Newfoundland man says a public office buried his sister without telling him

A Newfoundland flag flies in the wind in Rocky Harbour, Nfld., on Sept. 4, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — A Newfoundland man said he felt as if someone had punched him when he was told last month that an independent office of the Newfoundland and Labrador government had cremated and buried his sister without telling him.

Scott Hounsell said he got the news during a phone call with the province’s public trustee’s office, which he entrusted with his sister’s affairs after her death in 2023. He said he is speaking out in an effort to ensure no other family is forced to endure the same treatment.

“This is unethical. This is hurtful. This is cold. It’s difficult to talk about,” Hounsell said in an interview. “I loved my sister. It was devastating to watch her go through her life under the cloud of a substance abuse issue. And to put a final indignity upon her like this is unconscionable.”

Erica Hounsell was 56 when she died in St. John’s, N.L., in November 2023. She and her brother were estranged for decades as she battled addictions, but he was always there for her in an emergency.

He got a call around Halloween 2023 that she was at the hospital, and when he arrived doctors told him she was brain dead. He made the agonizing decision to take her off life support and watched over her for days until she died, he said.

The doctors then asked Hounsell if he planned to take her body, he said.

“I said no,” Hounsell said. “Because of her lifestyle. I didn’t know, if I was to become the executor of the state and take possession of the body, what I would find. What would come out of the woodwork, what kind of debts did she have?”

He left his sister’s affairs with the province’s public trustee’s office, and her remains with the provincial health authority. Officials assured him they’d take care of her business and phone him before she was laid to rest -- typically in about five months -- so that he could participate and have a memorial service, Hounsell said.

That didn’t happen. After months of silence, he phoned the trustee’s office, looking for information and following orders to re-submit the same paperwork several times. Finally, in January, more than a year after Erica Hounsell’s death, an employee at the office told him over the phone that his sister had been cremated and buried a few weeks before.

“It was like a punch in the gut. I physically felt like I was hit,” Hounsell said. “I don’t want anybody to feel the way I feel right now.”

He had to track down the funeral home that did the work in order to find out where his sister was laid to rest, he said, adding that he was relieved to find her grave had been marked with a white wooden cross.

Hounsell worries other families may have similar experiences. His sister’s body was kept at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John’s, where officials have been dealing with a large number of unclaimed bodies and an “exponential increase” in the need for somewhere to store them, according to a briefing note prepared by health authority officials obtained by access to information legislation.

The note says there were 31 unclaimed bodies at the facility as of Aug. 15, most of which were under the care of the public trustee, or in the process of being approved for the trustee’s care.

The office of the public trustee is a division of the Justice Department. The trustee is appointed by the provincial government to protect the financial assets of clients, who may include children, missing people or residents who have died.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said the minister has contacted Scott Hounsell.

“Deepest condolences are extended to the family,” said an email from spokesperson Debbie Marnell. “The public trustee is appointed by the court and makes decisions based on the specific circumstances and available information. This case predates the new regulations and legislation currently in place regarding unclaimed remains.”

The province recently passed legislation allowing the provincial health authority to take responsibility for and dispose of unclaimed remains.

Hounsell said he sent his sister’s paperwork to the general email for the trustee’s office, multiple times. An employee later told him that nobody checks that email address, he said.

“We don’t want the publicity, but we do want others to know what happened and to govern themselves accordingly,” he said, referring to himself and his wife, Charline Daley, who sat next to him as he spoke on the phone from his St. John’s home.

“I hope they do some soul searching up there,” he added. “I don’t want this to happen to anybody else.”

Hounsell said he will hold a memorial for his sister in the spring.

This report by The Canadian Press' Sarah Smellie was first published Feb. 12, 2025.