall parking lot. Previously, local restauranteur Peter Ginakes tried to develop the land, but failed due to logistical reasons.

In October 2024, the City of Winnipeg issued a permit to Tochal Developments to begin pre-development by removing vegetation and trees. 

John Wintrup, the hired planner and spokesperson for Yayahpour, has publicly stated that the landowner has the right to do what he wants with the land. After a January 6 hearing at the Manitoba law courts, Wintrup told reporters, “The landowner intends to develop it, the trees are going to get cut down and the land is going to be developed.” 

On January 8, Wintrup’s contractors felled 20 old growth trees around the sweat lodge.

 Morningstar Woman expressed feeling “helpless” when she saw the videos of the chainsaw operators cutting the trees. “You could see that the workers were actually right beside the sweat lodges,” said Morningstar Woman, who watched the videos while on a break at work that day. “I just felt like rage within me because (Wintrup) had promised that he wouldn’t go in there… that was absolutely horrible.”

Earlier that day, Wintrup attempted to pass by the sacred fire area with a bobcat skid steer, and into the forest, but was intervened by coalition members demanding that he have an archeologist present, due to the Asile Ritchot cemetery within the forest.

This was in front of a heavy media presence as the police were expected to enforce the injunction, but they did not arrive.

“We have a crew out there cutting away, and they’ll be cutting away,” Wintrup told the reporters.

“Why? Why are you cutting the trees?” shouted an unidentified person. 

Wintrup responded: “We have the right to do so, and the owner simply has had enough of residents who have been using this private space for their own personal use to somehow claim it as their own.” 

On January 8, Ricochet observed coalition member Louise May on the phone with an operator who told her that six units of the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) were on standby in Saint Norbert. Later that afternoon, a single police cruiser showed up after the media frenzy died down.

A fight within the legal system

About a week before those events, and two days after the fire was lit, on December 30, King’s Bench Justice Sarah Inness granted an interim, emergency injunction in favour of Tochal Inc. requiring individuals not to trespass or interfere with the company’s access to the private land.

The order was made without the 22 respondents present. In Wintrup’s submission to the court, he alleged being nearly run over by a truck, people “screaming obscenities” at him, and a threat to slash tires.

When the parties returned to court on January 6, Inness continued the injunction.

“It’s certainly what we asked the court to do, individuals who are aware of court orders should abide by them,” said Kevin Toyne, the lawyer representing the plaintiff, outside the Manitoba Law Courts.

“Tree clearing will continue, we expect the Winnipeg Police Service to actually start acting and enforcing the law here,” Toyne added. 

However, Inness allowed the sacred fire to continue so long as people weren’t obstructing Wintrup or accessing the private land in the forest.

In an interview with Ricochet, Diane Bousquet called it “cultural genocide.” 

“You’re denying us access to our sweat lodges despite what you told media,” she said about Wintrup. “The fact of the matter is if we step foot into those lodges, we’re all slapped with trespassing charges.” 

Wintrup said in a scrum on January 8 that he had spoken with Indigenous rights holders and was providing access to the ceremonial grounds. 

At the injunction hearing’s closing arguments on January 23, the defense council argued for Wintrup to stay away from the sacred fire and to cease and desist from tree cutting. 

The plaintiff’s counsel also requested that Inness expand the order to remove the sacred fire and camp. 

Inness reserved her final decision on the injunction for a date yet to be determined.

An important history at risk

While possible development is putting the forest at risk, it’s a heritage site that people do not want forgotten and paved over, they want the “Cimetière des Sœurs de la Miséricorde à St-Norbert,” also known as the cemetery of Asile Ritchot to be respected.

Babies, children and unwed single moms lived in cramped conditions at L’Asile Ritchot Orphanage in the first half of the 20th century. Many perished from malnutrition, typhoid illness from poor drinking water from the Red River, and other diseases.

A March 2013 article in the Winnipeg Free Press mentioned a 1923 Manitoba Board of Health report, which described that “a graduate nurse in charge of the older children has been moved up to the baby’s ward where she has sole charge of 64 babies under two years of age, many of whom are sick.”

Most of the young ones were buried in a common grave, where groups of bodies were buried together. As orphans, they had no family to pay for their graves. 

In a February 4 news release, the Société historique de Saint-Boniface (SHSB) unveiled new research findings of 3,383 who died at the orphanage through a “‘preliminary quantitative analysis” of admission records. 

Burial records show that 726 children under two years old were buried from 1907 to 1912.

Ethnicity wasn’t always documented, but through “preliminary analysis of existing sources”, the SHSB found that most children were French-Canadian or of other European ancestry. Out of the 3,383 deaths, at least 31 children were Métis, and it was confirmed that at least 225 Métis children attended Asile Ritchot.

