Jim and Jackie Haliburton have filed legal action over the removal of their mother’s body without permission. Holly Haliburton, 95, died Feb. 17, 2013. Her body was taken from St. Paul’s Hospital morgue on Feb. 25, 2013, the day before a scheduled meeting with the First Memorial funeral home in North Vancouver. photo by Vancouver Sun

We have filed a lawsuit against a funeral home and its parent company for removing the body of our 95-year-old mother, Holly Haliburton, from the morgue of St. Paul’s Hospital without our permission.

The hospital and its board, Providence Health Care, are also named as defendants in the legal action, filed in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver. The other defendants are the funeral home, First Memorial Funeral Services, and its parent company, Service Corporation International (SCI), the funeral industry giant that is based in Houston, Texas.

Our court action alleges the defendants were negligent and did not follow the regulations requiring signed consent before Holly’s body was removed from the morgue the day before we had a scheduled meeting to discuss prices with First Memorial, which had refused to discuss the price of a cremation over the phone and insisted we attend a meeting at the funeral home. After the meeting, we decided to hire A Basic Cremation (ABC) to handle the cremation service. But when ABC went to pick up Holly’s body, it wasn’t at the morgue — it had already been removed by First Memorial.

Stories on our lawsuit appeared today in a number of media outlets, including The Vancouver Sun. Click here to read the latest story by Sun reporter Lori Culbert. And you can read the original Sun story, written in 2013, by clicking here.  CTV News ran a story today by The Canadian Press. Click here to read that story.

Here are a few photos of Holly over the years:

Holly and Jackie, 1987.

Holly Haliburton, 1946. She was 29.

Holly in 1949 with Jackie, aged 2.

Holly (far right) with her family on vacation in 1960. Left to right: Holly’s son Jim, husband Jack and daughter Jackie.

Holly with her dog, Chiefie. 1961.