Exhumation to find Lauréanna Echaquan leaves family without answers

The Echaquan family awaits the results of Lauréanna Echaquan's presumed resting place. (Noovo Info)

It was a moment of mourning for the Echaquan family on Tuesday after two days of searching for baby Lauréanna’s remains in Joliette, Que. left them without answers.

• READ MORE: Exhumation of Joliette, Que. soccer field hopes to find baby, 53 years later

The family had received an exhumation order from the Quebec government to find her remains in May.

Four sites were identified, including a soccer field near the Joliette cemetery, where a cornfield once stood.

Two-and-a-half-month-old Lauréanna Echaquan died in 1973 from pneumonia at the Saint-Eusèbe Hospital in Joliette.

At the time, the Echaquans were told that Lauréanna would be buried in a nearby cornfield without a cross or memorial plaque.

• READ MORE: ‘Dark side of Quebec’s history’: Indigenous families exhuming their children’s bodies for answers, closure

Her body was never released to the family, and questions have persisted over the last 53 years about whether or not she is really dead, or if she was one of Quebec’s many “ghost babies,” Indigenous children who went missing or died after being admitted to hospital to receive medical care, mostly between the 1940s and 1980s.

Rumours have pervaded that some babies may have been swapped and later offered up for adoption or sent to residential schools.

Despite the lack of answers, the family says they are not giving up and are now considering next steps in their search for the infant.

This is the fifth exhumation authorized by the Quebec Superior Court as part of Bill 79, An Act to authorize the communication of personal information to the families of Indigenous children who went missing or died after being admitted to an institution.

The bill was introduced in the National Assembly in 2021 by Ian Lafrenière, Quebec Minister of Domestic Security and First Nations Relations, and is supported by Awacak, an Indigenous organization dedicated to finding missing Indigenous children across the province.