Shelley Sweeney is worried development would put many graves at risk. Sweeney is archivist emerita and professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba, and a member of Outdoor Urban Recreational Spaces (OURS), an urban greenspace advocacy group which has been organizing to protect Lemay Forest. She aided in the new findings of the 3000+ deaths.

Sweeney found that Wintrup’s offer to leave a 100 metre buffer zone around the cemetery lines was insufficient because the unmarked graves throughout the area have yet to be identified and marked. She drafted a map that shows where his plan for the development overlaps the cemetery.

Only those baptized by the Catholic Church were laid to rest in the cemetery and the unbaptized were placed outside, Sweeney explained. 

“When the cemetery was deconsecrated in 1974, only 15 bodies were moved, according to the records. And so there’s the highest likelihood that the remains are still there,” Sweeney said. “These are tiny children, babies, they didn’t deserve what happened to them in the first place … but we can acknowledge it, and we can preserve the space.”

Diane Bousquet believes that this cemetery needs to be treated with the same level of care that remains from children who attended residential schools are being searched for with ground penetrating radar. She said that they were neglected and needed to be honoured.

Louise May filed a private prosecution against Tochal Inc. for allegedly violating the provincial Cemetery Act by cutting trees knowing that there’s a high possibility of common and unmarked graves in the area, which she and others believe still requires thorough investigation.

A Crown prosecutor is reviewing materials ahead of the April 15 hearing.

‘Not a meaningful engagement’ with Indigenous organizations

Wintrup’s injunction application showed that he contacted Indigenous organizations such as the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs (AMC), Treaty 1, Southern Chiefs Organization and the Manitoba Metis Federation (MMF), to inform them of the situation surrounding the cemetery.

However, the MMF’s minister responsible for residential and day school survivors, Andrew Carrier, expressed dissatisfaction with how Wintrup consulted with them through phone calls and emails, which he described as being “not sufficient.” 

He emphasized that it was a priority for the MMF to preserve and protect the children buried at Asile Ritchot. 

On January 20, he sent landowner Mazyar Yahyapour a letter which stated: “While the affidavit evidence filed by your legal team suggests that the MMF has been engaged by your firm, I want to be clear. Emails and phone calls are not meaningful engagement.” 

Carrier’s letter called for the landowner and his team to begin “discussions that are long overdue.”

They also reminded Yahyapour that Lemay Forest holds historical significance to the Métis as it is where Louis Riel had set up the provisional government of Manitoba.

The late grand chief Cathy Merrick of AMC, which represents 63 First Nations in Manitoba, engaged with Tochal Inc. and research was done to investigate unmarked graves at Asile Ritchot. An initial study was contracted by Peguis Special Projects and Development. 

“The AMC is asking the City of Winnipeg to hold off on any development in this area in order to investigate the presence of unmarked mass graves,” wrote Merrick in an email to Winnipeg’s Mayor Scott Gillingham in December 2023. 

“The exact cemetery location remains unknown… to ascertain the cemetery’s size and the presence of human remains, a comprehensive survey program is necessary, utilizing test-pits, ground-penetrating radar, resistivity and magnetometry tests, all focused on locating graves without disturbing the ground.”

When Ricochet followed up with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, their response was, “we have no comment at this time.”

Lemay Forest is a microcosm of the global biodiversity and climate crisis

Another part of Lemay Forest at risk to development are the birds and wildlife who make it their home, such as deer, red foxes, beavers, owls, eagles, monarch butterflies and many other migratory and resident birds. Among them, the protected pileated woodpecker.

Eric Reder, a campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, noticed that Wintrup’s own documentation submitted in court shows he ignored the federal Canadian Wildlife Services request to do a survey for Pileated Woodpecker cavities throughout Lemay Forest. This failure to act violated Migratory Bird Regulations, though it’s unclear whether this violation will be addressed.

At a presentation to city councillors during a development planning committee meeting on January 13, Reder stressed the importance of protecting nature and biodiversity.

“If we don’t protect nature and biodiversity, society is going to collapse. If we don’t end the climate crisis, society is going to collapse… The process of moving towards a society that lives within the constraints of nature, starts with the Lemay forest.” 

Shelly Sweeney questioned the City of Winnipeg’s permit allowing Tochal Inc. to cut trees in the pre-planning phase. “It was a loophole in the first place that allowed the permit to be issued, typically no vegetation is to be disturbed, until there is a viable development plan,” Sweeney said.

“I don’t think that the city should have allowed the developer to start cutting down the trees until there was actually a development plan in place and that might have actually been an error, I’m not sure, but I think that that permit should be withdrawn.”

She told Ricochet that the “entire forest is worth preserving.”

City of Winnipeg staff have been reviewing the idea of expropriating the land after City councillor Russ Wyatt put a motion forward to expropriate and turn the land into a public park.

Louise May told the Manitoba Municipal Board that she wanted to see it deemed a “memorial forest.”

Wyatt has urged the mayor and city council to honour Winnipeg’s commitment to the Montréal Pledge in support of COP15 goals to protect urban greenspace by preserving Lemay Forest. 

In 2025, city councillors are expected to decide on a new policy that charges a fee for each tree that a landowner wants to remove, to deter cutting and preserve the city’s green canopy.

The sacred fire still burns

Throughout the last three months of the sacred fire perpetually burning, the Winnipeg Police have frequently visited the land defenders. They have followed steps of the National Framework for Police Preparedness for Demonstrations and Assemblies, a blueprint for the policing and destabilization of mass mobilization. 

At one point in January, the Lemay Protectors were on high alert of eviction and arrests. A Facebook live video by a woman named Cedar captured Winnipeg Police liaison officers delivering a letter. It asked them to move the fire and structures aside by the morning of January 26, or face charges of mischief, obstructing a peace officer, and contempt of court for violating the injunction order.

One officer told her, “The fire can be moved back,” and she retorted: “We’re not moving.”

However, Justice Inness had allowed the sacred fire to stay put after Louise May testified in court that the group “made a hearty effort” by moving firewood, her truck and left open a path for Wintrup’s vehicles and heavy equipment to pass by.

“We’re not calling it a blockade, it’s a ceremonial fire, and there’s plenty of room to go around it, it’s a wide swath of land,” May said during her January 6 testimony.

In an interview outside Lemay Forest, Morningstar Woman explained that the fire can’t simply be moved.

“When somebody tells us that it’s in our best interest to move the sacred fire, that is the perfect opportunity for us to give them the teaching that you just can’t stop a sacred fire and relight it,” she said. 

“Our commitment is to protect it in this exact area.”

Bousquet agreed.

“That’s my basic human right as an Indigenous person is to practice and be in ceremony,” Bousquet said. “It’s disrespectful and it’s harmful to continuously come in and interrupt what we have going on here.” 

Since the Winnipeg Police’s January 26 deadline passed and no arrests have happened, there has been some relief for the firekeepers who are determined to stay for the long haul into next fall.

“It’s been quiet,” Morningstar Woman said. “It’s more relaxed, but we’re still diligent with our surroundings… we’re still being respectful of the court injunction.”

She explained that Wintrup and the machinery have stayed away.

As for the legal side of the fight, on Feb. 26 Justice Sarah Inness found Louise May in contempt of the injunction order for standing in front of machinery trying to enter the forest on January 8, with sentencing at a later date. 

In a last ditch effort to revive the development proposal, Tochal Inc’s John Wintrup went in front of the Manitoba Municipal Board in February. 

He asked them to overturn the City of Winnipeg’s September 2024 decision not to authorize the project. The City had refused to amalgamate the parcels of land and rezone for multi-family dwelling to allow for the 2,500 suites and parking. 

Bousquet, May and others urged the board to reject the development application. 

“Although the truth about the children’s graves have only recently come to light, the real work of truth and reconciliation begins with understanding how they got there and why they’ve so easily been forgotten,” Bousquet said in a heartfelt presentation.

“If we continue on this path, ignoring our voices and our sacred spaces, we risk undermining everything we claim to be working towards, reconciliation, the duty to consult and meaningful engagement.”

Mazyar Yahyapour traveled from Toronto to attend the hearing. Ricochet asked why the forest needed to be cleared before having approval for development. “I will let my planner answer the question,” Yahyapour said as Wintrup stood beside him.

“The landowner wants to make productive use of his land …  it’s not going to be preserved as a forest for the public anymore,” Wintrup said. “There’s the potential to make something happen on the land that’s more productive than just growing trees for the neighbours.”

With the seasons shifting from winter to spring it means that the protected pileated woodpecker’s nesting season will soon begin.

“Because of the Migratory Bird Act, you’re not allowed to cut trees between mid-April to mid-October, so there should be no tree cutting,” Morningstar Woman said.  “It’s really good news.”

Crystal Greene is the BIPOC Investigating Canada fellow for Ricochet, IndigiNews and Pivot Media, with support from Canadian Race Relations Foundation and Journalists for Human Rights.

Editor’s note: This is a corrected story. A previous version said Elder Terrance Bruce lit the sacred fire. In fact it was a different Elder. We apologize for the error.